Last Epoch Review – Power Fantasy

Last Epoch has been available as an early access title for quite some time now. While the game was primarily single player back when it first launched in early access, through a series of updates, Last Epoch eventually got online multiplayer, as well as a host of other content, ranging from elaborate dungeons with bespoke mechanics, to new endgame activities. After almost five years since its original early access release, Last Epoch is now finally available as a full game with its incredibly beefy 1.0 patch.

To truly understand the appeal behind Last Epoch is to also understand the inherent appeal and current state of the action RPG genre. While incredibly popular, in recent times, the genre has been largely dominated by popular but variable IPs. One may focus quite a bit on offering players a pure, unadulterated power fantasy, allowing them to do millions of points in damage as they cleave a path through hundreds of enemies, while the other may allow players to get to that point only after they’ve spent a sufficient amount of time in thinking about their gear and figuring out their abilities and passive skill tree.

To put it simply, when it comes to action RPGs, they often tend to exist somewhere on a sliding scale between offering an insane power fantasy, and giving players a lot of build-crafting options to tune their builds to a T. Last Epoch sits quite comfortably between the the power fantasy and build crafting and customization scales.

"As you level up through your journey in Last Epoch, you gain new abilities, just like any other action RPG."

Last Epoch, going for the middle-of-the-road approach with its power fantasy and customization options, manages to achieve a little bit of the best of both worlds. The game offers quite a bit in terms of power fantasy, especially once you start hitting the mid-game and the synergies between your various abilities start coming together, at the same time also offering plenty of opportunities for players to experiment with these various synergies with what is one of the cleverest methods of build customization I’ve seen in an action RPG.

As you level up through your journey in Last Epoch, you gain new abilities, just like any other action RPG. What makes things more interesting, however, is the fact that each of your abilities also happens to have its own bespoke skill tree that allows you to tinker with just how your ability works. For example, playing with the Necromancer specialization, you can focus on letting your summoned minions do your killing. These summoned minions can be further customized by, for example, allowing Summon Skeleton to also bring forth archers and mages. This can be taken even further by giving each of your different skeleton types their own unique abilities, like fire arrows for your skeleton archers, or a poison blast for your mages, while your regular skeleton warriors cause enemies to bleed with every hit.

This same level of customization extends into every class, sub-class, and ability. The Sentinel class, for example, can be built up to be the weapons expert that is the Forge Guard, or a dark magic character in the form of the Void Knight. The Rogue, on the other hand, can go for a pet-based sub-class in the form of the Falconer, the archery-based Marksman, or the stealthy melee-focused Blade dancer. The Mage, and Primalist all have similar options that radically change how you plan your character’s build, depending on the style of gameplay you might be going for.

"The game offers quite a bit in terms of power fantasy, especially once you start hitting the mid-game."

Any discussion about action RPGs these days is never really complete without having to talk about its endgame systems, however, and thankfully, Last Epoch has a few options to play around with. The primary form of endgame content comes with the Monolith of Fate. Unlocked on finishing the title’s story, the Monolith of Fate essentially takes players through a series of randomly-generated zones, each one allowing players to target specific equipment slots for the loot they might want. For example, players might get to choose between a zone that will reward them with a weapon, or one that rewards them with a new pair of boots.

The other form of endgame content is the Arena, which acts as a way for players to compete with each other. The Arena allows players to take on infinite waves of enemies, slowly rising in difficulty. On dying, players are rewarded with a spot on the appropriate leaderboard, showing off their skills, class, and how many waves they managed to survive. These leaderboards are segregated into appropriate categories, split between solo, group, softcore, and hardcore.

Some of the most interesting content in Last Epoch, however, are its dungeons. Rather than being just simple caverns you murder your way through, the dungeons in Last Epoch are more elaborate affairs. Taking cues from popular MMORPGs, dungeons in Last Epoch tend to have their own unique mechanics, be it playing around with light to prevent the growth of dangerous plant-based enemies, or hopping back and forth between two distinct time periods throughout your run of a single dungeon. Each dungeon has its own unique rewards, alongside the randomly generated loot you’re probably there for.

"Each of your abilities also happens to have its own bespoke skill tree."

Speaking of time travel, I guess it’s time to talk about the story of Last Epoch. As far as action RPG stories go, Last Epoch isn’t the most interesting one out there, however, it has a distinct gimmick in the form of time traveling. As they progress through the story, players will fight their way through the Ancient, the Ruined Era, and the Imperial Eras. While there are some interesting attempts at environmental storytelling throughout the game, especially since you often get to visit the same zone thousands of years apart, getting to see how things once were and how they become later on, the overall story ultimately just boils down to “find and kill the main villain”.

There are still plenty of fun moments throughout the story, however, since, among other things, your actions help you achieve interesting things in the context of the world of Eterra, from forging bonds with several NPCs, to straight up waging a war on an entire empire. Despite these cool moments, there’s just too much fluff in Last Epoch, where you’re often just running through random zones and mindlessly killing enemies until you have to talk to an NPC again to progress the plot.

While the choices made on the gameplay side of things largely pay off, offering an incredible amount of customization while still being easily understandable and fun, some of the choices made in the game’s story often make it feel like there might be just a little bit too much padding. On the bright side, the core gameplay remains fun throughout, especially once you start unlocking some of your fancier abilities that start truly kicking off the power fantasy that fans of the genre play action RPGs for.

This game was reviewed on PC.