Four years. This is exactly what it took for the enthusiasts from Eleventh Hour Games to polish and release their first game. Judging by the efforts spent on Last Epoch, it is clear that this is not a test of the pen, but a thoughtful and ambitious release, aiming to compete with Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Diablo IV, and other ARPG leaders. Over time, the genre lost its former shine and charm, and all its content niches were long ago occupied by other projects, so Last Epoch needed a feature that would distinguish it from its peers. Fortunately, the developers came up with a way to get out.
Genre superposition
ARPGs have a long history, but not many important development milestones. Any diabloid sooner or later turns into an ordinary grind, since the genre was created to destroy packs of mobs in an endless race across repeating maps. In such conditions, there is rarely room for a plot or deep gameplay, so you just have to figure out how to improve what already works perfectly. Path of Exile responds to this with a deep leveling system. Titan Quest and Grim Dawn focus on atmosphere and story. In Last Epoch, the developers decided to mix the classic formulas of competitors to get a working foundation for adding their ideas. At the same time, players can buy last epoch gold so as not to spend too much time on it themselves.
It was not possible to meet the standard everywhere. For example, the plot of the work contains an interesting idea with time travel, conflicts between the cults of ancient gods, and the traditional salvation of the world, but in practice, most of these episodes look average. The main character can easily bring an ancient artifact to a couple of cultists, taking their word for it that they will not do anything wrong, and then be sincerely surprised when they have to fight a huge summoned demon. It is clear that the boss needed an excuse, but this is too strange. To be fair, we would like to note that the developers are actively working on problems, listening to the audience, and resuscitating the servers, so it is not recommended to abandon the game because of bugs. And if you are not chasing network activities, then you will be pleased with the confidently and reliably working offline mode.
Brilliantly done leveling of abilities
Given Last Epoch’s flaws and rough edges noted above, one might think it wouldn’t be worth the time. Believe me, the build construction will quickly dissuade you of this. The choice of the hero’s development and customization trajectory is the main trump card of Last Epoch because the developers decided to rely in this matter not on the number of abilities, as in Path of Exile, but on their combinations with each other. Instead of an exorbitantly huge tree of skills, from which a newcomer to the genre can lose consciousness just by looking at it, we are presented with about a dozen abilities for each class, there are 12 of them. And there are only five buttons for using skills. Doesn’t it seem like much? However, you won’t need any more. Here’s the thing: although there are few abilities, each of them has a separate leveling tree with several branches of development. Take the same necromancer. The traditional Summoning of Skeletons for this class can be upgraded to increase the number of skeletons to create an entire horde, or, conversely, reduce their number, but make them stronger and larger. Or exclude warriors, leaving only archers and strengthening their attacks. Or leave the robbers attacking opponents with acid and shurikens. Or make them cannon fodder, replenishing your resources after death. And this is only part of the variations of one summoning ability, the necromancer has five of them because you can summon huge golems, burning zombies, ghosts, and sorcerers – and build each of these units in your way.
Just imagine the scope for experimentation for each class, because leveling up often affects not only combat characteristics but also more fundamental things. For example, you can change the scale from which the ability scales, turning a rogue’s physical damage into magical damage, and how many different things can be done from a sorcerer’s elemental magic. In addition, it is possible to build a build in such a way that some abilities activate others: if you don’t want to use a separate skill to massively curse your opponents, just activate it on a local blink and debuff your enemies while rushing into battle. It’s up to your imagination to decide. The only limitation is the number of skills to upgrade. There are exactly five of them, as well as buttons under your control, but skills can be reset and transferred at any time, so there is complete order with creative freedom in Last Epoch.
In the case of Last Epoch, it’s not even close to a revolution in the genre. The secret of its popularity is its ability to latch on to one of the most characteristic attributes of an ARPG and embody it in its way. It’s no better or worse than Path of Exile or Grim Dawn, and this game still has to maintain the quality bar, so we’ll see what happens next.