Last Epoch

"

Wow, I lost track of time playing LE last night. That hasn't happened with a game in fucking forever. Finally got my little melee mage up to Spellbade passives, and oh, he's a lot of fun now.

Broad observation: SO many things even at this early stage are clearly responding to problems in PoE. The fact that every skill has its own tree rather than being exposed to potential game-breaking 'support' combinations, for example. Also, there are no mana flasks. It regenerates at a steady pace that can be increased somewhat, but to my knowledge mana is a universal resource you have to constantly be wary of -- a nice change from the bullshit we see in PoE where players can just fire off their biggest skills endless. The aforementioned crafting system not only has the potential to make white items very useful, it has a fracture mechanic that adds risk to reward to prevents OP items from being a given. I love that too...although that might be less learning-from-PoE and more 'sticking to what's always worked in ARPGs' -- Torchlight 1 had a similar gambling mechanic with its item enchantments. Get too greedy and the item might just break...

The stability of this alpha is impressive. I played for 8 hours straight yesterday. No crashes. Not one. That is incredibly rare for an alpha. Kudos to the team.

The amount of build variety is impressive but clearly much easier to manage than PoE's, since Eleventh Hour Games wisely lock so much of that variety to class choice. It's a safe decision but if the alternative is a broken game in terms of build balance like PoE, so be it.

Ah, another thing they learned from PoE: punish ranged. There's a rare monster attribute that states: 'has increased crit chance and attack speed until approached'. That's pure anti-range. The increase is not insignificant.

I also like that the skill passives change the appearance and behaviour of a skill dramatically. They're a nice compromise between supports in PoE and runes in D3. Much more dramatic a shift than supports, much less restricted than D3's runes. Given how each skill's tree works, you could easily focus on nothing but fireball for a good 50 levels. If you really wanted. Or a mana-based melee attack. Or life draining. Or shield dash. Or a riposte. Or skeletons. And because of the tree's design, none of these would be particularly bad choices. Unlike PoE's forced focus on a single skill *and* metagame that reduces most skills to crap, LE seems conscious of the allure of specialising in more than just the flavour of the week. Given each class has a good 20 skills or so, and there are 4 base classes, that's a *lot* of replay value if skill-based play is your thing.

Oh, almost forgot to mention. Even basic melee has built in AoE, just very very short range. It suffices for when you need to fall back on it. Most melee builds won't -- lmb is by default walk and can't be changed, so everything else is skills. You can and probably will leave basic attack behind very early into the game, which is fine. I don't remember an ARPG since D2 where basic attack was a thing. More importantly, there are true melee options for all the classes...and ranged options as well. Each has their place.

Even if this ends up being much more like Grim Dawn or Wolcen than PoE, I think LE's a solid addition to the up-and-coming ARPG wave.

"

I'm surprised at the 1k unique design pack though. That caused GGG so many headaches...

"

Oh, and if all that doesn't sell you on the game, surely THIS will:

My current character name is 'Totally Not Vlad Tepes III'. With the spaces.

LOOK AT THAT. SPACES. LONG NAME.

Best. ARPG. Ever.