78
Excellent combat and a
stunning sense of scale
help steer Lost Ark
through its more tired
MMO conventions.VERDICTwhat the game contains. Once you
reach the end of East Luterra, Lost
Ark gives you a ship, and sets you off
to explore the rest of the game’s
enormous world.
In sights and sounds, Lost Ark is a
captivating adventure. Which makes
it more of a shame that the main
story is simply not that compelling.
The central cast of characters are
largely one dimensional, a carousel of
exhaustingly noble heroes and
villains who look like they stumbled
through the local S&M club on the
way to battle. My other major gripe
with Lost Ark is that the loot sucks.
It’s all geared toward incremental
stat-upgrades, with precious little
that is unique or distinctive, at least
along the main story path.
Yet every time I started to brush
against Lost Ark’s shallower edges,
the game would throw some wild
scenario at me to hook me back into
its depths. The combat alone is
reason enough to give Lost Ark a go,
and its ridiculous scale and many
weird tangents succeed in
overcoming its flat storytelling and
by-the-numbers quests. It’s not quite
a classic, but I had some fun
watching it try to become one.ABOVE: All Ark and
no blight.
BELOW: (^) The story’s
main characters have
big ‘K-Pop boy
band’ energy.
ACTION ZONES
The zone design is primed toward efficiency. Here’s how:
1
Sidequests
are picked up
near
main-quests,
and can often be
resolved in
seconds.
2
Main quest
objectives
push you into
new areas, often
completed with a
different NPC.
3
1
2
4
3
‘Triports’ let
you teleport
instantly to that
location for a
small silver cost,
helping minimise
any required
backtracking.
4
Dungeons
are placed at
the end of the
zone, forming
the climax of
that area.
There were times I wanted
to give this game 90. This
was one of them.