Lost Ark Review in Progress
There’s never been an isometric action RPG quite so expansive or adventurous as Lost Ark. This stylistic, free-to-play MMO is finally about to launch for western audiences after taking South Korea by storm in 2019, and having played a few dozen hours in the test server, it’s not hard to see why it’s been so popular overseas. Its story may be generic fantasy, but there’s a surprising degree of depth to Lost Ark and each of its sprawling systems, and most of its content is accessible to play through by yourself or with friends. It’s the kind of game that’s easy to lose hours in even without spending any money, especially once you get your very own ship and set sail to pave your own path through its mysterious world.
The story of Lost Ark boils down to the now overdone “Humans and Angels team up to fight Demons and save the world” structure, and it suffers from some pretty ham-fisted writing and voice acting that can make the tone and pacing come across awkwardly at times. Action-packed cutscenes often help tell that story, and they tend to be a visual treat, but it’s unfortunate that characters’ emotions are poorly conveyed at basically all times. A major contributing factor is that character voices tend to bounce between either over exaggeration or an inappropriate lack of emphasis in relation to the stakes of the moment. As a result, they generally come across as one-sided and forgettable rather than unique or interesting, and emotional moments struggle to land.
What saves it are the great action sequences, which are well scripted and fantastically creative enough to do all the heavy lifting for the story. There’s an excellent segment where your character runs through a king’s tomb while being chased by an otherworldly,
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