The opening hours of Lost Ark are sometimes boring, but necessary to prepare the ground for what is to come. After creating my character, I was taken in search of a mythical artifact known as The Ark and at the center of a rather sweet fantasy narrative. Much of the leveling experience follows a military campaign to help a prince reclaim his lands and claim his rightful crown as king while battling relentless demonic forces. Although much of the plot doesn’t catch my eye, it does have some good moments. Important characters, such as the half-demon priest Arden and the generous Prince Thirain, have convincing arcs that sometimes tore me out of my boredom.
The world finally opens up, allowing free boat trips to other continents, dealing with much more varied and interesting aesthetics and themes. The critical path led me to places like an island with a honey that I shrunk, The childhood adventure with tiny Mokocos where I was smaller than a miniaturized ladybug, a martial arts tournament in a Japanese-inspired country and a high-tech continent filled with futuristic robotics and Mechs. When I sailed to these not-known lands, the world of Lost Ark lost all sense of coherent identity, but after opening hours I was ready for a radical change of scene, and diversity brings a lot of life to the experience. For this reason, I like the varied content at the end of the game much more than I care about why one country lives with Cyberpunk body mods while others live in the Middle Ages. I always look forward to the surprises that await the islands that I have not yet visited.
As an isometric game, Lost Ark’s World lacks a bit of the environmental splendor of other MMOs, although it shines in the Set-Piece moments where we get a new angle on the world. The most spectacular points of the narrative or dungeons are enhanced and highlighted with camera images that give a better idea of the world and the surrounding environment. The world becomes a much more interesting place when the cutscenes rotate and rotate the camera to show the ruins I’m exploring or the hundreds of monsters storming a contested castle. These moments contribute greatly to the fact That Arkesia has much more to offer – that it is a sophisticated world to live in, and not just a mostly flat dungeonesque landscape.
I am amazed at the customization options available for each of the 15 classes of Lost Ark thanks to the tripod system. This gives each of your class skills three levels of benefits to choose from, which can greatly modify these skills. Some perks change minor aspects of a skill, such as strike speed or resource consumption; others apply elemental bonuses and can fundamentally change larger characteristics of the strike or spell. With my Soulfist character, I set up my skill bar to focus on capturing enemies near me with great AOE strikes and finishing them off with massive meteoric palm shots or taking them down with bursts of machine gun energy. Skill points and tripod perks can be changed for free at any time, which made me happy to experiment for hours with cool Combos that blew up hordes of demons in a satisfying bloody mess.
Much of the game’s content can be completed on its own, including the dungeons, which I enjoy as a mostly single-player MMO player. However, it is much more fun to dive into a dungeon with a group of other adventurers. Players can form guilds and team up with friends on a specific server, but unfortunately, leveling up with friends can be inconvenient. When playing with a group, you often have to break up when they are moved to a story instance, which forces the team to invite again and regroup when the hurtful narrative content is over. As other players travel the world, Arkesia feels much more alive and dynamic, especially when I came across an uneven group of players who banded together to defeat a traveling tank loaded with Goliath rockets or a Brutal Boss in the middle of nowhere in the desert. The map is filled with such meetings, and it is always a pleasure to find them.
Lost Ark has no shortage of activities and collectibles, which I really enjoyed looking for. World bosses, dungeons, raids, PvP, Naval exploration, searching for more than 1000 Mokoko seeds, collecting cards, crafting items, cultivating materials, NPC friendship and much more can fill hours and hours. Almost each of these tasks has a number of rewards that make it interesting to do almost anything. There’s even an entire island fortress to build and customize, which feels like an entire game in itself. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface with my collection of items, which, fortunately, in many matters transfers the progress to the other characters I’ve created on the server. Although all the regional achievements tracked in the Adventurer’s gang must be completed for each character.
