Last Epoch - time travel action-RPG

[Lacrymas]

My three biggest gripes with LE is how piss easy it is, how the loot is a neverending shower of generic crap and obtuse stats, most of which are useless or overly specific, and how the vast majority of builds are just the subclasses because the subclass abilities powercreep the base ones. % chance to cast Bone Shards after using Transplant sounds cool on paper, but these kinds of myopic effects bloat the itemization and make it almost impossible to get what you want/need. The itemization needs a complete overhaul.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

My three biggest gripes with LE is how piss easy it is..

If you complain about this, or the fact that there is no punishment for death, you get a bunch of crap like
"The campaign is just a tutorial for the endgame."
"I like it like this."
"You can create your own challenge."

And more retardness. The game is fucking boring because it's so fucking easy. I'm not playing a 20 hour tutorial to grind for autistic loot in the endgame. Fucking wankers still do not understand that people played Diablo so much because they wanted more of it, they didn't suffer through the campaign for some magical endgame bullshit.

 

[Lacrymas]

As far as I know, the highest level of monoliths and the new harbinger bosses are where the game starts to get difficult. There are like 5 people who have managed to kill the new final boss on hardcore f.e. But I don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time breezing through the game, bored out of my skull, to get to the actually engaging bits.

 

[Damned Registrations]

How long is the campaign really? It's certainly shorter than PoE or Grim Dawn with their 30 million mandatory sidequests for talent points or whatever. It is boring as fuck though. I assume they wanted to give you a lot of time to fuck around with different skills and such before you got to the endgame, but that's a stupid reason since you could always just backtrack if you want punching bags to safely experiment on.

Fucking wankers still do not understand that people played Diablo so much because they wanted more of it, they didn't suffer through the campaign for some magical endgame bullshit.

Diablo 1 was replayable because it had many randomized elements and was short, not a painfully long campaign where you fight the same shit in the same place with the same gear every fucking time.

Diablo 2 wasn't replayable, people just went to multiplayer and got powerlevelled to try new builds. Punching things with the default melee/bow attack for hours to not ruin your build before you unlock your only real skill at level 18 or whatever was not a good time either.

As far as I know, the highest level of monoliths and the new harbinger bosses are where the game starts to get difficult.

Pretty sure monoliths have a 'push your luck' kind of mechanic so you get to difficult ones pretty damned fast. The problem is you'll probably be incentivized to farm a particular one to get some build defining unique. That's what drove me away eventually.

At the end of the day, of everything out there right now, if I were to jump back into this genre it'd be either this or a diablo 2 mod, assuming those have continued getting better. MedianXL was pretty cool last I played it, and that was years ago. If there's a version for the remake and they've gotten some QoL shit working, it'd be a pretty good time. These games live or die on how interesting the skills/spells are to use, and only this, modded diablo 2, and PoE scratch that itch for me. And PoE is disqualified for it's inane balance.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE2 and Titan Quest 2 are right around the corner, so they might offer something good in this genre. I've liked what I've seen from both, so time will tell. As for how long LE's campaign is, it's looong and basically unskippable. 10ish hours maybe if you rush. Grim Dawn's campaign can be rushed in 2 hours if you just run straight for the Loghorrean, I've done it. There isn't much side content in LE, there's certainly no exploration, so just going through main quest will have you see 95% of the campaign content. Theoretically, you can skip most of it by level 15 on an alt, but practically it's pointless because you can't do the monoliths at such a low level. You can try, but you'll die.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ah, I forgot the alts get to fast track the campaign, that's why I remembered it being short. 15 is certainly too early to do monoliths, but the way the campaign works you can basically run it in 2-3 hours on an alt and get to the level needed to start doing monoliths, from what I recall, since you still do the act bosses and they give a fuckton of xp. I certainly levelled a lot of alts. Helps if you give them twink gear to make up for skipping most of the campaign. Also, monoliths aren't the only side/endgame content in LE. It's got 3 dungeons that each have their own unique loot mechanics involving special currencies and such and let you add modifiers that increase difficulty and loot.

Anyways, fingers crossed PoE2 doesn't shit the bed, but it's looking very heavily skewed towards console play. Never was much into TQ, from what I recall it had super banal skills of the 'now your sword does fire damage' or 'shoot a magic bullet that does ice damage' variety. If the sequel has proper skills I'll certainly give it a look.

 

[abija]

Monoliths are scaled anyway, could do them at lvl 1 if they wanted...
Problem is, they are so boring, they make the campaign seem good in comparison.

 

[Lacrymas]

After having played it some more, it's unfortunately still a 5/10 game. I can barely summon the motivation to get to the monoliths to get the cosmetic at the end of this event. It's just a combination of factors that drive me into a fugue state - the non-existent difficulty, the lack of any kind of atmosphere, the story being dull and pointless (and unfinished!), the itemization that's made for people who use excel spreadsheets recreationally, the constant lightshow that is honestly exhausting to look at, every mob being essentially the same with a different skin, the item editing crafting that is a ridiculous solution to a non-existent problem. I really don't know who this game is for or what niche it's trying to fill that other, better games (yes, even PoE is better) don't.

 

[udm]

My three biggest gripes with LE is how piss easy it is..

If you complain about this, or the fact the there is no punishment for death, you get a bunch of crap like
"The campaign is just a tutorial for the endgame."
"I like it like this."
"You can create your own challenge."

And more retardness. The game is fucking boring because it's so fucking easy. I'm not playing a 20 hour tutorial to grind for autistic loot in the endgame. Fucking wankers still do not understand that people played Diablo so much because they wanted more of it, they didn't suffer through the campaign for some magical endgame bullshit.

And that's why I feel these guys do not get the genre, or maybe they're just trying to cater to the autistic audience. Grim Dawn has mediocre endgame content but the journey to get there is fun. Path of Exile (IMO) was most fun during the Alpha/Beta stages because of the attention to detail given to map and encounter designs from Acts 1 to 3. Even Torchlight 2 has fun dungeons and encounters even if the plot is non-existent. The best ARPGs follow these same design principles. Contrasting that, in LE and other newer ARPGs, the story feels like an excuse to get to the speed clearing meta.

 

[Lacrymas]

Grim Dawn has pretty good endgame content for this genre - roguelike dungeons, megabosses, the Crucible, the random dungeons whose name escapes me, and you can just do boss runs like in D2 if you must. LE has nothing but speed clearing from the very beginning. You start out severely overpowered as if you've already grinded BiS endgame gear and there's 0 sense of progression. For fans of this genre, the devs don't seem to get what people like about it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Too bad all of Grim Dawn's content is engaged with by swinging a stick in melee or firing a bullet. Diablo 1 had more creative spells.

LE is lacking in content, but that can be added over time. Having 30 different versions of 'do a completely normal attack but it's green and does extra damage' isn't something that you can expect to be fixed.

 

[udm]

Too bad all of Grim Dawn's content is engaged with by swinging a stick in melee or firing a bullet. Diablo 1 had more creative spells.

LE is lacking in content, but that can be added over time. Having 30 different versions of 'do a completely normal attack but it's green and does extra damage' isn't something that you can expect to be fixed.

Fair enough, I don't disagree with the above assessments of GD and LE. However, in the case of LE, going by what the company has been doing and the direction they've taken the game in, can you really bet your balls that they'll add good content to the game? It seems like what they've been doing is copying stuff from other games and reskinning them, without any notably unique flair to them. "Soulless", or "the lack of any atmosphere" as Lacrymas put it earlier, seems to be an issue with the developers right from the beginning. The signs were all there (writing, art style, and mechanics).

I'll gladly eat my words if they prove me wrong (and I like ARPGs, so I hope they do).

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be honest I haven't been following their development since I last played. They were missing a class or two and part of the mage as well, and were working on multiplayer at the time, so I figured it'd be a couple years at least before it finished cooking enough to be worth another play through.

Though on the subject of their direction, I recall hearing good things about how they were planning to handle trade vs self found economies. Seemed a hell of a lot better than what anyone else has been doing, which was generally nothing at all. I also consider the current endgame options of the monoliths and the 3 different dungeons to be pretty good considering the game's unfinished state. PoE didn't exactly have a stellar endgame back in the day either.

My main concern with LE is actually just whether it'll be finished at all. Development has been very slow, all things considered. I imagine their budget is pretty much fuck all and unless PoE2 faceplants on launch (a possibility for sure, considering some of their previous league launch disasters) I don't foresee many chances for them to get a big influx of money to change that.\

On the bright side, unlike PoE (and presumably 2) it isn't always online, so if the devs do go belly up at some point, the game will still be playable. Might even get cool mods at some point if it gets popular enough.

 

[ArchAngel]

To be honest I haven't been following their development since I last played. They were missing a class or two and part of the mage as well, and were working on multiplayer at the time, so I figured it'd be a couple years at least before it finished cooking enough to be worth another play through.

Though on the subject of their direction, I recall hearing good things about how they were planning to handle trade vs self found economies. Seemed a hell of a lot better than what anyone else has been doing, which was generally nothing at all. I also consider the current endgame options of the monoliths and the 3 different dungeons to be pretty good considering the game's unfinished state. PoE didn't exactly have a stellar endgame back in the day either.

My main concern with LE is actually just whether it'll be finished at all. Development has been very slow, all things considered. I imagine their budget is pretty much fuck all and unless PoE2 faceplants on launch (a possibility for sure, considering some of their previous league launch disasters) I don't foresee many chances for them to get a big influx of money to change that.\

On the bright side, unlike PoE (and presumably 2) it isn't always online, so if the devs do go belly up at some point, the game will still be playable. Might even get cool mods at some point if it gets popular enough.

At release they had an unexpected number of players and since the game is not F2P that means unexpected good sales. So I would guess their budget is OK, at least atm.

 

[Lacrymas]

The more I play this game the more I realize the devs aren't necessarily hack and slash fans, but more Path of Exile fans, specifically of mapping. You literally can just rush forward, press buttons for AoE damage and win.

 

[ArchAngel]

The more I play this game the more I realize the devs aren't necessarily hack and slash fans, but more Path of Exile fans, specifically of mapping. You literally can just rush forward, press buttons for AoE damage and win.

Yes, this is first aRPG that can be called PoE clone instead of Diablo clone.

 

[Peachcurl]

The more I play this game the more I realize the devs aren't necessarily hack and slash fans, but more Path of Exile fans, specifically of mapping. You literally can just rush forward, press buttons for AoE damage and win.

Why do you keep playing this? You don't seem to like it.

 

[Lacrymas]

The more I play this game the more I realize the devs aren't necessarily hack and slash fans, but more Path of Exile fans, specifically of mapping. You literally can just rush forward, press buttons for AoE damage and win.

Why do you keep playing this? You don't seem to like it.

That's a very good question. It's a combination of buyer's remorse and wanting to get the cosmetic if in the future the game somehow becomes good.

 

[deama]

The more I play this game the more I realize the devs aren't necessarily hack and slash fans, but more Path of Exile fans, specifically of mapping. You literally can just rush forward, press buttons for AoE damage and win.

Why do you keep playing this? You don't seem to like it.

Probably nothing else. Poe2 got delayed till next year, titan quest I think comes out in a few months or next year?
Nothing much else arpg wise.

 

[Lacrymas]

I can play Titan Quest or Grim Dawn if I'm itching for a hack and slash. I just want the cosmetic. But yeah, from the popular hack and slashers, there really is nothing else. Path of Exile is retarded in its zoom zoom gameplay, I've never liked Diablo 2 for various reasons and Diablo 4 is shockingly bad in almost every way. That leaves Last Epoch. Which isn't even all that popular tbh, this thread is certainly dead. I'll try out that Achilles game when I'm done with the cosmetic, it has gotten good reviews lately.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Thread made me pick this up again. Started a few characters, settled on a sorceror. Disintegrate is fun, but the build I was intending to use it with that triggered a volley of firebolts after channeling ends is bugged, so I'll probably transition into black holes that summon meteors. Though I did find a unique specifically for disintegrate... well, I got a while before I can learn black hole anyways.

Campagin beginning seems revamped from when I last played, I don't really care about the new subclasses (rune master looks neat but meteor is too tempting, this game has the best meteor spell.) The new loot stuff is fun, I assume each thing from a previous league. Lizards are boring honestly, but I like the nemesis thing where you can choose to power up the loot or kill him for a new set next time, and the experimental affixes have been pretty nice so far. Chest is boring too, but better than it not being there and I'm assuming didn't waste much dev time to implement.

Campaign is still too easy, but I have died a few times by standing in the fire or not paying attention to my resists at all. There's some bug that prevents me from dying that has happened a couple times now too. That's new. Latest area I reached was super laggy, hoping I just need new drivers, will find out soon.

 

[Lacrymas]

The start of the campaign has been changed a few times, yes, and we now have the worst iteration due to it causing story issues later down the line. The difficulty depends on the class and subclass from what I can gather. Classes like Acolyte breeze through everything (including going blind in hardcore) and all her subclasses are busted broken (especially Warlock, but Necro is up there as well), while others, like the Sentinel, struggle to kill normal mobs. Melee is terrible in general and stays terrible due to the atrocious balancing issues the game has.

As for the lag, the game is horribly optimized and most of the graphics settings literally don't do anything besides taking up resources, so I recommend turning most of them down.

 

[Peachcurl]

I don't think Melee is terrible, though it may have a harder time starting up. Which isn't a huge problem in an admittedly rather easy campaign.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think Melee is terrible, though it may have a harder time starting up. Which isn't a huge problem in an admittedly rather easy campaign.

Forge Guards struggle to do 300 corruption while Falconers do 3k+ f.e. From what I can gather, melee being terrible is the consensus.

 

[Inec0rn]

After having played it some more, it's unfortunately still a 5/10 game. I can barely summon the motivation to get to the monoliths to get the cosmetic at the end of this event. It's just a combination of factors that drive me into a fugue state - the non-existent difficulty, the lack of any kind of atmosphere, the story being dull and pointless (and unfinished!), the itemization that's made for people who use excel spreadsheets recreationally, the constant lightshow that is honestly exhausting to look at, every mob being essentially the same with a different skin, the item editing crafting that is a ridiculous solution to a non-existent problem. I really don't know who this game is for or what niche it's trying to fill that other, better games (yes, even PoE is better) don't.

Pretty much spot on, I got so bored after around 15-20 hours of play i just forgot it was installed. It's tough / expensive for a small studio to make one of these games, i think these dev's bit of more than they could chew.