izigame.me

Updated Review 2024 version 1.1.7
Ok, I think I played long enough to review this ARPG.
TL;DR: Over 2200 hrs played and I love it! There could be improvements and more content and it is coming down the pipeline
Disclaimer... I'm a filthy single player casual who plays offline only, that being said... I didn't use any specific pre-made builds for the classes, as I enjoy discovering skill synergy through experience and playing the game OFFLINE, now on to my opinion.

CLASSES

Void Knight is a fun class (level 98 Sentinel, 200 corr)
Paladin is a fun class (level 100 Sentinel, 200 corr)
Spellblade is a fun class (level 94 Mage, 200 corr)
Bladedancer is a fun class, struggles a bit at 100 corr (level 86 Rogue, 100 corr)
Beastmaster is a fun class (level 68 Primalist)
Falconer is a fun class (level 78 Rogue)
Forge Guard is not a fun class (level 94 Sentinel) (update, FG is much better after 1.1 release)
Necromancer was not a fun class for me, minions die to fast (level 95 Acolyte)

STORY AND GAMEPLAY

The story is my favorite to play through, I played it many times and it keeps you going from point A to B at a fast pace and engages you with mystery, interesting areas, enemies and allies as you venture your way through Eterra as a mysterious time traveler who has to put order back into time and fight back the chaos of the all consuming void of Orobyss.
As you play through the story, many items will drop. LE offers a way to filter all Items (shift-F) by affixes, rarity and many more. It's a very useful tool and will make item drops more worthy of your class design choices as you progress - I personally just filter out what I don't need depending on the class I chose and by the affixes I want to build my character with.
The Lore of Eterra is mysterious and engaging, keeping you interested into the characters and why everything is happening around the "Epoch". As the main story unravels around you and your chosen fate, the Epoch quickly becomes the center of attention as the last Artifact of Eterra her self, a god in the world with the same name who has vanished, her opposite - is Orobyss, the dark vile god who was only happy when the universe was dark and cold nothingness.
Last Epochs multiverse of time paradoxes is an interesting approach to the idea of an endless loop of game-play, keeping the traveler occupied by endlessly running the "Monolith", timelines which hold Echo islands of lost time and ruined futures that could be holding perfect items you've been looking for. LE also offers a crafting system via the "F" key which allows you to make items with affix shards, runes and Glyphs - all of these components are collected through combat or rewards and are used to manipulate the affixes of the item to be more usable to your build or to make them stronger.
When you do find that perfect unique and that juicy exalted item you will be able to make a "Legendary" item by combining them in a "Temporal Forge", which can only be accessed via a dungeon key that drops from fighting common area bosses. Legendaries depend on the Legendary Potential (LP) of a Unique item, where all or a few Affixes from an exalted item can be fused/applied to the Unique - creating a Legendary item is all RNG of course - but hopefully you'll get want you want eventually, just don't forget to time shift with the "D" key to pick up that sweet new item after forging.
As you get stronger, you will farm even harder Monoliths called "Empowered Monoliths" this version of the monolith is much stronger, offering increased pain modifiers and challenges to the end goals for the player to overcome. Corruption is the key to success, as you will be grinding more and more of it by defeating the echo quest boss to stack "Gazes" these gazes increase the amount of corruption you gain by defeating a shade of Orobyss. The higher your corruption, the more unique loot will drop with LP. (This is the current end game of Last Epoch)

NEMESIS SYSTEM

This was added with the Season 2 Harbringers patch and added special enemies similar to the Exiled Mages. There're 4 types of Nemesis based on Bleed, Poison, Frost and Lightning, each boss has 4 options to select random items from a list - including an egg that can incubate a unique from your inventory into a legendary with random stats or a Unique with Legendary Potential to upgrade at the temporal forge. There are also three choice to go about this - the Banish choice will change the item line up the next time you find a Nemesis spawn point. The Empower option will start a fight and enhance items into Exalteds or Rare items that could also have sealed affixes and or Unique items that will be given random affixes or LP. The Challenge option will also start a fight and the Nemesis will drop random items, shards and various loot along with the 4 items from the selection screen.
In my opinion the Nemesis system is very cool and gives the player something to do with their Unique items they find that have no LP. Before this system we sold them to the vendor or left them on the ground.

HARBRINGERS

The Harbringers are new boss types from the void and can be challenged in Empowered monoliths, the First harbringer occurs in the level 90 normal monoliths and drops an eye that can be used after a Monolith quest boss fight and unlocks the new Monolith area where the Forgotten Knight awaits to hear about your surprising victory. All Harbringers must first be defeated before challenging Abberoth.
I am not a fan of the Harbringer system, however, it's completely optional as there's a tick box after each monolith boss that allows you to summon one after the fight. These new bosses are very hard and fight similar to the arena bosses, they have added special attacks from the quest monolith boss as well as their own. Very challenging and I'm very glad it's not a forced system.

LOOT LIZARDS

I love loot lizards, I want more loot lizards, a whole village even a rainbow mtx pet! yes more, more! Loot lizards are a chasable npc mob that drops gold, idols and most of all loot of all kinds - but hurry before they sink back into the ground!

(No longer going since patch 1.7.6) IMPERIAL UPRISING EVENT

I'm on the fence about this new event, it has made empowered monoliths even harder. There's many mobs in each group with a boss, these mobs are buffed and will kill you faster than anything else in the monolith. It's currently possible to aggro multiple groups of these special undead packs of random ability shooting swarms of stupidity. However, these groups of mobs if defeated can drop multiple uniques, shards, glyphs and items, so if you can defeat them - it's pretty rewarding. However, the event created a flood of shards, glyphs and runes for crafting as now I have 1000s of them. (Not complaining, but kinda made shards value feel underwhelming, some shards are still pretty rare though)

MUSIC

I love the music of Erik Desiderio, I think he nailed the 80ies vibe fantasy pretty good, and like Steve Pardo this will be among my favorite ARPG game osts ever.
I made my own Last Epoch Grind playlist on Spotify too, because you are going to do a lot of grinding, so here it is, over 80 hrs of game composer and game OST tracks.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Pd0i6Bxfw1V0OodxfYvic?si=c5be17597f154562