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Little background - I've been playing ARPGs since Diablo 1, almost always to endgame, and I decided to check this out while waiting for the new PoE expansion to launch (been playing that one since beta). These will be my impressions as an entirely brand new player to Last Epoch starting my first character (went with a Poison oriented Lich), in no particular order. Currently at the Titan's Canyon waypoint at level 46.
General Stuff
First off - I think the potential is there. The world is interesting (I also loved Chrono Trigger, which is obviously a huge influence here, right down to 65milli- ahem, the Ancient Era having dinosaurs), and the skill trees and ability trees have my theorycrafting juices flowing. Leveling feels smooth with solid power spikes and a constant feeling of progression (through mid levels at least, I'll update when I hit endgame). I want to like this game and try a bunch of different characters to see all the cool interactions.
That being said, the performance issues have to be addressed (and I'm sure this is something that's been said before). I'm running what was a top of the line gaming laptop five years ago that still has no issues with current games (I get the occasional freeze on PoE if I'm trying to melt the servers with a meme build, but that's an exception), and the constant chugging and stuttering in this is an absolute dealbreaker. It feels like I'm trying to benchmark Crysis on a rotting potato, and it kills the flow of the game. I know that it's an early beta, and I'm willing to accept a certain amount of jank (one of my favorite PC games as a kid was Daggerfall, if you want to know the level of jank I'll tolerate), but whatever's going on under the hood right now is Not Good™. Imo, the sooner that's fixed, the sooner positive word of mouth will start spreading. As it stands, I can't recommend this game to other people, because it just feels terrible to look at/play (but once performance gets fixed, I happily will!)
Zoning - Not a fan of the auto-zoning if I walk too close to the exit. Let me as the player make that decision by clicking on it. Same with talking to NPCs - right now it feels like if I'm walking towards them and my cursor happens to drift over, I'm immediately thrust into a conversation box without being prepared for it. A clearer outline and hitbox when selecting NPCS, dialogue quest objects, and chests/world objects would also be nice - there have been multiple times where I was mousing directly over an object and the dialogue/interaction prompt would only show up on certain tiny parts. Right now the world feels inconsistent when I'm interacting with it, and that's not a good feeling.
Sometimes my character randomly yells out what sounds like "f*ck." I am equal parts amused and confused by this.
Game info - For the most part, this is well done. Most things are explained to the player, and the floating indicator in the bottom right for unallocated points is helpful. However, if you go to the passive screen and then exit out, the floating indicator disappears - I would recommend leaving it up as long as the points haven't been allocated yet (with possibly an option to dismiss it with a right click if someone wants to save points for some reason, though nothing I've seen so far incentivizes this, compared to a game like Grim Dawn). A player should always know if they're not utilizing all their resources.
A caveat to this is some things aren't explained (or displayed) at all, and they're pretty important things. There's nowhere on the character screen I can look to find my protection negation on enemies, and the game doesn't explain the difference between "less protection" and "penetration". As a veteran ARPG player, I'm assuming that it works similarly to PoE's system, where there's some sort of theoretical hard cap on resists that determines the difference between when "less protection" and "penetration" is better, but there's nowhere I can even check and see how much of each I have, and to what elements, let alone what amount of resists an enemy has. Do they stack? Who knows! /shrugemoji
Advanced skill data on the hotbar should show combined bonuses from the skill specialization tree and passive tree for each skill - that way I know I have 33% increased casting speed and 100% conversion to Poison with my Rip Blood skill just by hovering over it and hitting Alt (for example). Consolidating that information is something an experienced player is going to expect from a hotbar tooltip, and will help newer players understand the underlying systems much quicker.
I love the crafting system. Perfect mix of RNG and determinism. This is inspired. The only thing I think it needs is a small tooltip or tutorial to tell the player that all the materials you pick up can be sent immediately to the crafting bench - it took me forever to figure out I should be using the "Stash Materials" button in the inventory instead of stockpiling them in my vault. Other than that, don't remove a thing.
Pathing - pathing right now is atrocious, especially in cramped tilesets and doorways (omg, I cannot begin to explain my hate of doorways in this game). My character shouldn't freeze for five seconds when trying to run through a clearly open doorway, or take three seconds to hoverglide slowly through. This is one of those little things that goes a long way towards making a game feel smooth. Players need to know that their inputs have immediate agency, and right now, this ain't it.
Cooldown indicators above the hotkey bar are nice. Well done. I'd recommend doing something similar for debuffs on enemies below the center top health bar, especially for bosses.
Portals out from one-off time-gates (Ruins of Maj'Elka, etc.) should have a mini-map indicator once discovered. As a completionist, I like to know I've explored the whole map, and I don't want to have to memorize the particular terrain that leads out if I have other parts left to explore.
Big attacks are telegraphed well. Someone was paying attention during the PoE Innocence fight :) Once performance is fixed it'll be fun to dodge them, though the sapphirals feel about a tenth of a second too fast on their double blast.
Targeting feels excellent. It's not quite autotargeting, but hitting enemies with abilities feels super natural. Well done. However, displaying the target's health still needs quite a bit of work. The environment seems to take precedence for information display purposes in highly vertical areas, which isn't good, because the environment has nothing useful to say. I also have Thoughts™ on ally healthbar priority (see below).
The minimap is okay, but it's not great. You're doing an excellent job incorporating verticality into the game, but the minimap needs to reflect it with some sort of shading or crosshatching for higher/lower areas. Probably a low priority fix, but something that should happen sooner rather than later.
Players need to know that "on hit" means ANY hit, not just melee. I was not expecting Riverbend Grasp's axes to trigger off my Wandering Spirits throwing Spectral Putrescence bolts. This could potentially be a problem with on hit effects on endgame gear, as it incentivizes making a build that maximizes as many hits per second no matter the source, which will likely strain servers and trivialize content (see the original Shatterchuck in PoE). Will have more thoughts once I reach endgame.
Minimaps reset in static protected areas. This is annoying and should not happen. Once I've been to a town, I know the layout of that town. Also, zoning into and out of a previously undiscovered zone will reveal parts of that zone. This seems unintended.
Static friendly areas should not have breakables, nor should combat zones have breakables near the entrance. Right now, I can zone between the Oracle's Abode and the Maj'Elkan's Catacombs in about five seconds, and every time I do the breakables right by the exit from Oracle's Abode reset and drop new items. This incentivizes botting, which increases server load and ruins multiplayer economies. As currently implemented, not a great idea.
I like that a bunch of passive points are tied to sidequests. This might grow old after 9-10 playthroughs, but it incentivizes me to explore, instead of speedrunning from waypoint to waypoint. None so far have felt particularly out of the way either.
Specific to my playthrough things
Aura of Decay is unusable as an "always on" skill in its current state. I've been testing it since going poison Lich looked like an intended playstyle, and player increases in both damage AND protection lowering/penetration apply to the self poison stacks (in PoE terms, this would be like if linking Righteous Fire to Fire Penetration caused it to ignore your own resists as well). Needless to say, a damaging skill that punishes you for specializing in its damage potential is not a skill any player with any sort of game knowledge is going to use. The self poison stacks MUST be their own separate instances, and balanced appropriately, if you want this to work the way the game suggests to the player it should work. (I weep for the person who takes Decaying Form in the current state of things). From examining the passive Lich tree as well as the specialization tree for Aura of Decay, it looks like you want to try to incentivize players to go for either a passive always on playstyle, or a quick trigger on/off playstyle, but the way things are currently working means no one should ever pick the former.
In that vein, the self-damage resistance nodes should be more broadly applied as "damage you inflict on yourself," which makes them synergize with Aura of Decay's self damage. If they currently do so, there's no documentation in game that tells the player this, and the in-game wording strongly suggests that they don't.
It is difficult to distinguish between the undead things that are on my side, and the undead things that are trying to eat my face. I understand that unique art assets are probably a low priority at this point, but the visual distinction between enemy and ally is muddy, at best. In addition, the game prioritizes pet healthbars over enemy healthbars at the top of the screen if I'm attacking something and an ally is nearby - this should be reversed. I don't care if a disposable pet is dying, I need to know how much health the enemy has. I understand why you would want to target your allies with particular Acolyte skills, but right now it feels too aggressive in terms of prioritizing them over allies.
Icarian Poison feels either bugged or mislabeled. The tooltip says it gives a 5% more frequency of self poison per second, but after taking it I went from a somewhat sustainable 4 self poisons with Aura of Decay left running nonstop (with 2 points in Lasting Stench for the duration increase) to an unsustainable accelerating loop that hit 11 before I died, and showed no signs of stopping. This seems incredibly punishing for something labeled a 5% increase in self damage, and if I had to guess, I would wager it's applying the 50% increased frequency to the player as well as all the other downsides currently affecting Aura of Decay (see my earlier note on decoupling self-poison from the player generated values).
Wraith Bringers can be summoned from killing breakables. While I do enjoy the idea that the pot I just murdered is so upset that it has returned to a hellish twilight revenge existence, I don't think this should be an intended game behavior.
Conclusion
As of now, the game is rough, but fun. It's a nice mix between Grim Dawn's slower, heavier combat, and PoE's skill tree extravaganza. I'll be watching with interest to see how it evolves.
tl;dr - Game has excellent potential, performance issues need to get fixed ASAP
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