Amazon is launching Lost Ark<\/a> in the western world this week. The PC game made by Tripod Studio and Smilegate debuted in South Korea back in 2019, and now Amazon is serving as the publisher for its European and American launch.<\/p>\n Fans of massively-multiplayer online action role-playing games (MMOARPGs for short) have had their eyes on Lost Ark for a while, but is it worth jumping into this new fantasy experience when it finally launches on this side of the globe?\u00a0RadioTimes.com<\/a> tried out Lost Ark on an early access press server to answer that very question, and you can read on for our full thoughts!<\/p>\n When you boot up Lost Ark for the first time, you\u2019ll be given a choice between a number of different character classes \u2013 Warrior, Martial Artist, Gunner, Mage and Assassin, with each of those having its own sub-classes as well. You\u2019re able to pick whichever one you want, straight off the bat, and there is an admirable amount of character customisation on offer as well. (And don\u2019t worry, you can create more characters later and try out all the different classes if you so wish.)<\/p>\n We opted to try out the Mage class first, and were very pleasantly surprised to find that we had seven different attack spells to use from day dot. This range of eye-catching attacks, coupled with a quick tutorial that you can skip through if you want, ensures that Lost Ark gets you right into the thick of it nice and quickly. It\u2019s not long at all before you\u2019re out in the world, picking up quests and experiencing a fair amount of player freedom as you blast through a wide range of enemy types.<\/p>\n The world of Lost Ark is vast, and the lore of the game seems fairly deep, but the game does just the right amount of spoon-feeding to get you up to speed without holding you back for too long. If you are a fan of MMO games, we\u2019d definitely recommend jumping in and giving Lost Ark a try. That\u2019s really the best way to tell if it\u2019s for you, and you\u2019ll certainly find plenty to keep you busy for hours on end.<\/p>\n Of course, with Lost Ark being a game that could live for years with a number of future updates and add-ons, it\u2019s hard to say exactly how good the overall story will end up being. But from what we saw in this early access build, there\u2019s plenty of intrigue on offer here.<\/p>\n You could argue that the Lost Ark story lacks a truly unique modus operandi \u2013 it centres on an ancient powerful relic (the eponymous \u2018Ark\u2019) that has been split into seven parts and spread across the land, which does feel a bit like Lord of the Rings lite. Despite that, you could also argue that minute-to-minute gameplay is a lot more important than overarching narrative arcs when it comes to sucking players into a world like this. And on that front, Lost Ark really does shine.<\/p> Whether you\u2019re playing with a controller or a mouse and keyboard (or a bit of both, as we ended up doing), exploring this world feels great and there\u2019s always loads of content to keep you occupied. More than once, we pushed back bedtime to squeeze in that fabled \u2018one more quest\u2019, which is about as ringing an endorsement as we can give for a game of this ilk.<\/p>\n The quests in Lost Ark have a nice amount of variety to them. While the main story will send you across the land in search of those Ark fragments and various related items, the side quests vary wildly \u2013 you might find yourself with a list of monsters to kill, groceries to pick up and enemy camps to burn down, along with a bunch of other short-and-snappy tasks to tick off. It feels very satisfying to make your way around the map and tick off a bunch of these jobs in one outing, building up to a bigger job like a dungeon assault or a story-progressing mission.<\/p>\n The Lost Ark combat also feels really good to play around with, whether you\u2019re using the spells of the Mage or the artillery of the Gunner or one of the many other options. You can spend skill points to upgrade each of your moves, and it doesn\u2019t take long at all for the whole endeavour to feel like an action-packed power fantasy set within a high fantasy world. There are lots of different computer-controlled enemy types, as well as some player-versus-player opportunities, and it\u2019s really fun trying out your arsenal of attacks on a variety of opponents.<\/p>\n The world of Lost Ark also looks lovely from a visual standpoint, with luscious landscapes and shiny settlements contrasting nicely with dingy dungeons and plague-ridden lands. We were playing with an NVIDIA 3070 Ti graphics card, and the visuals really did stand out as one of the highlights here. Even from the game\u2019s isometric viewpoint, the world looks stunning. There are a few little niggles, like the odd character whose mouth doesn\u2019t move when they\u2019re speaking, but nothing that isn\u2019t par for the course with an ambitious new title like this.<\/p>\n One other minor problem occurred during our introductory hours with the game \u2013 at one point, a button prompt to use an item popped up on the screen, but pressing the buttons requested didn\u2019t seem to actually do anything. This did cause a momentary flash of frustration, because the quest wouldn\u2019t progress, but it all worked out in the end. Once we found the item in our inventory, we managed to use it from there instead. Again, this is a very minor qualm for a game this massive.<\/p>\n All in all, we\u2019re impressed with Lost Ark so far, although it feels like there could be a lot more to come for this title in future. It\u2019s an eye-catching world filled with great-feeling attacks, bolstered by a compelling gameplay loop that\u2019s packed with nicely varied quests. There\u2019s also a rapport system that allows you to befriend NPCs, and a pet system that allows you to bring cute critters out into the world with you, both of which feel like features we could spend a lot of time enjoying. We\u2019ll certainly watch this one develop with great interest.<\/p>\n Lost Ark launches Friday 11th February 2022 on PC. Players who buy a Founder\u2019s Pack<\/a> will get early access from 5pm GMT on Tuesday 8th February.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Follow Radio Times Gaming on Twitter<\/a> for all the latest insights. Or if you\u2019re looking for something to watch, see our TV Guide.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Visit our video game release schedule<\/a> for all upcoming games on consoles. Swing by our hubs for more Gaming<\/a> and Technology<\/a>\u00a0news.<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now \u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0to get each issue delivered to your door. For more from the biggest stars in TV, l<\/strong>isten to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a>\u00a0with Jane Garvey.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Rob Leane Published: Tuesday, 08 February 2022 at 12:00 am 4.0 out of 5 star rating Amazon is launching Lost Ark in the western world this week. The PC game made by Tripod Studio and Smilegate debuted in South Korea back in 2019, and now Amazon is serving as the publisher for its European […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":10940,"template":"","categories":[8],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/02\/lost-ark-review-is-amazons-new-fantasy-mmo-game-worth-playing.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Rob Leane Published: Tuesday, 08 February 2022 at 12:00 am 4.0 out of 5 star rating Amazon is launching Lost Ark in the western world this week. The PC game made by Tripod Studio and Smilegate debuted in South Korea back in 2019, and now Amazon is serving as the publisher for its European…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/10939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""The\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/02\/Lost-Ark-review-rating-b3dd794.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"Lost-Ark-review-rating\"\\"\/")
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