Without having played the end game content in depths I've played the game enough and especially read about it so much that I can give other grouvee players an idea what they're awaiting, maybe that helps some people who are uncertain if they should try it out.

Diablo clone?

There's been dispute about how similar this game is to Diablo. It's been advertised as such years before and that's why I was waiting for it so long, because I'm a big lover of the Diablo series.

As much as people were overemphasizing the resemblance they downplay it a bit these days. At the core, Lost Ark's basic gameplay loop is hack & slash-arpg-action combat like Diablo has invented and popularized and in this sense they're one of a kind. Everything else about this game is MMO, though, in a for me personally very negative sense. My review is biased because I am no MMO-guy, of course.

Diablo's formula since D2 in my opinion consists of two aspects: brilliant action combat, notoriously labeled as Hack & Slay, and an addictive item loot-system. Lost Ark has the former, but not the latter. As easy as that. Oh, and Diablo 2 is legendary for its atmosphere. Lost Ark lacks that as well.

Pay 2 win?

The other big question around this game has been whether or not this game is pay 2 win. It's ben asked and stated so many times that I started to feel like westerners are fairly hypocritical and cringy regarding this topic.

My simple answer is that Lost Ark is not pay 2 win because you literally cannot win in an MMO. To win implies competition. What is the competition in an MMO? Having the endgame gear as soon as possible? So to say, who spent the most time in it wins? If somebody has a T6-armor in WoW in my eyes he didn't win, because they barely needed to play well in order to get it, they just played a lot.

It is true though: Lost Ark lets you pay to progress. Alongside cosmetics you can buy experience buffs and a lot of utility things that save you up some time. As soon as there's a competitive aspect like in the pvp-system, item gear is equalized and all that doesn't help you.

The problem with pay 2 win is that it makes competition absurd which is not given in this case. I know that mmo-players might view their progress as a sort of competition but for me that's an absurd conception as an MMO simply requires time not skill to progress.

Pro

• The Hack & Slay-combat feeling has been mastered here almost to perfection. I'd say it's the best combat feeling ever made in an (a-)RPG, even better than in Diablo 3. Slashing down the enemies feels insanely satisfying, the animations are beautiful, your hits have visible impacts on your enemies, they even get knocked back heavier if you hit heavier etc. One of the biggest issue with MMOs is terribly slow and boring combat feeling. Lost Ark neutralizes this problem. There was never an excuse for mmos to have such terrible combat. And now it's downright illegitimate. I hope Lost Ark will have a hugh positive impact on the genre in that sense.

• The class design is superb. All classes feel very unique and different from each other. They're also not your typical high fantasy standard reportoire, you have a martial arists, an artillerist etc. Also, they're adding new classes continuosly.

• The pvp system is thanks to the high speed and precision aspect of skill execution an actually serious aspect of the game. They even have ranked matches. For an MMO, skillfull pvp is very uncommon and that's actually pretty amazing.

• There's so much interesting end game content. MMO-veterans say the Raids are among the best they've ever seen in the genre. There's a lot of different activites and things to do in the end game: chaos dungeons (like maps in poe), raids, pvp and some raids are very difficult, thus offering a very deep vertical content and challenge for hardcore players. You also have horizontal content as you can set up your own house on your own island and decorate everything around there. That's lovely.

• For me personally the style of the game is still a little too polished and clean and I prefer the gritty dark style of Diablo, POE or Grim Dawn. But the game isbeautiful. The maps and areas are very diversified, the UI looks great, and if you ignore the overly sexualized items the armor design is actually pretty great.

• The story goes 15-20 hours, then you're 50 and in end game content. MMOs are terribly long usually, Lost Ark isn't, you're quick to reach end game.

• The UI is very intuitive and in terms of graphic design doesn't look as terrible as in other MMOs. It does give you the same amount of information as those others, but it doesn't bombard you with information. I always find everything that I am looking for without googling. Should be normal, isn't unfortunately.

• The UXP in general is very streamlined and pleasant. It's always pretty clear what to do next, aspects of the game are explained during the story in a very natural way, you never have to wait somewhere or wonder what to do next, quests pop up, you do them, next one comes, everything is streamlined and feels fluent. Lost Ark has a gameplay flow.

Contra

• Currently you have to queue for hours to get to play in Europe. This is the reason why the game gets review bombed at the moment.

• As in most MMOs the quests are just the same old 'go there, kill five of those, come back'.

• The story is some regulard old high fantasy kitsch and absolutely uninteresting. There's also no full synchronisation. There's some amazing cinematic experiences in there as the castle siege for instance, though.

• Female characters are overly sexualized. You're forced to wear hot pants with some classes in the early game. The walking animation in cut scenes with some classes is comically sexualized. The décolletés of some characters in certain armors look downright comical.

• This is for me the worst: there is no proper skill tree customization. The skill system offers you zero personalization of your character. You can respec everything all the time, but nothing that you might skill actually makes the skill feel different. A sorceress is just a sorceress, everybody plays the same sorc.

• Ah, this might be even worse: There's zero sense of progression. Your abilities look downright awesome right from the start and stay like that the whole game. Lost Ark simulates progression by implementing strong power creeps, meaning that your iteam gear quickly gets too weak and you will need new one to keep up with your kill speed, but...

• ...The item system offers zero personalization as well. In every area there's just one type of item that drops for every character, meaning that everybody has the same items on the same levels. I know these are things that are typical for MMOs, but where's my customization then? Also, the items are just bland numbers for your 'item level'-progression. They have no special effects or abilities ever. Looting, essential part of Diablo, doesn't exist in Lost Ark. I wouldn't mind if the personalization of my character comes from somewhere else. It doesn't.

• Because there is no sense of progression, no threshold for some nice new abilities that you chose on your own, no power spikes with interesting item drops, simply progressing the bland numbers of your item gear, eventually, and very sadly, Lost Ark feels like work to me, just like all other MMORPGs. If you like that, or are less sensitive towards these aspects, good for you.

• This is subjective, but these latter things eventually all sum up to an overall feeling of superficiality that I still hope to get rid off. Again this is something I have with every MMO, so maybe actual MMO-players won't have that. It might be caused by a tiny bit of an asian-gotcha-free2play-vibe, though, as well. It's not strong, but it's there, sometimes.

Don't let the middle-of-the-road score fool you, this is still the most fun I have had in an MMO in well over a decade. Well, besides Destiny if that counts... It has really fun combat (though not amazing enemy design) and a nice treatment of side objectives that minimizes time waste and focuses on constantly moving you forward through its big world. It also has surprisingly dynamic cutscenes and some really pleasant visuals. It does a great job at onboarding you into the game and pointing you toward the most important stuff early on, while giving you constant flexibility to adjust your build on the fly and experiment with different abilities.

Still, I've lost all motivation to go back to the game to finish its final areas or touch any post-game content. Especially coming right off Diablo II, I felt so little tension in the gameplay, just a very easy romp through areas, so it became monotonous as I approached the 10 hour mark. Objectives tend to lack any meaningful variation besides pressing the same interact key in different places, or killing slightly different enemy mobs.

Even when they drop you into a real fleshed-out dungeon, they usually feel a bit too simplistic and straightforward to be at all memorable. Your character starts out already strong with a wide moveset, which provides instant gratification, but little sense of growth that I want out of this kind of game. As an MMO, I suppose the "real" game starts after you get through all this and begin doing daily challenges or whatever other stuff makes up the post-game. I came to this as an ARPG first and an MMO second, so that doesn't do much for me. I also found the sheer complexity of all the menus and systems coming along with the MMO format to be a bit overwhelming.

I think this is a fun game and you can't beat the price of free, so I do recommend it in general and am happy I spent time with it. If you are a huge MMO fan (I'm not), don't worry so much about my critiques, and try it out for yourself.