Last Epoch Final Review

mmorpg.com:

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote my Last Epoch Review in Progress, and boy has it been a wild ride. My first impression of Last Epoch was that it felt similar to other top ARPGs but had the potential to rise to the top of the genre. You’ll have to read on to find out if Last Epoch actually lived up to that potential. Welcome to our Last Epoch Final Review.

Launch Week — Or My Personal Battle With Error LE-61

Last Epoch is the perfect example of why early reviews can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, early access to the 1.0 client gave reviewers a sneak peek at the changes coming in the full release, or in my case, a chance to finally check out the game I had literally been waiting years to play. Gameplay elements could be explored, and game-crashing bugs could be identified. Although I didn’t have enough time before launch day to experience all that Last Epoch had to offer, I could at least write about my first few hours of gameplay with optimism that Last Epoch was looking like the ARPG I was hoping for.

And then came the other edge of the sword. My pre-launch time with Last Epoch was nowhere close to what I would experience after launch. The pre-release test server was shut down on launch day, so I had to restart a new character to continue my review. No big deal, I thought. I had already played through the story, so I would just blast through the minimum needed to unlock all my passive skills and idol slots, and I’d be able to check out the endgame content before writing my final review. 

That’s not how things went down. 

My trouble-free time playing the pre-release copy of Last Epoch gave me a false sense of security that the release would go well. And oh my god, it didn’t. Server issues made Last Epoch unplayable unless you wanted to slink away to offline mode. Online Co-op was in shambles, and I was lucky to get 10-15 minutes of play before I had an infinite loading screen that required a restart. And that’s assuming I could get past the