Table of Contents
- Disclaimer
- About Lost Ark
- Introduction to the Review
- The good things
- The bad things
- TL;DR: The Verdict (also, my Steam Review)
- Read my other reviews
Disclaimer
The review was originally written between 20.02.2022 and 17.03.2022, so shortly after Lost Ark was released in the West.
However, outside of the short Steam review and publishing it to a few friends of mine, the full thing was never posted anywhere online.
I kept the review and uploaded it to my website for presentation purposes – to show what I can do, in what way, how deeply I can write a review, and to not discard tens of hours of work composing this. Keep in mind, though – a lot of the aspects rated here have already changed and perhaps made the game better (or worse in some aspects, I guess).
About Lost Ark
Lost Ark is a free-to-play action MMORPG first released by Smilegate in South Korea in December 2019. The game was highly anticipated, and gathered a lot of publicity, quickly becoming one of the most played games in that region. Shortly after, the game was made available in Japan and Russia as well.
The game was released in the West (Europe and North America) on February 11, 2022. The game quickly exploded in popularity, reaching over a million concurrent players on Steam on its release date, and peaking at nearly 1.3 million viewers on Twitch at the same time.
The game was praised by many, even before its western release, but there was also a lot of criticism – especially around the game’s monetization model and some gameplay systems.
I got to play the game 3 days before its official release due to Early Access coming with supporter packs, and I accumulated about 250 hours before composing this review.
Introduction to the Review
When I think about reviewing an MMO, I judge it by the following variables:
- replayability
- the scale of horizontal progression compared to vertical progression
- quality of combat systems
- quality of non-combat systems (crafting, gathering, trading, exploration)
- existence of challenging endgame content and its degree
- influence of in-game store (essentially: pay2win)
I intentionally left out the “multiplayer” aspect of the game; in almost every MMORPG I have played, I either played solo or with people I met along the way. Despite this, I WILL review Lost Ark’s social aspects as well, because I understand it is (rightly so) an important part that defines an MMO for a lot of people.
In this review, I will go over ALL the good and bad things about Lost Ark that I have noticed along my journey, and compare some of them to similar parts of other MMORPGs. I will also try to look at systems from not just my perspective, but the perspective of an average player – and these two often differ quite a lot. The TL;DR can be found at the bottom; it has also been posted as a review on the Reviews page on Steam.
The good things
Combat
+ Satisfaction
The main selling point of the game for myself and a lot of other people is the overall feeling of combat. It feels smooth, due to the impact of positioning and the two special abilities available to everyone – Dodge, which moves the character towards a direction, on a short cooldown; and Stand Up, which has a longer cooldown and lets the character quickly get up when they’re knocked down.
The combat is very dynamic, unlike a lot of other top MMOs. Both the enemies and the characters are constantly in movement, whether it’s repositioning, or making strong, area of effect attacks. It’s almost impossible to just stand still and hit all the available buttons. For this reason, it is also very satisfying, and much more skill-based than it seems. A good player, who has a decent knowledge of the encounter, will take almost no damage, while simultaneously dealing great damage to the boss, and repositioning in-between attacks.
The skills in Lost Ark have an amazing feeling. They’re strong, impactful, have clean and satisfying animations. A lot of them have a decent degree of animation lock, but it seems much worse than it is – because of how good hitting an ability feels in Lost Ark, the animation locks are easy to get used to.
The sounds of abilities also match perfectly with the animation, creating a superb overall feeling, close to what we can experience in an ARPG.
+ Normal mobs
Normal mobs, such as those that can be found in Chaos Dungeons or just in the open world, feel just like enemies in an ARPG – they quickly swarm you and die very fast. While it is certainly possible to die to a swarm of “white mobs”, their main purpose is to die to a skill or two, drop some loot, and make you move on. This aspect is done perfectly – in combination with the overall feeling of casting abilities, killing hordes of enemies feels great.
+ Bosses
Unlike normal mobs, and bosses in most ARPGs, bosses in Lost Ark contrast with normal mobs – they have mechanics, and (unless you’re significantly overgeared) punish bad positioning. They don’t die very fast, and often their mechanics get harder the closer they are to death. The game also does a good job of telling how far into the fight you are through the multiple health-bar system – you can easily see how much damage you’ve dealt to the boss, and it helps you easily remember when certain mechanics (those that are based on health, because not all are) occur.
Storytelling, overall game feeling
+ Cinematics
The cinematics in this game is next level. I don’t even know how it’s technically possible, but a lot of them happen in the actual game world and are not separate, pre-recorded videos.
The best example would be the well-known Borea Castle Siege, where there are hundreds, if not thousands of entities on the screen at the same time, and just moments later you get to control your character and fight those monsters.
The cinematics is simply epic, and the way they are constructed makes you feel like you’re a part of the scenery and not just an observer.
Another great example is the Armen transformation scene, where you get to control the unique character just moments after what happens in the story.
One more example that caught me off-guard was the Feiton story finale, where we take part in an epic battle, with hordes of enemies, unique structures, and a powerful boss on a dark battleground.
The cinematics is just so good; barely any other MMO can do such an insane job at it.
+ Perspective
What Lost Ark does differently from ARPGs (it’s hard to compare to MMORPGs here) is the perspective. While normally it is an isometric game, there are multiple times throughout the game (not just story!) where the perspective changes completely. Sometimes you’re in a dungeon and you enter a dark passage – the perspective changes from top-down to third person. Sometimes, the camera moves around, or stays in place regardless of character movement, zooms in, zooms out, rotates, and so so on. To me, this is a huge upside, as it sometimes makes me forget I am playing an isometric game, and it also helps A LOT with immersion and storytelling.
+ Story
The main story, in my opinion, was okay. There were certainly some “specific” moments or quests on the way, but overall, I think Lost Ark’s story is alright. It didn’t catch my attention nearly as much as some other games did, but I still found it fun, and I don’t think there is much to complain about here.
What I like more, however, are the island-specific stories, since they often range from interesting or funny, to even emotional at times. One of my favorites is the “Tooki Corporation” island story, where we help a cute little Tooki get the promotion they’d always hoped for, and in return, the Tooki becomes a good friend of ours – and the game even gives us a short, funny cinematic! Some islands have their own story dungeons which are just perfect – for example the Metus island with a whole stealth-like adventure, resembling the memories of a crew captain.
Most importantly, the island stories feel separate from themselves and from the main storyline of Lost Ark, which to me is a huge upside, since not every piece of story content in the game is connected to the same root, and instead, each place tells its own specific, unique tale, with its own narration and its own motives.
Graphics, clarity
+ Map, location, enemy design
Location design in this game is top-notch. It’s hard to even compare it to anything else because maps look amazing in Lost Ark. And it doesn’t matter what piece of content we’re talking about – continents, islands, Abyssal Dungeons, all of them look great.
The same can be said about boss design – they not only look great, but their attacks do as well. They look spectacular, and it’s worth getting into a raid just to be able to look at the encounters, while the rewards can be the second priority.
The design of Dungeons (and Abyssal Dungeons as well) is breathtaking.
Especially good-looking are the pieces of content we, western players, do not yet have access to, such as the Abrelshud Abyssal Dungeon, where the terrain in front of you transforms in real-time, as you walk through it.
+ Game graphics
This is a topic separate from the “Location Design” point. While I understand that many people despise the Asian art style, I personally don’t mind it, and I think the game looks good and modern. Whether it’s character models, faces, shadows, out-of-combat animations, details, mounts – all of these look very good by modern standards.
At the same time, the game doesn’t have astronomical hardware requirements, which makes me wonder how such a pretty game can run on mediocre-at-best machines.
Game systems design
+ Exploration
The exploration in this game is very well done. There are a lot of places to explore – continents, islands, hidden dungeons. There are also multiple timed events, such as world bosses, or co-op islands that are only available for a short period. There is open world PvP turned on in some places. In short – a lot of content to explore.
The main part of exploration is, in my opinion, the sailing system. At first, it seemed weird to me; but when I got used to it, I started appreciating that system. It allows you to sail anywhere you want, literally! There are some exceptions – the map is only big enough, and there are multiple Hazardous Waters all around, that can’t be traveled through without good preparation. It really does feel like an open world, with few loading screens and many places to go to and have fun, whether alone or in a group.
Exploration is rewarding. There are many collectible item types with precious rewards, ranging from combat improvements (such as bonus skill points) to desirable cosmetics (unique mount and ship skins). Some rewards are special runes, cards, or crew members, which indirectly improve your efficiency and character power.
The collectible I don’t like is the World Tree Leaves, an RNG drop from collectible nodes and using Trade Skills in general. I am not a fan of random drops – they do, however, grant some XP and improve gathering efficiency in the long run, and it certainly does feel good when one drops, but I’m not a fan of randomness gating my progress.
The only (quite big) negative thing about exploration in Lost Ark is the lack of repeatable content, but I will talk about that in the “The Bad Things” section down below. But overall, I give exploration systems a very positive rating.
+ Chaos Dungeons
Chaos Dungeons are very close to content available in ARPGs (for example to normal Rifts in Diablo 3). You go in, kill a bunch of monsters, kill a few elites, and you’re done. They’re very fast (around 5 minutes each) and drop a lot of loot, which is satisfying. It emphasizes the feeling of combat in Lost Ark, since the cooldowns are lower in Chaos Dungeons, you move faster, and monsters swarm you in dozens, sometimes even hundreds.
In general, Chaos Dungeons are fun, and an essential part of endgame gear progression.
+ Guardian Raids
I haven’t played anything like Guardian Raids in any game before. Some people say it’s like Monster Hunter – you first have to find the boss, then kill it, without seeing its health bar or many telegraphs. The main idea is to get to know the Boss’ mechanics by seeing and experiencing them.
They are an interesting piece of content, though – I personally don’t think they’re rewarding enough, but the fights are cool, they look good, aren’t very long, and most of them can be solo’ed when you’re just slightly above the required gear level.
+ Low skill floor
What I like about Lost Ark, as opposed to many other MMOs, is that every piece of content is very easy to get into.
The first few Guardians and Abyssal Dungeons in Lost Ark are quite easy, mechanically. The encounters do not have a lot of mechanics; they are quite short and require little to no preparation. Therefore, it’s easy to get into them, even if you’re just a casual player. The difficulty does ramp up a bit, but at first, it’s easy enough for the average player to clear, and possibly get into raiding and crave for more.
Obviously, content like Chaos Dungeons or PvP does not have a skill floor at all, since it’s so trivial by definition. But, the challenging content that often requires more preparation in other games is much easier to get into in Lost Ark.
+ Reusing story assets
To add to the above point, Abyssal Dungeons re-use assets (locations, bosses) from story missions or classic Dungeons. In my opinion, this is a very good thing. From a casual player’s perspective, this lets them get to see and know the encounter a bit before actually going into an Abyssal Dungeon to face an enhanced, harder-to-beat version of the same boss.
This essentially creates multiple difficulty levels – Normal Dungeon, Hard Dungeon, and Abyssal Dungeon. (And, as we know from games like Guild Wars 2, where raids and challenging endgame content, in general, are dead, because they are too hard for an average player to get into, multiple difficulty levels are a very good thing.)
Guardian Raids do that too, to an extent – for example, the maps where we fight Guardians can be found in the Open Seas as islands, even with some quests on them that encourage players to go in and slay the Guardian.
+ Cross-server play
It’s hard to believe that this isn’t the norm in 2022 still. Cross-server play, to me, is one of the most important parts of any MMORPG. Not only does it prolong the life of the game, since it feels much more alive even with fewer players remaining to play actively, but it also makes it easier to play with friends, since you can do so regardless of what server they choose. There is no downside to having cross-server play.
In Lost Ark, all endgame activities can be done with people from other servers, but within the same region (for instance, a player on a server within Europe Central CAN NOT play with a player in Europe West). That includes PvP, Chaos Dungeons, Abyssal Dungeons, Guardian Raids, Cube, Platinum Fields, Boss Rush. What cannot be done cross-server is mostly just open-world content – events, islands, exploration. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay since most of these activities can and sometimes even should be done solo anyway.
PvP
+ Dynamic, fun, no power creep
In short, PvP in Lost Ark is very good.
To start, there are three PvP game modes available in Lost Ark:
- Team Deathmatch – two teams of three fight each other, whichever one scores more kills wins
- Deathmatch – six individual players fight one another in a free-for-all fashion, top three in terms of kills are considered victorious; this mode can only be queued up solo
- Team Elimination – two teams of three duel each other; team members fight 1v1, and the victorious player stays in the arena until defeated, the team defeats all enemy players wins
There are no additional objectives. The only thing that matters is scoring kills on enemy players, while not getting killed yourself.
PvP games are very short, and usually take (excluding the time it takes for queues or to make a build) a maximum of 5 minutes.
Since the combat itself in Lost Ark is very good, it’s logical to assume that PvP is great as well – and that is true. PvP is a lot of fun, it’s very dynamic, and each available game mode feels different.
The biggest upside of PvP, in my opinion, is the lack of power creep. In a lot of MMORPGs, PvP often feels “toxic” – there are multiple Crowd Control abilities, high damage attacks, low cooldowns, a ton of mobility, etc. In Lost Ark, I did not get that feeling at all. In fact, I feel like there isn’t a lot of damage – almost every class in the game has some built-in utility, survivability, or shielding, and there are few high damage attacks. This makes PvP battles very meaningful, as it’s not a matter of who casts the one-shot attack first, but rather who has the better positioning to avoid as many attacks as possible and at the same time aims as many of theirs. I love that aspect.
As you play PvP, your Rank increases (or rather “decreases”, as it starts at 20 and goes down). Though I don’t quite get the point of it, and I feel like it’s meaningless. It seems like your Rank cannot go down, even if you lose a game – only go up. Therefore, it’s closer to a representation of your PvP experience rather than skill.
There are, however, some problems – the major one is the PvP ranking system, which I honestly can’t tell if it exists or not. If it does, then it’s hidden very well; other than the rank mentioned above, I did not see any sight of a different system. The second problem is the rewards, which do not seem to exist at the moment. Even during the special PvP events, which occur during some days at specific hours, I didn’t notice any rewards being translated into the PvE world, despite the event’s description mentioning, quote, “Rewards”. PvP matches do, however, count towards the weekly Una’s Task that gives pretty good rewards compared to the other weeklies.
I understand the lack of rewards can be a turnoff to a lot of people, but I honestly think PvP is worth getting into just for the fun it gives. I do also believe that there is a ranking system in the Korean version of Lost Ark and that it is associated with PvE-related rewards, so I hope to see that in the western version soon as well.
+ Normalized
The fundamental requirement for a PvP game mode to be competitive is to have normalized gear so that somebody who has been playing for longer does not have a vertical advantage over somebody who’s just starting.
Lost Ark’s Arena PvP is completely normalized – you pick your stats, your abilities, talents, and go in. The total time it takes to make a build is close to five minutes, and there is no advantage based on the time played – only skill matters.
What’s worth noting is that Open World PvP (such as Island PvP or Guild vs Guild) is not normalized – your gear progression does matter in these, but they aren’t nearly as competitive as the arena.
Gameplay bugs
+ Almost none
During my playtime, I encountered almost zero gameplay bugs. The only one I can recall was me not being able to open the Songs menu, which required me to go back to Character Selection, and join my character again – no big deal.
This is likely because Lost Ark is not a new game, and has been playable in Korea and Russia for years now. That was probably enough time to fix the bugs and deliver a smooth experience.
The bad things
Game systems – in practice
– Endgame – raids, dungeons
In the “Good Things” section, I talked about what the different endgame systems look like in Lost Ark, and that I generally like the idea behind them. I also think that they’re very well done from a casual player’s perspective, either somebody who doesn’t have a lot of time to play or somebody who doesn’t have the aspirations to be a top-tier player. However, in practice, the things aren’t as good as I’d wish.
The first and foremost thing to me is: the content is not challenging enough. Don’t get me wrong – tier 2 raids and dungeons are probably already TOO HARD for the average player, let alone tier 3 content, but I don’t consider myself average. I look for a challenge. Something that will take hours, or maybe even days to fully clear and understand.
Lost Ark doesn’t give me that. Boss mechanics, while they’re cool and fun, don’t have a lot of depth in them, and with a few exceptions, if you die or wipe to something once, you’ll already have been familiar with it the next time around.
What is more important in Lost Ark is what I call the “micro-skills”. Things like positioning, multi-tasking, dealing damage and moving at the same time, and so on. These are things that the average player SUCKS at. But for somebody who’s already experienced with MMOs, even in general, it doesn’t take long to beat any boss in the game. The actual knowledge of boss mechanics is less valuable than good preparation, movement, and awareness during the fight. A lot of mechanics are intuitive. A lot of them require quick thinking or paying attention. And these are the things that an average player WILL fail.
Lost Ark suffers from the “teammate syndrome”, known well from nearly all other multiplayer games, but it’s much more prevalent because of the above. The average player cannot do more than one thing at a time. The average player does not use potions or any consumables at all. The average player doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t read chat, not even the information that the game itself gives you.
Therefore, the challenging aspect of content in Lost Ark is actually challenging because of PUGs, and not because it’s challenging by nature.
You start seeing this once you get a decent group, either with friends, guildmates, or just people who know what their abilities do and can pay attention to encounters. The game becomes TRIVIAL then. There is no progression to be had when bosses die within two, three tries, and there is NO WAY to boost the difficulty since currently, only Tier 3 Abyssal Dungeons have a Hard mode.
Actually, quite the opposite – as your gear gets better, and so do you at the game systems in general, there is almost no incentive to go back to the lower-tier content since the bosses will just die INSTANTLY.
Having one wipe mechanic (sometimes not even one!) in Tier 2 Abyssal Dungeons is a joke. Once you deal with that – you’re free to just mash your keyboard, as the bosses don’t do anything! Some bosses can die first try with random, inexperienced people in the raid – one example from my raids could be the first phase of Alaric, in the Alaric’s Sanctuary Abyssal Dungeon. The boss MELTED first try, since, except for one very clear mechanic and some low damage attacks, the boss did NOTHING.
And how hard is it to prevent a wipe mechanic? From my experience of playing exclusively in PUGs – it takes two, up to three tries.
A good example could be the Tranquil Karkosa Abyssal Dungeon. The last boss – whatever its name was – has a mechanic that requires careful positioning from all eight raid members, to collect orbs flowing towards the boss from eight directions. There are two types of orbs, and to do this mechanic successfully, you need to body block the orbs without getting hit by the same type of orb twice in a row. This requires careful positioning and good movement, and if two or more orbs reach the boss – everybody dies.
So, I with my group full of random people (I joined through Matchmaking, not even the Find Group tool) went in, with barely any prior knowledge, and we wiped. Then, before we went in for the second time, we assigned positions to people and got ready for what was coming. What happened next? – the boss died. SECOND TRY. WITH 8 RANDOM PEOPLE. I didn’t get to experience any other mechanics or attacks, since we had supports that essentially tanked the damage for us; hell, we didn’t even need to worry much about the Breath mechanic, since it got automatically refilled at the end of the wipe mechanic! So other than that one thing, the boss was just a DPS golem.
This is also where another concern shines – supports are too strong. Support classes – Paladin and Bard more than others – have too big of an impact on the outcome of the fight. They essentially let you face tank anything that is not a wipe mechanic while also boosting your damage – and since the in-game Matchmaking tries to get you a support class in each subgroup, then wipe mechanics are, quite literally, the only thing you need to worry about in an Abyssal Dungeon.
The only Raid I ever really struggled with was the second phase of Alaric in the Alaric’s Sanctuary Abyssal Dungeon. I think the boss was a great combination of punishing mechanics, high damage attacks, and had an easy-to-fail wipe mechanic. Also, Alaric moves around the arena constantly, which makes it much harder to just melt him with DPS and ignore everything. Not even Tier 3 Abyssal Dungeons gave me a challenge of difficulty close to Alaric.
Furthermore, for some reason that I don’t have the galaxy brain to understand, Lost Ark does not hard-cap your gear at a certain level to prevent you from completely ruining the lower encounters. There’s nothing that prevents you from joining a Tier 1 Guardian Raid and just one-shotting the boss. There’s nothing that prevents you from joining an Abyssal Dungeon run and carrying the other three (or seven) people – except that you will barely get rewards if any at all. Why doesn’t the game cap Tier 1 Gear Score at 600, so that you can still join for some rewards even if you’re higher up, without simultaneously ruining the fun for others? From what I’ve heard, even if you make a build on your character with 600 Gear Score, you will still get reduced rewards – to play that content again you would have to make an alt character and gear it from scratch.
What’s even weirder is that gear scaling DOES exist in the Open World – some islands do have a hard cap, which if you’re above, then you’ll deal less damage and have fewer stats in general. Why not in endgame content as well??
One more thought – the Abyssal Dungeons pre-events (aka “trash events”) are completely pointless. In other games, the pre-events before a boss fight usually teach you some of its mechanics or general concepts that will be useful in the fight. In Lost Ark, you just kill a horde of mobs, move from point A to point B and engage the boss. Why?
The only thing any close to what I’d expect was the first underwater Dungeon, where the game did take its time to introduce you to the Breath mechanic – but after that, we were immediately back to the “kill some monsters idk” part.
To sum up:
- There’s no reason to play lower tier content, ever
- By playing it anyway, you can ruin the fun for other people by mindlessly carrying them through the content
- Therefore, there’s not enough “fresh” content to do at your level
- And, that content is not challenging enough anyway
What also strikes me is that in Lost Ark, there is not enough responsibility needed from the entire party. Again – this is a GOOD thing for the average player, but I am not that. When I compare Lost Ark Abyssal Dungeons (let’s actually call them “raids”, okay?) to raids in other games, I see a huge difference in this regard.
I am certain that this type of content exists – I did watch some Korean videos on higher-tier Legion Raids and Challenge Modes – but not in the current western version of the game. Maybe the situation will change in a few months.
– Lack of things to do
This point is quite possibly even worse than the previous one. There is nothing to do in this game.
I know this may sound a bit too harsh, but that’s the reality – the first week of playing, there is a ton of things to do and explore, all the islands, all the raids, all the events.
But after some time, there’s literally nothing more to do. And that’s because nearly all content in the game is time-gated.
Do two Chaos Dungeons a day; more than that – you get worse, weekly gated rewards (which can easily be exhausted in a day of playing – what to do then for the other six days?).
Do two Guardian Raids a day; more than that – you get almost nothing in reward for your time.
Do one of each Abyssal Dungeon a week; you literally CAN NOT EVEN ENTER after that, not even for fun, not even to play with friends. No way. You clear once, you’re done, and there’s nothing you can do for the rest of the week.
Do up to one World Boss (“Field Boss”) every day; I say “up to”, because somedays there isn’t even ONE World Boss that you can do. Why??
Do up to one Ghost Ship every week; the quite challenging content that can fail if you’re without a decent group, but if it succeeds, then you’re locked out for the rest of the week. Why??
Once you complete every quest, go to every island, try out every timed event – there’s just nothing to do, except wait for the daily- or weekly-gated stuff.
Checking off your daily checklist will take you two, maybe three hours. And after that, there’s just nothing more you can do to speed up your progress. There’s no repeatable grind. There are no repeatable event rewards. After some time, there’s no more exploration, either.
What advantage does a player that plays eight hours a day get over a player that only logs in for two? I don’t know, but I strongly suspect they don’t get any.
Somedays, there aren’t even a lot of timed events happening. Especially recently I feel like something has been changed – the Adventure Island scheduled for mornings and evenings are identical. They used to be separate – if you do an island at 11 AM, you can still join for rewards at 9 PM. That is no longer the case.
Even TRADE SKILLS are time-gated – gathering, fishing or hunting deplete a “Work Energy” bar, which refills very slowly. It can take a day to refill what you’ve used up in half an hour. I personally like gathering in games – it’s a chill, fun activity – but Lost Ark doesn’t even let me do that as much as I would want to.
After a week of playing the game actively, it turns into a schedule, which in turn feels just like a mobile game (except on PC):
- Do three dailies
- Two Chaos Dungeons
- Two Guardian Raids
- One or two timed events for your quests
- Maybe an Abyssal Dungeon if you have the time
- Log out
Total time spent –2-3 hours. What to do afterward?
– Fear of missing out
Because Lost Ark resembles a daily checklist, people often don’t do what they truly want to do, but instead, force themselves into doing things that will help them maximize their time efficiency. What if somebody wants to do some exploration, but hasn’t done their daily Guardian Raids? They can either do what’s fun and fall behind or do what the game is forcing them to – queue up and slay two Guardians.
I think this is very toxic, and it wouldn’t happen in a game without daily-gated activities, or with more endgame content to choose from in general. This problem wouldn’t exist if there were multiple things you could choose between in the endgame, that all grant you comparable profit. Sadly, with Lost Ark, that is not the case.
– Item Level is not even close to a good representation of character strength
What I don’t quite understand, compared to other MMOs with vertical progression, is the way Item Level and Gear Score work in Lost Ark.
The only way to increase Gear Score is to upgrade your items. There is no way to drop an item that has a higher iLVL (except when moving a tier up, eg. from Tier 1 to Tier 2).
But in Lost Ark, only Armor and the Weapon count towards increasing Gear Score – that’s six pieces of gear in total. Your Accessories (two rings, two earrings, one amulet – five pieces in total) don’t have any impact on your Gear Score, despite having a massive impact on your character’s overall strength.
Another thing that isn’t accounted for is the Ability Stone. Its Engraving effects have a decent impact on the character’s strength, but what’s more important is the Vitality stat on it. The difference between “no Ability Stone” and “good Ability Stone” can mean doubling your health! Have you ever wondered why your teammate keeps dying on a Guardian, although their Gear Score is above the requirements? That might be because they aren’t equipped with a good Ability Stone.
One more thing would be the Item Sets – special types of Armor and Weapons that can be crafted with materials dropped from Abyssal Dungeons. They not only are a tiny bit better in terms of their Secondary Stats, but they also grant unique bonuses when equipped with multiple pieces of the same set – for example, an increased Crit Rate, Crit Damage, or extra damage to Boss monsters. And yet, these clearly better items have the same iLVL as their blue counterparts!
And then there is also Item Quality – while it doesn’t matter as much (the difference between a 50-Quality Item and a 70-Quality Item is marginal), it can make a difference if all of your items are very low in quality.
Summing all of the systems up – Item Sets, Accessories, Engravings, Ability Stones, and Item Quality – the difference between two players with identical Gear Scores can be insanely high, and in every regard – damage dealt, survivability, and utility. So, Gear Score is essentially just a system to gate people from doing all the content and restrict their access (both up and down), and not an actual representation of how strong a character is.
– RNG
This is something I completely do not get. I do get the fact that the systems in Lost Ark are a lot more ethical than in some other games – bad luck protection, upgrade chance going up with every failed attempt, item quality having a lower impact than in other games, etc.
But why is there RNG at all?
Why doesn’t upgrading just require proportionally more materials, but in return have a 100% chance to succeed?
I’ll tell you why – because that’s fun for the average player.
Do you know the feeling of hitting a 40% chance upgrade? Or making a very good Ability Stone, with maybe a single-digit probability of it being good at all? I do get that gambling is fun for some people, but to me, it’s just pure bullsh*t. Your progression in the game depends on RNG; if you’re lucky, you’ll progress faster than other people, even if they play as much as you do.
This is a screenshot of me failing the 75% roll, six times in a row. While the probability of this event is very low – about 0.02% – I sure did feel good having to deal with RNG in a progression system, eh?
– Dodging
This is probably a biased opinion, but I hate the fact that your dodge does not grant you invulnerability. Sometimes, even if dodge out of something, you still take damage – that’s because dodge is essentially just a movement skill, with no additional benefits attached to it.
Another thing that I dislike is what I would call a “fake telegraph”. Every MMORPG player knows: red circle bad. Lost Ark is no exception – a red, growing circle is never a good thing and should be moved away from. But what then happens after the circle disappears – the area on the ground is still dangerous, even though there is absolutely no telegraph telling that!
I have this situation nearly every day, where a boss performs an attack that I move out of, then I immediately go back in once the telegraph disappears — and I get hit by that same attack immediately! I cannot get used to this, and I never will – what I know is that I’ve never seen something like this in any other game that I have played.
– Monster XP
This is just a tiny thing that I wanted to mention – killing monsters gives, in my opinion, far too little XP. I get that in Lost Ark you get Experience mostly from questing, and not slaying monsters, but getting +2 XP from a monster at your level just feels bad and out of place.
Social aspects
– Playing with friends
Playing with friends in this game is nearly impossible. Again – this is not something that the average player will care about, but I understand how important it is for a lot of players.
Why is it impossible? That’s because of the combination of a few systems in Lost Ark.
The first and simplest example is the upgrade RNG. If you get lucky and upgrade your gear faster than your friends, you’ll be much ahead of them in terms of content and progression, and even if you’re still within the same Tier as them, you might even ruin their fun due to being overgeared and it being easier to deal with bosses.
The second thing – there is no incentive to go back and do lower-tier content. Since there is no hard-cap, and there are barely any rewards, what is the point of doing Tier 1 Abyssal Dungeons with your friends, instead of Tier 2 or 3 content to maximize your rewards?
Third thing – there is physically no way to re-enter the same Abyssal Dungeon within the same week. You’ve already cleared? There is no way to go back, EVEN WITHOUT REWARDS! Even if you’re of similar gear score to your friends, you cannot go in and help them, you physically cannot.
And fourth thing, again – since gear is not hard-capped, going back to lower-tier content anyway would just ruin the fun for others, since you’ll be much too strong for that content.
Before anyone asks – yes, you can make alts. But will the average player have multiple characters? No! People get attached to their characters, be it their class, look, even just the name. Also, what is the point of gear progression at all, if to play (even just for fun) you intentionally need to NOT progress or need to have a separate character to clear with?
Consumables
– An interesting system that I am not exactly a fan of
I have mixed feelings about the Consumables system in Lost Ark.
First things first – the items actually get used up, and do not refill or go on a cooldown (like in most ARPGs). Also, you can only have up to four different items usable at a time, and only one of each type at a time (HP Potion / Potion / Grenade / Bomb are some examples of item types).
What I like about this system is that it allows everyone to get prepared to a fight before it even begins, by bringing specific items useful in the current situation – such as staggering grenades when more Stagger is needed; Flares to a Guardian Raid, to easily spot the boss; or special items like Panaceum that help deal with certain mechanics.
What I don’t like, however, is that the game doesn’t really “encourage” players to use these in a fight. What happens if I use all of my items, and then still wipe to the boss and have to try again, essentially wasting items and thus money? What if I’m the last one left alive in a Guardian Raid, and I have no idea how close the boss is to death – should I use my items, to maximize the chance of success, or just give up and try again without wasting consumables?
Graphic design
– Item icons
While I generally praise the graphical design of Lost Ark, this is something that I find very weird. All item icons look very close, if not the same.
This is a screenshot with four different items – Sorceress pants. Don’t they look a bit too similar, and a bit too underwhelming?
All the items you drop feel the same. Items with different names look the same. Items of different TIERS look the same.
To me, this is not a huge thing, but it just feels very weird for such a pretty game.
– Tooltips
Tooltips in Lost Ark are quite bad. I have gotten used to them over time, but I still think there’s something wrong with them.
Take a look at this tooltip, for example:
Not only does it feel like an illegible wall of text, with only two colors (gray if locked, white if unlocked), but it’s also very unclear. How much damage does this effect deal? At what range? Does it scale with anything?
Annoyances
– Lack of clarity
Engravings are just one example of badly-explained mechanics. There are a lot of things in Lost Ark that aren’t clear and are never explained in-game, anywhere.
For example, the item “Panaceum”:
Let’s ignore the fact that the “100%” could be removed and replaced with something else; does this item actually remove ALL harmful status effects?
The answer is no! Some boss mechanics cannot be removed this way, even if they are essentially “harmful”. Besides, what is a “status effect”? What is the difference between a “status effect” and just a “debuff”?
The only way to find out is to use the item and see if the effects are removed or not.
Another example would be the “Stagger” mechanic – a lot of skills in the game, on top of their normal effect, also do “Stagger”, which depletes the blue bar below Boss HP bar, and is necessary to get through some mechanics.
The four stages of “Stagger” are Low, Mid, Mid-High, High. What does it mean? How much does it do? There is no way to tell; there is no number you can check to see how much needs to be done, or how much your skills do. At all!
Some mechanics aren’t explained at all, for example, the Weak Point mechanic – what does it do? Can it be used against all opponents? How is Level 1 different from Level 2? These are questions you won’t find the answers to in-game.
– The so-called “G” pressing
Even though this is more like a meme, there is a lot of truth in that. The quests mostly revolve around pressing G repeatedly. Whether it’s to talk with NPCs, gather objects, open passages, or find hidden objects; the questing system is mostly just pressing G, and sometimes killing some monsters or entering a dungeon. This isn’t necessarily a downside, but it certainly gets annoying after some days of playing through the game.
– Repetitive sounds
Another thing I cannot understand in Lost Ark is the repetitive, annoying sounds – an example could be the whistling that occurs before mounting up. Why does it exist? What does it achieve?
I noticed this the moment I started playing and entered the starting village, where dozens of people were constantly whistling to mount up; now, many days later, I still cannot get used to it. I simply cannot comprehend why that’s in the game at all.
– Unnecessary delays (eg. mounting up)
On the topic of mounting up, I don’t get why there’s a delay between pressing the “Mount up” key and mounting up. What does it achieve, except it wastes 2 seconds of your time, every time you decide to mount up? Why doesn’t it happen instantly?
Another thing could be the dialogue skipping – the game does not let you go through the dialogue instantly, instead, you can only skip one portion of it every interval, even if you spam the skip button. Why?
A person who doesn’t care about the story will not read the dialogues, even if they cannot be skipped instantly; so, the game essentially wastes the time of people who don’t care, or play through the story for the second time, or, for some reason, have to do the dialogue a second time.
– Windows
What annoys me a lot is the layout of in-game windows in Lost Ark. Best example would be the “Re-try” button in Raids and Dungeons. If somebody presses it, to initiate a restart vote, the window appears IN THE CENTER OF THE SCREEN. While the fight is still ongoing! Essentially covering your view. The window doesn’t disappear even after casting a vote.
Of course, everything can be moved around on the screen; but the problem with that is simple – the things go back to their original order once they reappear, or when you restart the game! So even if you move the window to the side once, the next time (which can be just a few minutes later) it will still pop up in the center of your screen to obstruct your view from the boss mechanics.
Translation bugs
– NPC names wrong, unfinished words, weird punctuation, wrong capitalization, etc.
This is probably the thing I care about the least out of all the above. While there are almost no gameplay bugs, I have encountered multiple translation errors. Getting NPC names wrong, questionable punctuation, lack of spaces in between words, or inconsistent word capitalization, just to name a few.
I have also had a quest that was explained so poorly, that I didn’t understand what I had to do – I strongly suspect this was a translation issue, but maybe it was something more. Either way, while this is noticeable, it isn’t extremely bad.
TL;DR: The Verdict (also, my Steam Review)
Despite giving the game a negative review, I highly recommend downloading and trying the game out, as I think it will probably appeal to the majority of players, especially the casual side, which is more and more prevalent with each upcoming year – and also, it’s free to play, so why not!
I will not talk about the server issues, which clearly influence a lot of the reviews here, but instead will focus purely on the game itself.
To start off – the game is good. The story is okay, the cinematics are great, the gameplay feels good and satisfying, the exploration is fun and rewarding, the housing system is better than in most other MMORPGs, gear progression and upgrading (although heavily RNG-based) feels more ethical than in other games that have vertical progression.
The problems, however, that make me give Lost Ark a negative review, lie in the end-game systems.
A lot of things are time-gated. Chaos dungeons – two a day, otherwise you get weekly-gated rewards that can be exhausted in less than a day. Guardian raids – two a day, otherwise you get almost nothing for the time you spend. Abyssal dungeons – each one only once a week, otherwise you cannot even enter to have fun. Upgrading – there is only so many materials you can get in a day. Adventures – most islands can only be done once a day, sometimes you even have to pick one of three to go to for the day, and somedays there are barely any events happening throughout the day. Map completion – gated by Rapports, which take weeks.
From a casual perspective, the game feels just like a mobile game, except on PC – in a good sense. You log in, do your three dailies, two dungeons, two raids, maybe participate in an island event or two, then you log out. Total time spent – two hours or less, and yet you get a lot of content out of the game. If you’re somebody who doesn’t have a lot of time to play games, then Lost Ark will respect your time, even if you miss a day or two of logging in, even if you don’t have the ambitions to become a top-tier endgame player. You should play the game.
I myself am, however, closer to a hardcore player than to a casual. I can play the game for six, eight, sometimes even twelve hours a day. (And I expect a challenge.) And that’s where the problems begin – once I’m done with my two hour scheduled activities, there is nothing for me to do in the game. Literally.
The first week of playing was great fun – I explored continents, islands, endgame content, even spent some hours wiping on bosses over and over again as I was just grasping their mechanics, as well as how the game plays in general.
But now, there is nothing else for me to do in the game. Once I do all the daily activities, I can just log out and come back the next day. There is nothing I can do to speed up my progression, since everything is timegated. There is no content in the game I could infinitely farm, even for just a fraction of rewards (as said before, exhausting the weekly-capped rewards takes less than a day of playing). I have been to almost every island I could go to, done almost every quest (except the ones that are, ironically, time-gated) I could do, slain almost every boss I could attempt. And now, the game didn’t even turn into a grind – it turned into a slow, time-gated grind, which I can do nothing about.
Playing for eight hours in a day almost doesn’t give me any advantage over somebody who only plays for two. I cannot even re-join Abyssal Dungeons, the so-called “challenging content”, because not only I can only do each once a week, but also I cannot even join the lower-tier dungeons, since the game – for some reason I don’t have the galaxy brain to understand – instead of hard-capping my gear at some level, so that I don’t ruin the game for other players, lets me enter but with little to no rewards for my time and still making it possible to ruin the game for other players by coming with an overgeared character and just destroying everything.
The boss mechanics in Lost Ark aren’t punishing enough; there is not enough responsibility for each and every player in a raid, and a lot of attacks can be facetanked through Support classes, or even skipped altogether through high DPS.
Since the only content that does have gear scaling is open world (I cannot even comprehend why, out of all content, this one has scaling but others don’t), which I don’t care much about, playing with my friends that aren’t close to my Gear Score is not possible; I will just ruin the game for them, whether it’s raids or dungeons, and then get nothing for the time I spend, not even fun.
Therefore, as much as I would love to give this game a positive review, I have to say I’m disappointed, and I hope the end-game will be fixed in a few months time.
I will, however, continue playing the game for now, but I will treat it just like a mobile game – log in once or twice a day, do all the activities (that absolutely are fun, don’t get me wrong!) and go play another game.