so i have been playing Last Epoch for the better part of 5 days, devoting basically every spare minute i get to it. and while i have finished the current story on two different characters, i intend to make a target feedback post for both of them later, so this is my basic impressions of the game, story, design philosophy.
To start, i found the story more or less easy enough to keep up with going through, even if at times it felt a little bit bare-bones. i expect that the zones we have already visited will have two to three times more side quests than what is already available, and/or perhaps some end game repeatable content once the story is finished (and the story zones scale to your level instead of being level locked, personally, i feel this should be the way by default).
i’ve found that, generally from level one to ten the game is a bit of a roflstomp, which is fine for the introductory levels before your arsenal has been expanded by a reasonable amount. ten to twenty is probably the most comfortable zone of levels in the game, and anything beyond thirty is both a slow slog and a bit dangerous at times.
to address the slog part of things, i feel like the 4th skill specialization unlock should come at 29 instead of 34, as that’s when i usually find myself able to make use of it, as for the level 49 unlock, one of my characters was able to make use of it right away, while the other needed to get something like 15 more passive points before i had the ability to utilize it, so that seems like a mixed bag.
furthermore, i love the skill specialization trees, the way they’re designed makes the real idea of custom play seem viable (barring a few outliers which i will discuss in my individual class reviews)
as far as maps go i’ve tried to report any clipping bugs i’ve encountered, but i still see from time to time and instance where the path ends but the mini map goes on, or the mini map ends but i still have a path to walk.
on the topic of itemization, i’ve found it’s another mixed bag, i quickly noticed that white items are basically worthless for how quickly they break, while yellow items are too unreliable in their default affixes, so my builds all start out as blue that had one of the things i was looking for and i forge on the rest, a nice middle ground for this i think would be making whites more resistant to fracture and yellows have a targeted (instead of random) way of removing a certain affix. on the other side of that i’ve found that most unique items are either the most godsent overpowered nonsense that ever existed, or completely worthless and useless to everyone who would ever pick them up at any point of the game. now i’m not saying that’s necessarily good or bad one way or the other, so to a degree its nice to think that a yellow is a better catch for a build than a unique if the uniques affixes don’t fit into my build, especially since uniques can’t be forged, but i believe a unique items should at the very least fit into some build that somone might make, and not be the falcon with a pitiful amount of dodge, or exsanguinous with its comically overpowered synergy with a lich’s base ability to destroy the entire world (of ettera)
to cap off this initial review, there are a few enemies that i’d like to talk about being dramatically over/under tuned.
1: anything that casts avalanche does waaaaay to much damage
2: the swarm of rats that charge past minions shouldn’t have a stun coefficient.
3: the lightning spiders (sapphire i think)
4: those big green slimes in the sewers/ aquaducts are laughably weak for something so big and noticeable and could have 3000 times more hp and wouldn’t be any more a threat than they currently are.
5: anything with the word wengari in it’s name is currently the most frightening thing to any of my characters thus far.
any who, this completes my initial thoughts on the game from week 1, i’ll be trying out the other 2 classes over the course of week 2 and come back with any additions as i see fit.