Our author Schuhmann has played the first hours of the new MMORPG Lost Ark (Steam). He says: From level 1, I felt like I was playing a vibrant, modern MMO. I had fun right away and didn’t have to earn it first. That’s exactly what I missed in Diablo 2 Resurrected.
I spent the first two hours with Lost Ark yesterday and I keep comparing them in my mind to my first minutes in Diablo II Resurrected. I found those rather disillusioning in August 2021. Back then, I looked at Diablo 2 again after 20 years and was quite disappointed after having been addicted to it in 2000.
Class Selection and Game Introduction
The differences are significant for me. Just how you start the game:
In Diablo II Resurrected, I dive straight in with my selected character – just like it used to be. It is the player’s job to inform themselves about what they are playing.
Lost Ark gives me time to decide on a subclass after I’ve made a rough direction with the class selection. In a test area, I can try out which of the 3 subclasses I want to play. Bosses and mobs can be spawned at the press of a button, serving as targets.
Skill Selection in Early Levels
What bothered me about Diablo 2 Resurrected was that at the beginning of the game, you practically have no options to do anything. You rely on relatively slow auto-attacks and occasionally on a skill.
Diablo 2 Resurrected gives me the feeling: “First, earn your fun.”
In Lost Ark, I start the game as a Death Shooter right away with almost 10 skills, can switch between weapons, and have something to do immediately, with various options in each on how I want to act. I have a rotation, I have a gameplay loop, I don’t feel like I need to earn my fun in the game laboriously.
The Feeling of Power
This is closely related to the variety of skills. In Diablo 2, I start really “at the bottom,” having to bash some zombies in a dark cave with a stick. There, power fantasies are not fulfilled – they are only fulfilled 80 hours later when I am geared up and optimized, taking down Baal in seconds (if the servers hold).
In Lost Ark, I’m already backflipping around with level 1, tossing my spinning pistol around and throwing grenades. Hordes of enemies fall before me. I get my first mount after just a few hours.
The Comfort
In Diablo 2 Resurrected, I have to assign skills to the right mouse button via hotkey and then fire them. The inventory is instantly flooded with meaningless items without value, I have to go back to town to sell the stuff. My bag is cluttered with healing potions that need to be organized.
In Lost Ark, healing potions stack, I can execute skills at the press of a button, and the menus feel fresh and modern.
My Conclusion: It Can Indeed Be Different
When I criticized Diablo 2 Resurrected, many said: That’s just how it is in the genre. It’s generally customary in hack and slashes to “first earn your fun.”
Only in the mid and end game, after investing countless hours into the game, does a hack ‘n slash really become fun:
- The gameplay becomes varied
- The items become exciting
- You can really customize your character through items and builds
Until these options are unlocked, the game is gray and dull. It has to be that way, as the old-timers decided more than 20 years ago and it was like that for years. The player would be completely overwhelmed with the “complexity” of the game if they were allowed to start with more than one skill and auto-attack, or so the logic goes.
Lost Ark has shown that a modern game can function differently.
This is just an initial impression and shouldn’t mean that Lost Ark will become the best game of all time. That has to be proven in the mid and end game. But so far, 96% positive reviews on Steam show that many are excited about the early game of the MMORPG.
After Diablo 2 Resurrected, I had the feeling of playing a game with Lost Ark that wants to captivate me from the start and where I don’t have to earn my fun first.
For a deeper insight into Lost Ark:
Today the new MMORPG Lost Ark launches – We have already played it for 12 hours
