Hello everyone. I am a veteran Path of Exile player, trying out Last Epoch after a few recommendations. I didn’t have the time to try it out but lately after feeling a bit burnt out of PoE, I’ve decided to give it a try.
I’m happy to report that after playing for 23 hours and getting to the monolith endgame, my initial thoughts and experiences of the game is very positive.
The gameplay is very well done
The skill system plays a good middle ground for those who like the complexity of PoE’s skill tree and the simplicity of Diablo 3. My lightning blast mage had several options to change the skill fundamentally where you can add chains or change the chains to fork and even double or triple cast. Rather than simply slapping damage modifiers, i much prefer this skill system where you can play the same skill but experiment with different configurations to your liking. Comparing to the Arc skill from PoE, when was the last time you slapped a chain support or fork support on it without sacrificing damage modifiers on to your skill setup. Whereas here, lightning blast is able to be changed fundamentally and the damage modifiers come from the class passive tree, which I also find intriguing.
Enemies and bosses
The gameplay here is slightly slower, which is not to say a bad thing. Enemies and monsters stand out well enough that I can remember this particular enemy’s attacks and threats. Bosses even, have good build-up to their abilities that you are able to dodge and time their attacks quick enough. I was able to respond well enough to minimize death count to only 1 death throughout my whole playthrough (Lagon’s eye beam).
Crafting system: Chef’s kiss
That being said, I do have a few gripes though:
Performance and optimization
I understand this is beta but optimization seems to still be a work in progress. My machine isn’t the most powerful in the world but I could play cyberpunk 2077 on high settings. Unfortunately, i had to lower my settings quite often here due to fps drops especially on areas with huge backdrops.
Areas and instances
One of the few big gripes i had was with the instance areas. The area resets were a bit ridiculous. The first time i discovered this was when I defeated a boss and teleported back to sell off a few items with a full inventory. Only to return and find that the items i left on the ground had disappeared and i had to fight the boss over again. This seems a bit far fetched don’t you think. Teleporting back shouldn’t reset the instance. In fact each time you enter the area it resets it back to where enemies are full again and it seems I can’t really rest my progression unless i unlock the area’s waypoint.
The quest indicator
This is probably a minor gripe but i disliked the quest indicator showing me the direction of the exit or quest npc. The areas are beautiful and backdrops are nice but sadly i kept focusing on the quest indicator too much to able to notice most of the areas themselves. I disliked the fact that i followed the indicator north for example only to find a dead end and had to go west and then continue north because the indicator shows you the direct location rather than general direction you have to go. Oftentimes i ignored enemies as i approached the area’s exit because some areas drag on for too long. I much enjoyed the last area which is Lagon’s temple where the quest indicator was absent and i had to explore the temple to find the exit, allowing me to visualise the beautiful temple and fight enemies as i go through to find the exit. Perhaps the quest indicator could be an optional feature that you can toggle on or off in the settings?
These are my thoughts so far. I believe this game is on the way to become something special. I’m looking forward to more content.
Have a good day 
