Recent reviews by [Hog4n] Panties O'Doom

tldr; I recommend you do *NOT* play this game. It has an intentionally toxic material grind to force you to pay just to attempt content that is actually relevant.

At the time of this writing, I have 600 hours logged in Lost Ark, and honestly that's about how long it took me to fully realise just how badly amazon has screwed up this game. I am not f2p, I bought the platinum pack founder and a starter pack because I was really hopeful that this game, and its producer were the real deal.

The core gameplay loop, the story, the art style, all of it is excellent. Especially for a game based on Unreal 3, Lost Ark stands out and actually got me enjoying ARPGs which I haven't really liked since the original launch of Diablo 2. Honestly, if Smilegate had actually put this out themselves, I honestly believe I would never have had to write this review

This is an MMO, and while it has content, you will run that same content *over* and *over* and *over*.
It is a daily grind MMO and missing even a single day will mean you're falling behind. The rest system does *help* with this, but you are still behind.

The core advancement system which content is gated behind is called 'honing' and it is RNG based with a pity system, which in of itself is fine for a f2p game, but leads to the real ugly point of this review.

Which is: Amazon ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this up intentionally. Lost Ark has been out in Korea and Russia for years, and the launch version of things sucked hard. Smilegate to their credit saw how badly the game was performing and they fixed the honing system so that f2p people could actually *get* to the proper endgame without having to spend hundreds of hours getting there. They also added more income sources so that someone willing to put in time instead of money could actually keep up.

Amazon launched in NA/EU with the original honing system that nearly killed Lost Ark in KR/RU, and reverted all the added income sources.

In NA/EU we have less gold income, less sources for materials, and higher honing costs with worse RNG. There is no reason for this but greed. Smilegate *knows* this is bad for the health and longevity of the game, and given their history I have no doubt that were Smilegate truly the ones calling the shots for NA/EU, we would *not* be in this state. Amazon has no idea how to run games, let alone a sustainable f2p model, as evidenced by New World and the recent departure of the head of the entire studio.

I personally am incredibly frustrated that we've been given the worst possible version of what I'm sure is actually a great game in KR/RU. This debacle and its unbridled greed has earned Amazon Game Studios a spot on my 'do not buy from EVER' list right next to EA.

The characters and their responses feel real. This is a game made by adults, for adults.
The game rewards exploration, but doesn't require it.
The skills also feel rewarding, having high awareness and some explosives skill has already paid off, even in the first hours of the game.

I know I have a long way still to go, but its pulling me in like few games like it in recent memory.

So I've played this to completion on PS3, and am working on a second playthrough for PC. Suffice to say, I like this game enough to play it multiple times.

tldr; the game is not perfect, but the story is good if you're willing to grind through it and spend some time reading datalogs.

The good:
The combat system can be very good if you want it to be.
Auto-battle is great for power grinding, and manual casting is necessary for using potent abilities like Army of One. Stagger, especially with launching enemies gives layers of tactical depth that a lot of other FF games sorely lack. The combat with larger enemies can have a really nice ebb and flow requiring tactical paradigm swaps for buffing, debuffing, healing, chain maintenance and chain building.

The story is truly epic, with a ton of history and a well fleshed out world. The characters actually change in meaningful ways beyond just 'I have to save the world' type nonsense.

Graphics: I've left this to last because I'm one of those 'story-driven' players. The game is beautiful, especially on PC.

The bad:
The story while good, is also damned by how the history is presented. Large swaths of the story are contained in datalog entries in a game that has hours of exposition. The average person never looks at the datalog and really misses out on the truth of what's going on. That's truly sad because a lot of the character growth is more clear when you're more aware of what the characters actually know about their own world.

below spoiler gives away massive story details
its an epic about desperate living robots who want to sacrifice millions of souls all at once to make their creator come back, but because of their programming, they can't actually kill anyone themselves, so they make cocoon a utopia for humans to breed to massive numbers in, and they make their entire society paranoid to bring about a forced conflict which will cause cocoon to crash down to the planet below and kill all its inhabitants at once.
Knowing all of that ^ makes Lightning's journey of self discovery much more potent

- Not being able to swap party leaders in combat. << Change this one thing, and its a whole different game. there's a reason why the FF7 remake allows this
- Crystarium development can feel very slow for an on-the-rails game. It also feels very lackluster compared to a traditional level system where you get little bits of 5-6 different stats in one bump, vs this nonsense where you're getting +20 HP here or +3 strength there. The only impactful pickups are the abilities and accessory slots, and those are few and far between making it painfully obvious that the rest is just filler.

The ugly:
- The fact that you can't turn off the first 'long' paradigm switch animation is infuriating. This will eat at you the more you play, it doesn't need to be there and over the course of the game I'm sure they added 1-2 hours just watching this stupid animation. The 'short' switch animations are already long enough.
- The pre-emptive strike system is beyond stupid because you have no idea which enemies will detect you in what ways. again, there is a reason this was replaced in Lightning Returns
- The upgrade and item synthesis systems. These were very obviously bolted on and are just bad. Figuring out the optimal way to upgrade things is a waste of time, just read a guide. The upgrade system is mentioned very early in the game, but never again. What makes this especially egregious is that the system *should* be a centerpiece. It's a secondary development system, but you can't get the components in sufficient quantities, or catalysts, or the other items necessary to make up the better synthesis groups until *very* late in the game. This stands out to me as the single biggest missed opportunity in the entire game. Had I been able to develop my weapons/synthesis groups from the beginning, I'd have yet another thing I was actively levelling, one that *strongly* affects gameplay. An example, I have a favorite build for Lightning, it uses the Boost Synthesis group with Enkindler and Sprint Shoes to get auto-haste and faster ATB gauge and it completely changes the feel of the game. But you can't even really *start* on this build before you reach the archylte steppe which is *deep* in the game.

Summary:
I like this game, and that's an unpopular opinion. A lot of people get stuck on the on-the-rails nature of the game, and that's fair, its not for everyone. But I do enjoy it, and the sooner I get back to auto-hasted Lightning juggling enemies with army of one, the happier I'll be.

I was a long time Carmageddon faithful. Logged hundreds of hours in Carmageddon 1 and 2.

I backed this game on kickstarter and was hoping to find some truly awesome Carmageddon action with a new engine.

What I found was a very shiny, well polished, dog turd with horrible balance and half-tested controls. Oh, if you do try it, DO NOT USE A KEYBOARD. The cars literally cannot be controlled using a keyboard, you will spin out just by trying to make adjustments, even at low speeds.

You will play, it will be fun, for awhile. Then you will start upgrading your cars, and you will get wrecked. You will get one shot by enemies you can't avoid, who have cars that handle better, accelerate faster, and take less damage.

I wanted to like this game, hell I wanted to love it. But I can't. Its impossibly frustrating even on normal difficulty.

This game is awful. DO NOT BUY IT

tldr; Game designer doesn't care about single player, updates only affect multiplayer balance even though single player is unplayable. Keyboard controls are garbage, use a controller or don't bother.