But how will the rollout work? How much will the expansion cost? In a new forum post, game director Judd Cobler apologized for the delay in information, as the studio is in the “thick of our acquisition” by Krafton.

“Currently, we’re working on a seasonal-to-expansion roadmap to share with you all shortly. We’re just tidying up some graphics and trying to ensure what we say for the season content is not sharing too much that will force us to adjust it shortly after sharing (making a live service game is very iterative).” He also clarified that Orobyss isn’t Season 4 and that multiple seasons will launch before it arrives, which is why it hasn’t received too many details.

Cobler reiterated how the developer’s association with Krafton will “be hugely strengthening for the studio and the content that we’re able to create,” and its “growing future” (which it admitted to being at risk previously). While post-1.0 seasons weren’t profitable, Cobler says the studio is unsure about monetization surrounding the expansion.

“Years ago, when we were a significantly smaller team formed on Reddit, our goal was not to charge for any content, but our cosmetic sales have not been enough to cover our own development costs over the long term. Our studio has grown significantly, and we pay livable wages to our team members. In true ARPG fashion, our costs have increased (insert power creep joke here). That being said, we are still modeling how the expansion will be monetized exactly, but when a decision is made, we will share it with you right away.”

Last Epoch on PS5 and Orobyss don’t have a release window, so stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.

The expansion and PS5 release were both announced with a trailer during the State of Play. The trailer, which you can check out below, shows off the host of features that Last Epoch is known for, like its customisable skill tree, crafting systems and gameplay-changing loot. However, we don’t really get much in the way of details about what the Orobyss expansion will entail.

Last Epoch on PS5 will feature all of the 5 playable classes from the PC release, with each featuring three masteries that can be customised to a player’s chosen style of gameplay. All in all, there are more than 120 unique skills in the game, and players will need all the power they can get since the campaign will take them across countless eons as they travel through time to take on the forces of the Void.

For more details about Last Epoch, check out our review of the PC release.

Referring to the acquisition by Krafton, Cobler has noted that the future of Eleventh Hour is now much more secure. He has also referred to the acquisition as marking the beginning of a new chapter for the studio overall since the game launched the 1.0 version of Last Epoch back in 2024.

“After speaking with dozens of strategics and potential partners, Krafton clearly demonstrated that they’re aligned in helping us achieve our goals and can both enable and guide us through some of the largest upcoming challenges we’ll face as a studio,” wrote Cobler. “This partnership will allow us to deliver things we’ve only dreamed of previously, and I’m excited to share details on those at a later date.”

After the acquisition, Cobler has also noted that Eleventh Hour Games will now focus on growing its team of developers to make more content and improvements to Last Epoch. However, he has noted that the studio isn’t yet ready to share details about what the acquisition means for the long-term content plans, while also pointing out that Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies is launching on August 21, and that Season 4 will release around four months after that.

“I started Last Epoch as an after-hours passion project in 2017, where I took to Reddit to form a group of ARPG obsessed enthusiasts in the pursuit of making ‘The Next Great ARPG’,” wrote Cobler. “We were excited to come home from our day jobs and discuss, debate, and build the early stages of Last Epoch late into the evenings over Discord, eventually leading to our name ‘Eleventh Hour.’ From there, we brought our ideas and passion for what we wanted to develop through a successful Kickstarter, followed by Early Access, and years later, launched Last Epoch 1.0 in early 2024.”

Last Epoch is available as a free-to-play game on PC. For more details, check out our review of its 1.0 launch.

This acquisition announcement comes in the wake of Krafton being in the midst of a legal battle with the co-founders of Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds. The lawsuit, which seemingly revolves around a $250 million payout that the co-founders have claimed has been withheld by Krafton, also claimed that the publisher had been engaged in a campaign to delay the release of Subnautica 2.

“Krafton engaged in a months-long campaign to delay Subnautica 2’s release,” reads the lawsuit. “It pulled key marketing materials, refused to follow through with crucial partnerships, and reneged on long-standing commitments to handle important pre-launch tasks.”

Available in early access since April 2019, Last Epoch sees players on a journey to gather the pieces of the titular artifact to prevent a catastrophe. There are five default classes, but as you progress, each with three associated Masteries completely changes your playstyle. Each skill also has a dedicated skill tree to level up.

Despite the player count, Last Epoch’s Steam user reviews have dropped to “Mixed”, with only 62 percent being positive. It’s due to server issues preventing players from logging in or taking extensive time to travel to the next zone. An offline mode is available, and while you can’t trade, the Circle of Fortune, which buffs loot drop rates, is available.

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.

While the patch notes are too numerous to list here in their entirety, there are a few noteworthy highlights that players can expect once the game comes live from its 24-hour maintenance. A major new feature coming to the game with the update is Item Factions, which allows players to join either the Merchant’s Guild or the Circle of Fortune. Each faction allows players to make choices to effect how they get new loot throughout the game.

Players are also free to leave and switch between the two factions whenever they might want without losing their reputation progress, promoting further experimentation and customisation.

Last Epoch is also getting a fully offline mode, which can be accessed by going into the title’s properties in the Steam UI to pick between regular and offline modes in the launch options. Offline players won’t find many differences in the game, aside from minor UI differences like the online character tab being hidden, and the region selection dropdown menu being disabled.

The update is also bringing a host of changes to just about every other aspect of the game, including every class, passive abilities, and unique and set items. There are also new unique items being added to the game with the update.

For more details, check out the full patch notes on the official Last Epoch forums.

Witch each class and sub-class getting a short showcase, the trailer caps things off by showcasing some of the build customisation options it will feature, before showing off some of its other features, including 4-player online co-op, end game dungeons, an in-depth crafting system, and an endless arena mode.

Far from being the only trailer in the lead up to Last Epoch approaching the end of its early access period and getting its 1.0 update on February 21, back in January, the game got a trailer showing off its story and gameplay.

Coming to PC, Last Epoch is available for pre-order in three flavours: standard edition ($34.99), deluxe edition ($49.99), and ultimate edition ($64.99). The more expensive versions of the game come with extra bonuses, including cosmetic rewards and the digital soundtrack.

The 2-minute-long trailer shows off some of the unique abilities that each class in Last Epoch gets access to over the course of playing the game. The trailer also highlights the unique time-traveling story of the game, where players will get to visit the same locations throughout different epochs of time, as they fight various enemies from different factions that evolve over time.

The studio has also announced that Last Epoch will be released in the form of three versions: Standard Edition ($34.99), Deluxe Edition ($49.99), and Ultimate Edition ($64.99). The more expensive versions of the game will feature extra cosmetic rewards, including an in-game pet, and the digital soundtrack. The Ultimate Edition will also give players 100 Epoch Points to spend in the in-game store.

Both the Deluxe and Ultimate editions of the game will also unlock additional rewards for players on the game’s launch day of February 21. The title is currently available as an early access release on PC.

In showcasing the game’s story, the trailer also talks about Last Epoch‘s emphasis on time travel in its story. The trailer shows the same zone changing into a grotesque, demonic area thanks to the ravages of time. Ultimately, the trailer finishes things off by showing a player character travelling between the different eras of time in the game.

Last Epoch, originally released as an Early Access title back in 2019, has seen quite a few updates since its launch. The game is currently gearing up for its 1.0 release, which is slated for February 21.

The game will continue to get new content as its heads towards its exit from Early Access, with January seeing the release of the Warlock preview, as well as other updates bringing with them Item Factions.

Last Epoch has five playable characters, with the game’s unique feature being that each ability has its own skill tree, using which players can change how each ability works.

In a post on the Last Epoch forums, the studio has stated that it has plans for post-launch content for the game. Last Epoch is set to get substantial new content every few months in a seasonal format, referred to by the studio as Cycles. These Cycles will bring with them new end-game content, skills, unique items, and gameplay systems, among others.

On the way to its 1.0 launch, Last Epoch is still slated to get quite a bit of content, including the addition of Item Factions and the Warlock preview in January. Early February will see the release of the Falconer preview as the game heads into its final month of Early Access.

Much like its contemporaries in Diablo 4 and Path of Exile, Last Epoch is a loot-centric action RPG which throws players into a time-travel-based story. The game’s unique feature is that its skills have their own skill trees which can affect how the skills work. Last Epoch has five playable classes, each with three Mastery Classes that are unlocked over the course of the game’s campaign.