Developer: Team EARTHWARS, oneoreight
Publisher: oneoreight
Genre: Souls-like Metroidvania
Reviewed On: PlayStation 5
Also Available For: PlayStation 4, PC
Lost Epic is a game that simply could not hold my attention. I tried for quite a long time to get through it, but I was hardly ever able to play for very long in one sitting, and I’d constantly find myself distracted during those sessions, until finally, I decided that this must be a sign and I should factor this lack of engagement into my review of the game.
This is so odd, because Lost Epic is, from what I managed to get through, the kind of game I should absolutely adore! It’s a metroidvania-come-soulslike about killing bastard gods with some seriously crunchy stat and progression systems, not to mention some slick, attractive visuals. I love every part of that sentence, especially when the concepts therein are put into practice as competently as the developers of Lost Epic have, and yet!
The combat is solid, with a couple of neat-if-not-revolutionary twists on standard soulslike practices, such as characters of any build having a slot for magic-bullet-spewing floating gauntlets and an emphasis on aerial combos to maximize damage output and survivability. Character growth carries the interesting twist that stat increases are gained from a mixture of gear improvement, regular ol’ leveling, and rewards for completing quests or praying at shrines scattered throughout the map. There’s a fishing minigame, a cooking minigame, and compelling gameplay benefits to actively engaging with both, none of which could hold my attention.
Truly I don’t know why. I’m pretty sure it’s not the story, which is admittedly somewhat predictable (based on looking up what happens online to confirm my suspicions upon realizing I wasn’t going to get through it any time soon) but interesting enough. Nor, I think, is the problem with the difficulty, which is both not that high and adjustable according to the player’s tastes.
I will note that there is a multiplayer element to this game that is sure to be practically non-existent at this point for anyone wanting to pair up with random strangers. Though it is, as far as I can tell, completely unnecessary for enjoying or fully completing the game, it does feel like one of those cases where the developers or producers overestimated how popular the game would be and might as well have kept it a single-player-only affair. I don’t even necessarily mean that as a criticism, I just find myself somewhat exasperated whenever a game has online components destined to be dead on arrival.
Lost Epic is, by all accounts, a good game that I would recommend if someone was looking for a stat-heavy soulsvania (or whatever you want to call this increasingly common genre lovechild) with punchy combat and cool abilities. If you, dear reader, are one such seeker then by all means give this one a shot, and please don’t let my own lack of enthusiasm turn you off it. Make of it what you will, and if you do end up playing it hopefully it grabs you more than it did me.
I recognize Lost Epic as a good game, it's just not really for me even though it feels like it totally should be.
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