Impressions of Last Epoch

One of the games that have had a huge success so far in 2024 is the hack-and-slash action RPG Last Epoch.

I myself am a huge fan of hack-and-slash action RPGs, but recently there seem to be no good ARPGs around.

(In case you are wondering, I did thoroughly enjoy the first two installments of the big D, but the 3rd installment did not click well with me so I decided to skip the 4th).

I had heard interesting things about this game prior to its official 1.0 release, so I purchased a copy of it while it was still in its early access form (though just a couple of weeks before its 1.0 release) to try it out, as well as look for classes or builds that I could play when the official release comes about.

While no, it does not have mind-blowing AAA graphics, nor neither are there voice acting for all the dialogs, it does not hinder the fact that this is an entertaining and captivating game, one that I honestly enjoyed as it stays true to the spirit of hack-and-slash games, allowing experimentation with different builds and customizations without absurdly heavy penalties on the player.

And in fact I am very glad that my not-so-high-end machine could run the game smoothly without major framerate drops.

Now that I have completed the main story (Chapter 9 as of writing), I would like to share about what I find enjoyable in this game for anyone considering it.

Please note that there might be minor spoilers from this point on so if you want to experience the story and gameplay in its purest form you might want to just close this window, head over to Steam right now and purchase a copy to try out yourself.

Prologue

The story begins as one of the four Gods of the world started to wage war with the others, and each character class has a backstory that led them to be entangled in this war. One particular interesting note is that in the early access version the introductory cutscene was different for each character class, explaining the background of the character and the reason for being part of the war, but with the 1.0 release the cutscene became a common generic one for all characters. In all honesty I did like knowing about my character’s motivation to take part in the war, so I do hope they would bring back the character specific cutscenes in a later version again.

Classes and Skills

There are 5 main characters (classes) to choose from, and each class has 3 masteries (or subclass) that you could choose as you proceed with the story, unlocking specific passive skills and bonuses to build the character with. The implementation of the passive skills system is definitely worth mentioning as it deserves high praise - choosing a specific subclass would provide your character subclass-specific bonuses, as well as unlock the entire passive skill tree of that subclass for you to spend points on, but you are still able to add points to the first row of the other two subclasses if you desire so. This brings a lot of customization options to build your player as you could mash certain passive skills from the other trees with your inherent subclass bonus to synergize. Respeccing the passive skill points are as simple as vising a NPC and paying some in-game gold to reset the points, so it allows for experimentations without worries.

Though one feature of the game, as mentioned by the developers themselves, is that while passive skill points can be refunded to be reallocated, the mastery chosen cannot be reset as that is part of the game experience they want to deliver. So if you want to try out a different subclass’s full passive tree and/or innate passive bonus, you would have to create a new character.

On top of the passive skills, there are also active skills like spells and what not, and the way the active skills are implemented definitely adds an entire separate dimension of customization to your character, and in my opinion deserves a huge round of applause.

Firstly, up to a maximum of 5 different skills can be equipped on your character at any one time, defaulting to the keyboard presses of Q, W, E, R and the right mouse click. You can swap the active skills around and find synergistic builds or skills that would complement your playstyle.

Each active skill has its own skill tree, and the skills would level up with you as long as they are placed in the Skill Specialization Slot. You start of with only one Skill Specialization Slot early in the game, but as your character levels up you would unlock more specialization slots, with the last slot being unlocked at character level 50. Skills that are not placed in the specialization slots can still be used if they are bound to the active skill hotkeys, just that they will not be able to level up or be customized.

The points for the skills can be respecced anytime, and a different skill can also be chosen to replace a current one in a specialization slot at anytime too. However there is a slight “skill experience” penalty for this, and you would be required to level up the skills again to regain the points for customization. That said, it is not as big a penalty as compared to other games where super rare drops or cash items are required to even reset one single skill point, so there is no worries with trying out specific skill trees.

What I thought was ingenious about the active skill tree implementation was how I could have freedom in modifying a particular base spell. I am playing a minion summoning Necromancer, and there are many ways you could spec the simple Summon Skeleton spell - while it defaults to a 50/50 mix of sword wielding skeleton warriors and ranged skeleton archers, do you like it to be 100% skeleton warriors? Or 100% skeleton archers? Or have some skeleton rogues too? Or perhaps have less skeletons but stronger skeletons? All these are possible depending on how you build the active skill trees.

And speaking of that, this is one of the few games that did not ruin the essence of the Necromancer - I enjoy having an entire army of undeads or golems walking with me, and this game allows you to do that if you wish to, instead of forcing necromancers to go with a meta bone spear build just so that you could even scratch the boss’s hide.

Storyline and Quests

Although relatively linear without much open-ended options, the story is entertaining with its twists and subtle hints of time travel continuity. I have to admit I did have to refer to online synopsis more often than once as I sometimes got lost on NPCs’ relationships with each other. That is 100% on me though.

While most of the quests are the typical “go here and defeat the dungeon boss” or “go and fetch this for me” ARPG quests, one of my favorite side quests involves having to do a time leap into the future to retrieve a quest item from a corpse so that you could open a door in the present (put this as vaguely as possible to not spoil the quest), and it captures the essence of the game’s time-traveling theme very well.

While the main story now ends at Chapter 9, this game is supposedly to have 3 more chapters in its storyline (until Chapter 12) which I guess could come in a future patch. After completing Chapter 9, the end-game content involves you exploring alternate timelines and seeing what could have happened if certain events went in a different direction. I have only completed one of the alternate timelines so far, and it definitely brings a further depth to the lore.

Final Thoughts

So tl;dr, this is definitely a game worth your time if you like playing hack-and-slash ARPGs, and offers good end-game content and replayability as well. And you get to play as a proper necromancer if you want to too.

On a final note, I think the developers do deserve praises for handling initial server issues and updating the rowdy public with transparent updates. Most recent games which require online authentication usually have rocky connection issues at launch due to influx of new players, and Last Epoch unfortunately was not spared from this misfortune. However seeing how the developers kept the player base updated with their findings and doing their best backend to solve the issues definitely instilled a lot of respect for them in me.

Difficulty Following Action RPG Stories

I have been playing Last Epoch lately, and in all honesty I am enjoying it very much - it just feels great to have an army of skellies roaming with you causing mayhem to everything that has a red life bar. I plan to write about it in more detail once I complete the main storyline, which is taking a bit longer than expected as I have to juggle with taking care of the little ones too.

Now, I am not sure if I am alone in this, but I do find myself getting lost regularly in the storylines in most hack-and-slash action RPGs (ARPGs). Not just Last Epoch, but even other titles like Diablo (and its subsequent versions), Grim Dawn, Titan Quest etc.

It is like most of the time at the beginning I learn a bit about what is happening, get to know a few characters, and as the story progresses I know I need to whack the big bad guy, but suddenly I cannot seem to recall why is a certain NPC helping me or why a certain quest is required to reach the said big bad guy - I end up having to search online for a synopsis every now and then to read up again on who’s who, who’s whose friend, and why I am doing certain things.

It is really strange that this only happens to me for hack-and-slash ARPGs, whereas in other RPGs like Disgaea series or Shining Force series (back on the Sega MD when I was a kid), or even Yakuza Like a Dragon, I tend to remember what is going on pretty well and have a deeper impression of the characters.

I wonder is it because the nature of hack-and-slash ARPGs they make you more focused on skills and items that you tend to click through the conversations?

Or perhaps the design of the dialog boxes with just a static portrait just does not leave a deep impression in the brain?

Or perhaps I just have a really short attention span and am clicking through dialog boxes really fast?

Just really intriguing.

That said, Last Epoch does have a pretty interesting and entertaining story so far, and although I had to refer to summaries online a couple of times now, I am certainly impressed with the attention to small details the developers gave in the storyline.