If developers Vanillaware decided to have a baby with Dark Souls, the resultant offspring would be something awfully similar to Lost Epic.
Developed by Team EARTH WARS and first released back in 2022 for PC and Playstation, Lost Epic is, well, an epic 2D action RPG with Souls-Like personality traits that has finally come to Nintendo’s Switch. Like so many 2D games these days that have crossbred with From Soft’s iconic design style, Lost Epic throws a fairly large world chock full of hard fights at you. The question is, now that this subgenre of Soulsvanias is so prevalent, does it do anything noteworthy to stand out?
Set in the world of Sanctum, the old gods have left this world behind and the new gods have taken up residence and begun a healthy diet of human meat. Not to take things laying down, a group of knights have taken it upon themselves to become God Slayers and put the gods, The Pantheon of Six, to the death.
Lost Epic throws you into a vibrantly beautiful world of multi-layered 2D art, featuring gorgeous locations and fantastic anime designs and animation. The environments, constructed from multiple layers of 2D art play’s host to sparkling green forests and cities overrun by organic nightmare fuel. Reflections shimmer on the water while fish swim in its depths. Lost Epic continues the trend of impressive 2D artwork that I’ve come to expect from this genre.
Character designs and animations, while heavily anime-inspired, are just as equally wonderful.
Lost Epic plays out like a 2D hack-and-slash action game with some platforming elements. The connected open world hints at some Metroidvania design but, outside of opening up some shortcuts, is far more straightforward in its exploration. You won’t be going back to previous areas to open up new locations as your abilities increase. You can see pretty much everything there is in an area on the first run-through.
Lost Epic is more concerned with the hack-and-slash RPG side of things. Sure the world is full of some colourful characters and plenty of side quests, but the bulk of your time will be spent trimming down monsters. Enemies killed drop anima, little shards of energy that you can use to level up your character or use as currency.
Levelling your character is also more straightforward than a typical Soulslike. At a goddess statue, you simply choose to what level you want to level up, if you can afford it, and away you go. This will take care of your basic stats but if you want to really become powerful, you’re going to have to delve into the game crafting and skill point systems.
Like any good RPG, you can power-level your way to victory, but even that will only take you so far. Each new area generally has a massive power jump that’s an indicator that you need new weapons and to spend those stat points.
Initially Lost Epics’ twenty-page skill tree and crafting system are daunting. But after figuring out that most pages are opened up from quest lines, finding hidden monuments and defeating specific bosses, it becomes easier to comprehend. Here you can increase your stats further along with opening up passive skills that stack and learning the recipes you’ll need to craft the games various weapons and gear.
Weapons can be picked up in the world both from enemy drops and specific locations. You can’t just craft any old weapon you want as most of the powerful ones are made from other weapons. You can enhance weapons, add elemental attacks to them and transfigure them into new types once you’ve opened up the recipe. So nothing that you pick up can really go to waste, whether it’s a new weapon or a monster part.
There are a variety of weapons, each type coming with its own attack animations and timing. And that timing, or getting it right is important to victory. Initially, I found Lost Epics’ attack timing, animations and dodging to be off, somewhat laggy actually. But it wasn’t long before I was steamrolling all but the hardest enemies in my way. It may take some time to get used to the game’s timing, but once you do its second nature.
Complimenting your skills are Divine skills for each weapon type that you can also unlock. These are special attacks that also parry enemy attacks, opening them up to staggering and one hit kills. You can wield two weapon sets at the same time and swop between them at the drop of a button, meaning you can have a nice arsenal of Divine skills to draw on at any given time.
Befitting its Soulslike inspiration, death will respawn you at the last goddess statue you visited while all that anima you’ve picked up gets left behind. Unless you’ve skipped a statue, it’s not an issue to reclaim them and, thankfully, Lost Epic is rather generous with the amount of anima you can harvest from enemies.
Sure the amount you need to level up slowly escalates, but by the time you’ve done a run back to your dropped resources, you’ll most like be well on your way towards another level up. Enemies, as well, respawn when you use a statue.
Lost Epic is also full of side quests to do. Some are area specific and of the generic kill this sort while others are more investing, such as escorting a character from one area to another while protecting them from baddies. There are mini-bosses to kill and mazes to fight your way through. Side quests are worth doing as the Anima gained makes a big dent in those escalating numbers.
Lost Epic drew me towards it with its gorgeous Vanillaware-style visuals, but its fun combat and exploration kept me around. The gorgeous visuals and animation are the icing on top of a nicely layered and tuned cake that will take you hours to eat. This is one epic that deserves to be found.
Lost Epic Trailer
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