Hello all!
I’m really enjoying Last Epoch, and I can honestly say that within the first week of downloading the game, I feel it’s already well worth the money I paid for it. Since the game is still in development, I thought I would put together a list of my impressions…mostly good, but also some areas where I think there is room for improvement, usually with very little work.
To being with. Installing the game was super easy and quick. Seems basic, but I remember some games installation processes being quite convoluted, and this was not, so it’s a good place to start.
I chose a primalist as my first character (currently level 77), and I’ve played most of the other base classes up to about level 10 just to get a feel for them. The gameplay is good, some of the bigger skills feel very im to cpactful (fury leap and upheaval come to mind), and overall the leveling experience has been a good one, although I have yet to see if that holds true on the 2nd and 3rd characters.
I love the way that EHG has gone with letting you specialize skills. Being able to shift the elemental focus and ailment that are applied by a skill or set of skills is great! That said, I feel like they could “double down” on this, and the game would “grab” you much earlier if the 3rd/4th/5th slots for skill specialization opened up dramatically earlier (I’m thinking by level 20 you should have all 5 slots open). The skills are already gated behind minimum level or minimum passive point investment, and further limited by how much experience you get, and I think it would let people experiment a bit more (and be more fun) to have access to those specializations earlier.
The loot filter system is amazing. It’s both incredibly simple to set up in a basic form, yet detailed enough to be very specific about what you’re hunting. I will say that I was a bit annoyed to learn that I couldn’t recolor/emphasize certain crafting materials like runes & glyphs. I hope this gets added in the future.
Having experience in a few other ARPGs (Diablo 2 & 3, PoE, Grim Dawn, and Torchlight to name a few), there are a few features that I am used to that were a bit difficult (or impossible) to find here that could greatly improve the user experience.
For an example, a hotkey setting to zoom the map overlay in and out instead of having to go into the options to set a static zoom level would be very much appreciated. It would be great if there was a convenient way to do something like have the map overlay slide to the right or left of your screen, or maybe even have the minimap be movable, but I feel the ability to zoom in and out with the overlay is kind of a baseline.
The default “J” hotkey for the quest log doesn’t seem to work. I’m assuming this a known issue and still in development.
It would be nice if there was some kind of indicator that you were low on health besides the obviously low health orb. This, combined with some of the enemy’s area attacks being barely visible (another thing that can be slightly improved) leads to an interesting experience where you feel like you died instantly, even if it was a steady drain of hp. Either an audible cue like a “I need healing” or “I will not give up”, or a visual cue like screen shaking or the edges of the screen dimming or getting red would let you still focus on the action while still being able have a general idea of your safety level.
…to be continued…
