Lost Epic Review [Switch] – Promising and Pretty

As a fan of RPGs and Soulslike games, we were pretty excited to try this one out. While it has a lot of promising gameplay elements, some features fall flat. We’ll cover the positives and negatives of Lost Epic – …

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As a fan of RPGs and Soulslike games, we were pretty excited to try this one out. While it has a lot of promising gameplay elements, some features fall flat. We’ll cover the positives and negatives of Lost Epic – while giving you our honest opinion on the latest Metroidvania-esque title.

Lost Epic is a side-scrolling RPG with Soulslike and Metroidvania elements. You play as a knight, aptly named the God Slayer, as you explore the world of Sanctum battling against a variety of enemies – including powerful bosses, upgrading your character as you progress.

The Visuals

Now, as lovers of anime, we were instantly drawn to this game due to the gorgeous concept art. The art itself is gorgeous, especially the intricately detailed character designs and beautiful backgrounds throughout the world. However, the animation doesn’t quite tick the right boxes.

The paper-esque animation style will appeal to some players, but for us it makes the game look a little cheap at times.

Fortunately this shouldn’t be enough to put you off the game itself, but we do wish the movement style was a little more fluid and realistic – though we do appreciate that the models are entirely 2D, so there’s only so much they can do.

Upon starting the game we were pleasantly surprised when the “character customisation” screen popped up. That joy soon turned to slight frustration when we realised that the “customisation” was choosing between a bunch of presets – it’s not exactly what we had in mind.

Again, not a deal breaker – but it would have been a neat addition to the game to include an extra layer of character customisation.

The Gameplay

The initial gameplay elements are fun to play through, and with a deep progression system that it’s hard not to be impressed by. You can easily spend hours grinding to enhance your weapons and equipment – which is what you want from a Souls-like game.

There’s an excellent array of side quests to work through alongside the overarching main story. These quests offer a nice break in between grinding out materials and anima for your upgrades.

If you’ve ever played a Souls-like you’ll gain a sense of familiarity with the special checkpoints. When interacting with said checkpoints, you can use your accumulated Anima in a variety of ways. Firstly, you can level your character up – pretty standard for these types of games. Each level grants you a skill point, which can be spent on new abilities in your Tidings book.

Furthermore, if you’re finding the game a little too difficult, you can change the game’s difficulty from the checkpoint. We do appreciate this handy feature in games, especially if you just want to relax while enjoying everything the game has to offer.

Crafting and More

One of our favourite features that can be added to a game is crafting, and that’s present and correct here.

There’s something extremely satisfying about gathering materials to work towards creating special items and weapons, and. Lost Epic has a crafting system that follows the same structure as others in the genre – so it’s pretty easy to get into once you start enhancing your character’s equipment. Or brew up some potions!

One feature that stood out to us is the ability to extract Anima from unwanted items and equipment. That in itself is extremely useful when you’re running low on Anima – which is the main currency used for practically everything in the game.

As we mentioned before the progression system is in-depth and brilliant, even for hardcore RPG fans. You can improve your overall stats, evolve your weapons/equipment, and unlock Divine Skills to use in the action-packed combat.

Combat – Is it Good?

On the topic of combat, it’s definitely something that needs to be improved. While the combat is fun, it gets quite stale after a while. This is a problem when the game relies heavily on grinding out content.

The battle sounds are lacklustre at best and are extremely repetitive. They almost seem a little out of place in regards to the rest of the audio and don’t really blend in with the combat at times. We hate to say it again, but the sound effects mixed with the animations make the game feel cheap at times.

The actual soundtrack for the game is lovely though, with atmospheric tunes accompanying you as you traverse the expansive map.

Performance on Switch

In terms of how the game plays on the Nintendo Switch, it’s fine. It’s the type of game that’s perfect for handheld play, but with the Switch having a small screen you do struggle with certain aspects.

The text is tiny for instance, especially when trying to navigate through the Tidings book to unlock new skills. This is an important part of character progression, but it’s not fun when trying to read small text explaining what each skill does.

Secondly, there’s no minimap. It gets quite tedious after a while when having to open up the larger map every time you need to double-check where you are. The game would definitely benefit from having a minimap at the side, or even a button shortcut to toggle it on and off. Although, with how small some of the features are in the game, we’d hate to think how difficult it would be to read a minimap.

My Final Thoughts

We want to love this game, but certain aspects are a real turn-off. Lost Epic has a ton of promising features, but that won’t be enough for some. You can tell that a lot of love did go into the game and that the developers are clearly passionate about the Souls-like and Metroidvania genres.

A patch here and there may make the game more enjoyable, but there’s no news on further updates at this current time – meaning we only recommend it for those who are ready for an experience where a fair amount of grinding is necessary.

For more information about Lost Epic, visit the game’s official Steam page!

The good

  • Beautiful art and background
  • In-depth progression systems
  • Gorgeous music
  • Nice blend of Soulslike and Metroidvania elements

The bad

  • Repetitive battle sounds
  • Lackluster combat at times
  • Small text
  • Hard to navigate with no mini map
60 out of 100

Editor
With experience writing for GameRant and in SEO copywriting, Adele loves to combine her adoration for gaming and writing. She'll talk your ear off about anything fantasy, and if she's not typing away at her desk, she's probably playing an RPG somewhere.