About Last Pirates:
There are a LOT of games out there that try to be the “true” Diablo 3 in one way or another. Path of Exile, Torchlight 2, Grim Dawn, the actual, official Diablo 3. And they all have something to recommend about them. They’re all good in their own ways (Yes, even Diablo 3). But they don’t quite ever scratch the itch in a way that’s hard to quantify. Honestly, though? Last Epoch feels the most like what a literal sequel to D2 would’ve been if it hadn’t been twelve years between games. It takes a lot of obvious inspiration, but also has tweaks that make frustrating features that a lot of the other contenders for the crown don’t even consider, like the charms, a bit more streamlined and nuanced. The game itself strikes a decent balance between “passive tree spaghetti” and “Pick the right colour skill rune”, allowing decently varied specs and some pretty fun combinations of gimmicks, from the obligatory pet class to the DOT-heavy, two-handed melee build. It’s not as forgiving as something Diablo 3 where you can flip between entire builds at the drop of a hat (sometimes literally), but you can still have a decent amount of wiggleroom even after you’re locked into a subclass. The item crafting system also bears mention, as it’s a quite robust way of tweaking your loadout, a way to work around that inevitable problem where you get like six weapons in a row with completely nonsensical stats by simply stripping them down and rebuilding them with a variety of shards, The RNG with fracturing is the price you pay, but at least they give you ways to mitigate that. The big criticisms are mostly things that COULD be ironed out. A lot of the visuals are pretty rough, animations aren’t necessarily great, character models are kinda bad (though the worst two have gotten at least a decent rework), some of the subclasses are either unfinished or still haven’t been implemented yet, but for the most part the Devteam have been fairly good about not making promises they can’t keep, so it’s fairly likely that a lot of the problems will get ironed out. The other, massive, elephant in the room is that the multiplayer isn’t in yet. Which is absolutely going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people. It’s still in the “when it’s ready” zone of “could be in a few months, could be next year.” So if that’s a problem that’d influence your buying decision, by all means don’t get it… yet. It honestly just feels really nice, in a way that’s familiar while still feeling fresh. If it’s at all appealing as a single player experience, definitely grab it. It’s one of the best ARPGs on the market, and hopefully they actually finish it.
