Last Epoch - Ok, let me preface this by saying what is probably obvious... I like indy games, I like supporting indy games, and I like following indy games through development by, when possible, playing the beta games and giving feedback. I have, as should also be obvious, a rather think skin when it comes to quirks and bugs if the core game is mechanically sound, fun and/or innovative.
Having said that... I do not like Last Epoch. some of what I don't like may be due to it being Beta, but from my experience, most of what I don't like largely isn't...
First off, I was pleasantly surprised to see the game download was 39GB... 39GB means lots of content right? Well... that remains to be seen, but I haven;t been wowed by the art assets in the game.
I am aware that art assets can be place holders for future art that is still in production... I think back, for example, to the very early days of Sea of Thieves and the absurd place holder avatars and animations that, by release, become some of the most immersive visuals in a game of it's type. But in LE I see no variation to art standards that would differentiate work in progress from finished art that you would expect in a game whose art is still developing. Everything in the game uses low polygon models and rudimentary animations that feel more like a 2D Sprite based game than a modern title.
it feels old, and not in a good way.
The story also is somewhat interesting... essentially it is a time traveling adventure with big bad people going through time to do bad things. Great! Sounds intriguing... but... it really isn't implemented in a way that you might find interesting. In the time I have played it I have traveled through 1200 years or so of this world's history and it has had less variability than, stay, traveling in Earth history from 500 BC to 700AD... and sertainly nothing as dramatic as traveling from 800 AD to 2000 AD. the only thing that seemed to change was the bestiary, and even that is minimal.
What the time travely part of the game does is confuse, at least early on. Trying to find a shop in the game early on has you trying to figure out which epoch the shop was in, and then figuring out how to return to that epoch. But selling gear gives you gold that, at as of this build of the game, has limited use. There is 1 shop per epoch that I can see and they all have with one page of gear, and it all generally sucks.
I'd also like to say I like the game mechanics but really they are also boring. It might come back to the piss poor art, but the spells also lack the pyrotechnics.. or even the visual cues that you would expect... grind to level up a skill to be able to imbue your weapon with fire? Great... and you can tell it's working because.... the damage numbers are slightly higher than before.
It's getting boring just writing about it so I am going to stop. I have no clue how this game got such a high Steam rating...
I'll revisit the game periodically and if they ever get their act together I'll let you know.