Lost Epic Review: a 2d action with soulslike genes that does not convince

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Lost Epic Review: a 2d action with soulslike genes that does not convince
lost epic review: a 2d action with soulslike genes that

Lost Epic is the result of a mixture of ingredients in interesting power but which unfortunately failed to surprise us.

Lost Epic Review: a 2d action with soulslike genes that does not convince

Lost Epic is a video game that constantly walks the very thin line that separates naivety from boldness: it draws heavily on different sources of inspiration to replicate its dynamics, aesthetics and themes. But when he has to put the pieces together and merge each element into one overview with its own identity, it fails to bring home the result: in short, we are talking about an experience full of obvious edges and criticalities, net of its good basic potential.

First of all, it recovers the aesthetics and the two-dimensional action of Vanillaware’s works such as Dragon’s Crown (here is the Dragon’s Crown Pro review to learn more), and then combines them with typical mechanics of the soulslike. Finally, he places everything in a playful context characterized by open spaces in pure metroidvania style, with a sprinkling of narrative centered on a chosen wretch, a knight unable to die fighting against entities infinitely more powerful than himself. In short, let’s see why the mixture of ingredients offered to us by onoereight and Team EARTHWARS has left us with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A complicated start …

Lost Epic doesn’t start out in the best way and offers the player a general smattering of the elements of one purely ancillary plot and to be honest uninteresting. The cornerstones of the gameplay among other things, one above all the two-dimensional action, are introduced in a very ineffective way, thanks to a revisable localization which afflicts both the actual explanations – which we found rather convoluted – and the menus, making the first few hours of the game rather tedious.

Gradually, with a little patience and relying on experimentation, life in the game world becomes a little easier because the mechanisms that regulate the gameplay become more and more clear. In this way, in short, they begin to distinguish the various playful souls of Lost Epic, just as we begin to appreciate the immediacy of some solutions on the whole, while asking ourselves questions on the actual usefulness of others. Enemies can be shot through a repertoire of light and heavy attacks or using special abilities to take out the toughest opponents. In general, this is the area of ​​production that convinces the most, because as long as you have to play the game, all in all it is fun, thanks to what is an immediate action and a fast pace. Unfortunately, starting with the lack of variety of opponents, it is impossible for us to say that the fights proved to be without hitches. In the hero’s journey, which one must undertake for overthrow the gods who dominate the world – so that we can build another one from its ashes – we have often come across creatures that are really too similar to each other, passing over some rare cases where this has not happened.

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Not that there are no adversaries capable of putting our brave warrior in difficulty, mind you, but given the crucial importance of the variety of enemies in this type of experience, it would have been legitimate to expect more tangible efforts on this front. If we add to this also the uncertainties related to the execution of the somersault – an action that has revealed itself far less responsive than expected – the reasons that lead us not to fully promote this aspect of the game are clear.

… for an uninspired adventure

What just doesn’t work is the way in which Lost Epic takes on typical soulslike mechanics and sticks them on, without a minimum of contextualization. To level up, as well as to craft and upgrade items and weapons, Soul crystals are used, which are obtained by defeating enemies and which are lost in case of death. So far, we are talking about playful traits we have become accustomed to. The unusual, and the unsustainable, lies in the amount of grinding at the base of the protagonist’s growth.

It is not so much the level up that is problematic, as it is finding the materials useful to trigger the upgrades or to create the key objects, a discourse that we even extend to the creation of potions, which are the only means to heal oneself in battle. Moreover, the areas of crafting and upgrading are managed by a character in which you can come across one or at most two respawn points in each area, a choice that we found questionable.

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This ongoing search for Soul crystals and materials would also be sustainable in a fun map to explore. Unfortunately, however, Lost Epic has nothing of the most inspired metroidvania, since it limits itself to proposing a world that is only a succession of large roomswhich by the way are not even organically connected.

Taking one road rather than another simply means getting to the bottom of it to get something precious, only to have to return to the fork to explore the path not taken previously. On several occasions, when we had to complete secondary missions that turned out to be uninspired – but capable of offering substantial rewards in crystals – we found ourselves having to do the same rounds and always visit the same places, in spite of that desire to know and explore which should be the basis of a product of this type.

Scratching the patina

Net of the first impacts, many of the scenarios we discovered and visited turned out to be far less captivating than expected. As mentioned, Lost Epic is very inspired by the production of Vanillaware on the fronts of artistic direction and style of the settings but unfortunately it gets results that are not as convincing, starting with what it is an aesthetic that is at times pleasant but which is accompanied by a level of detail that is not always satisfactory.

For example, the choice of colors with which the team painted is good places with fantasy iconographywhich unfortunately, however, are characterized by a sparse effect – which limits and not just the scenographic impact – and by a reduced depth.

Things are slightly better with regard to the characters, the protagonist himself – who can be selected from an appreciable pool of models – and the monsters, because they were made with some care. Unfortunately, however, things change if we move to the front of the animations, often turned out to be coarse and capable of producing an annoying puppet effect. To close the discussion there is a sound accompaniment with a fluctuating success, which only on a few occasions has been able to give an extra touch of epicity to the adventure.

Lost Epic
Lost EpicPC Analyzed VersionThere is nothing that can entice and stimulate the player to face the twenty hours needed to complete the full-bodied adventure of Lost Epic. The component that works best, the action formula, is also the thinnest, and certainly not enough to bear the weight of the whole experience. The other areas of the gameplay unfortunately only weigh it down further, mechanical accomplices not well implemented and useless trappings. In short, these are the reasons why this 2D action rpg has been trapped in the limbo of mediocrity.