A passionate nerd’s feedback
Warning: this will be long as I will mention what I like about the game, not only its shortcomings
TL;DR: Game is good.
New player experience:
From the start, the game promises. Each class feels very unique even at level 1.
Movement is mostly smooth, and adding the dodge mechanics with spacebar already announces that you will be dodging and there will be skill cap both in normal enemies and in bosses.
Fire-spitting phoenixes set that in stone before you get to fight your first boss.
The story, up to this point, is a bit confusing, full of foreshadowing and less meaningful dialogue than a dark souls game’s first npc.
The music is very polished and most early game skills have beautiful sounds.
Walking around as anything other than a rogue feels like a slog until we get our first movement skill.
The story unfolds and at each turn it reads more like an afterthought. Things make no sense. Characters lack any sort of personality or charm. But gameplay is SO GOOD that we ignore all that and keep moving.
We get our specialization very fast with no way to try anything about them. That sucks, but at least it’s early enough, and characters are generic enough that it does not matter because we can rush another character to that point very fast. Something to improve, but not really a problem.
After that any semblance of storyline goes down the toilet. Nothing makes sense and everything seems pulled out of an improv dungeon master in their first campaign. But gameplay only keeps getting better, so we ignore it and move on.
Eventually we get into monos after a several hours long tutorial and endgame starts, but not before choosing factions.
Ok guys, you outdid yourselves here. CoF is amazing. One of the best ideas for this type of game I’ve ever seen.
You divert A LOT from gambling addiction simulators like PoE, and make players have a lot of influence over the outcomes.
This is refreshing and one of the reasons the game shines.
Back to monos:
Monos are repetitive and tedious after a while. But they are fun.
Unlike PoE’s endgame I get to play what I want.
Do I want to do bosses? I do bosses.
Do I want to do any given map? I just click it and go into it. Much like diablo 2 during the good patches, before the uber trash and needless nerf to endgame experience.
Completely different than PoE’s disrespectful “10 layers of rng farming to get one twentieth of the item you need to fight the boss once”.
Here I click, fight harbinger, go door, fight Aberoth. As it should be,
WELL DONE
Respecting player’s time is a good call.
The game’s length feels perfect as well:
A good amount of hours to “complete the content” (beat Aberoth the first time), then unlimited grindfest for grinders, while leaving non-grinders happy.
If you add more content, you should spread it, not make the game longer.
Make lower levels more interesting, move stuff around, add other avenues of leveling. But don’t make the game a 600hrs slog to finish the actual game. Don’t artificially inflate it.
In fact I’d suggest making the monolith part shorter as more content comes out. Doing each mono twice is a bit too grindy.
Regarding crafting:
The system is good. Best in the market so far. Far from perfect.
Endgame crafting is too RNG based. Getting a good exalted to fuse at Julra’s is not fun. Finally getting there to get your item bricked because the worst of four stats rolled is not fun. Doing Julra’s sanctum so many times is not fun.
The crafting system works wonderfully until around level 80, but needs serious improvements after that.
I simply stopped caring about crafting when it became tedious.
So far, all has been mostly roses. But this game has one ORIGINAL SIN.
It has no offline multiplayer.
This on itself is bad enough for many people not to buy it, and was almost enough for me to get it refunded.
Most of us don’t care to play a game like this with randoms.
People either play solo, or play with friends. And serverside multiplayer sucks and is very poorly done (see the fight against Lagon for the best example)
I have several friends waiting for this game to become truly offline to buy it. And frankly, it will happen regardless of EHG’s preferences, see examples as:
- Dark Souls’s DS3OS
- Skyrim Together
- Quake III Arena (ioQuake3)
A quick google search shows that there’s a lot of interest in that, both from players and potential buyers.
Once Last Epoch’s “DS3OS” comes out, the goodwill will be gone from EHG to whoever made that.
So why not do it yourselves and rake the goodwill?
With all this said, TL;DR:
The good:
- Game is fun
- Music is good
- Gameplay is superb
- Game length is on point
- Skill is more important than gear
- Crafting system is amazing in early levels
- Each class feels unique
- Easy and meaningful to respec
- Sweatys can keep sweating forever after the game is done by increasing corruption while normies log out satisfied
- CoF is a novel and very good idea
The bad:
- Endgame gear is too RNG based
- Only one leveling avenue
- Campaign feels irrelevant
- Monos become repetitive
- Julra becomes a chore after the fourth time
The ugly:
- No offline multiplayer.