Recent reviews by nuckydux

Honestly, its not a bad NGU clone. Will update review as I play.

Why pick this roguelike over others?

A) It's not afraid of math
B) It's not afraid to let you afk
C) It's not afraid to let you be overpowered
D) It has options for number formatting and ridiculously high particle count support

Unlike other roguelikes, this game isn't playing at power. The challenges are Idle Game esque because of how well they've implemented the power caps.

Everything can be op but nothing is op inherently. Many cards have trade offs rather than being flat multipliers and many traits are multiplicitive rather than additive. You'll start the game dealing a few points of damage, and end up compounding your crit multi for 5T+ later on.

10/10 even in early access.

Sadly after 5 days of not being able to log in, I have to change the review from positive to negative.

The sad part is that the game has a great foundation, but I'm not interested in playing offline. The game does not work as advertised and until it does, I would recommend anyone to stay away.

The servers seem OK now. Once they have been up for a time GREATER than they have been down (5 days for me) I will flip my review back to positive. If they go down for an unreasonable period (say half a day) I will start the counter over.

Edit: I've been having a blast. No server issues. Flipping my review back to positive. Good job guys, thanks for getting the game out in a stable state. I'd say its safe to play now.

This game has one of the most incredible leveling ARPG experiences I've ever had. For players from other games, I'll use generic terms to describe in-game systems.

Crafting:

For example, Salvaging/Enchanting items during a run feels incredible and gives much bigger depth to the ARPG experience. No longer do you need to grind endlessly for recipes or 'enchanting level', instead you can Shatter items during a run and use those same shards to craft on another piece of gear (so long as it has forging potential). This is an incredible mechanic.

I would say I wish magic items dropped with significantly more forging potential early on to let players experiment a little more. Getting 17 forging potential doesn't let me play around with 'rerolling' too much, which was a really fun mechanic to do.

What I will say is that the 'legendary system' here is incredible with the simple addition of 'legendary potential'. My favorite bow in PoE (even post nerf) is Quill Rain. I love it because it subverts expectations and gives a nuanced sub-build within any ranger type skill, a rapid fire barrage over a heavy hitting ballistic, but for many builds will be replaced by some end tier crafting bow.

In Last Epoch, you can get legendaries that have legendary potential, which lets you hadron colide them with a rare item of your choice. Legendary potential has values 1-4, meaning it will absorb those stats from the item you choose.

So I could make some end game Uber Elder Bow, that that Elder Base+Enchants and Quill Rain and DNA Digivolve them into Elder Quill Rain with the legendary inheriting the crafted affixes from the Elder Bow. I cannot tell you how this makes my brain tingle in every way that I want.

And you can 'buy' some of these items if you're in the Merchant's Guild, no luck needed, just $$$! With the new server stability, this has now become a viable progression path.

Idols and Skills:

This is probably one of my favorite parts of intersection in Last Epoch. I was planning Hammer VoidKnight and I had fallen in love using orbiting hammers and Smite hard casting. I was sad to see there were no interconnected procs like some of the Acolyte abilities have where you can proc another ability with a different skill, but then I found the Idol that gave me 4% chance to proc smite any time a throwing attack (Hammers is a throwing attack) hits a target. I have like 50 hammers flying around at any given time.

Oh my God, its crazy even with just one idol! I am now hunting for those idols to stack as much % chance as I can. Smite has such incredible buffs in its skill tree and one of those leaving little pools of fire on the ground called fissures.

I'm using some random Rogue Staff that gives me block/ block effectiveness/ -throwing mana cost / 16% more damage on bosses with throwing attacks, even though all of its GOOD stuff is buffing shuriken, because this Staff gives block chance which actually works with my skills.

I have shield bash that doesn't need to use a shield giving me +12% block, which is up to 50% with this staff on and I can use CDR and +1 shield charges to keep that buff up longer. Together these abilities feel like they were meant for each other. I then look and realize that I'm using 5 out of 25+ abilities offered to me, there are likely so many more synergies that are waiting to be discovered and I honestly am in awe that its so easy to get things to work together.

This is what builds in PoE struggle to maintain without high investment. The 'rhythm' of this game feels incredible and intuitive before End Game, rather than 'the game starts at maps.' And if you read what's on the screen rather than dissociating through the experience, you're going to have a solid understanding of the systems in place when you reach end game, making transitioning to Monoliths (PoE Maps), or Dungeons.

Overall, when reviewing this game in the lens competitive to PoE/Diablo, this game gives a refreshing take on many arpg motifs, and Last Epoch's re-orchestration is going bring more than replay-ability, it will give this game longevity from a satisfaction that can not be found in any other ARPG I've played so far. That novelty will mark its existence in the ARPG space, and I am so excited to sit back and watch as this game evolves from an Intel Arc to an Nvidia Ada.

TLDR;
9.99¯/10 ARPG.

feels like every other base building survival game, maybe once its out of EA it'll have something to offer

DRM makes the game unplayable. This was dropped on Jan 22nd and I am demanding a refund or I'm going to charge this game back. My cc has consumer protections against actions like this (changes that make a product unusable post purchase), you all should check if your CC does as well, and charge this product back.

DRM

It doesn't do anything, the world is empty and bland and there seems to be no point. The game itself is burdening, the UI is often outside the bounds of the boxes, the radial wheels are clunky at best, and the 'pals' seems generic. I don't understand why Pokemon would sue, there isn't anything here?

Maybe when its out of EA, there will be things to do, until then just play a romhack and Valheim if you really need the survival aspect.

At time of review: Sector 25/2 weeks played

Unnamed Space Idle is easily of the best idlers on steam. While still in Early Access, it already has many diverse systems. I haven't run out of content yet but I play slower than most.

The math is excellent and thought provoking in some areas and extremely simple in others. I love this because it usually means that an older system 'naturally' automates itself in may ways and your focus tends to either shift towards new systems OR unlocking deeper mechanics via subsystems.

The prestige mechanic is very interesting. Many games use prestige as a primary or secondary source of power. While prestiging exists and is useful, it exists around unlocking one-time upgrades for your ship and you only need to prestige when beating the relevant stage.

In-game shop is extremely reasonable. So reasonable I haven't used it yet.

Download it ASAP even if you aren't sure in order to save the dev from any Unity costs past January 1st.

yeah, i'd play it

Cheap, affordable, and lets me make great pixel art! Thanks guys.