Recent reviews by Sir Tuty

This is liable to change, seen as its still very early days for Lost Ark - And this has only just scraped through with a positive recommendation in my books

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TL;DR

There was a long queue time, an early and neat class system, superb visuals and cutscenes, but a lack of originality and a combat levelling system which favours anything but combat. Perfect if you want something to switch off to

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For Those Who Fancy A Read

I was initially greeted by a 25-minute queue to get into the server with the lowest queue. Panicked by its taunts of "Even if you get through, you might not be able to make a character" I stuck with it. Character creation was reasonable. Not as OTT as Black Desert Online, but with just enough of a uniqueness for each character. I was surprised at how early they ask you to specialise though - Expecting a later power spike when you unlock prestige techniques and weapons. Though on the plus side, they give you a training and testing emulator to see which class does what. After rushing to look at the shooting classes (and having binge watched The King's Avatar) I chose the Artillerist, due to its likeness to a class in the show.

The intro story line made me chuckle - The evil Eye of Sauron has come to the material plane and has started to take over the minds of every important figure. A story which for the first few hours of playing was then never touched on again. No talks of Evil Eyes, no real explanation as to why you're obliged to help. Also the first notable character goes on to declare that he "has the sword", so he "makes the rules". As the scene pans out to both out characters, its clear that the oversized cannon on my back was of little concern to him. And having seen other creatures in the game, I feel like gunslingin' and gun-wielding might have been an afterthought for players, but not the world they're based in - They practically don't exist thus far.

From then it plays like most Diablo-esque MMORPG. Find items, investigate objects, level up and so on. Though they definitely intended it to be quest driven - Many monsters only give 2xp, then 4xp and if you're lucky 90xp, yet the amounts required to level up are way into the hundred-thousands (100000s). Coupled with the fact that unless you start to train monsters behind you, you'll only ever kill three or four at a time, killing monsters is more of a hindrance to levelling. Also its a live PvE, so everyone is competing for the same monsters. I actually got quite anxious in the starting areas, due to its limiting of experience to players and possibly ruining their quest needs. The secret dungeons were a nice touch though. Made players actually look around to understand where they are.

As games go though, Lost Ark is in its infancy. If the developers take notes of their opening week. Maybe increase their server capacity, reward players who grind monsters with better experience and such. Maybe even add new story lines, we maybe be looking at a new longtime dungeon crawling MMO. If not, we may find that its player bases quickly fizzles out

The orginial which this game is based on is a classic. Its cel-shaded graphics and comic style really brought the game into its own. This on the other hand is terrible. With more glitches than its predecessor and the most irrelevant sound clips, this game is pure ****. Its intended multiplayer function was non-existent and the game was just a re-textured carbon copy.
This was a money grab, a ruse, a small time indie company pulling an awful trick on its audience. Don't buy this game... Wait for it to go on sale for cheap or play the original - You'll have more fun.

I'll admit now that I havent played this for very long, but as a game, it stuggles to work well on keyboard and quite frankly its the same game, just with a new title and expirience. I'm unsure about using a controller, because I don't have one I can use, however if I were you, stick to the original. Sure you see a lot more visually and can be useful for legitamately finding the herbs for the herbology achievment, but in all fairness, this game has been out for rather a long time, so if you can't find a guild telling you were they are (If you are that desperate), then by all means pay for the game.

Also if they are still doing the deal on the game if you already have H2S then you're not losing too much.

Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Creativity: 0/10
ZOMBIES: 10/10 (At least they've got that right!)