Lost Ark review: Is Amazon's new fantasy MMO game worth playing?

When you boot up Lost Ark for the first time, you'll be given a choice between a number of different character classes – Warrior, Martial Artist, Gunner, Mage and Assassin, with each of those having its own sub-classes as well. You're 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't worry, you can create more characters later and try out all the different classes if you so wish.)

• Buy Lost Ark from Amazon (prices from £13.20)

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's not long at all before you're 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.

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'd definitely recommend jumping in and giving Lost Ark a try. That's really the best way to tell if it's for you, and you'll certainly find plenty to keep you busy for hours on end.

Of course, with Lost Ark being a game that could live for years with a number of future updates and add-ons, it's hard to say exactly how good the overall story will end up being. But from what we saw in this early access build, there's plenty of intrigue on offer here.

You could argue that the Lost Ark story lacks a truly unique modus operandi – it centres on an ancient powerful relic (the eponymous 'Ark') 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.

Read more on Lost Ark:

• Lost Ark classes - which is the best to start with?
• Lost Ark Founder's Pack - what are the differences?
• Lost Ark PC requirements
• Lost Ark server list

Whether you're 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's always loads of content to keep you occupied. More than once, we pushed back bedtime to squeeze in that fabled 'one more quest', which is about as ringing an endorsement as we can give for a game of this ilk.

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 – 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.

The Lost Ark combat also feels really good to play around with, whether you're 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't 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's really fun trying out your arsenal of attacks on a variety of opponents.

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's isometric viewpoint, the world looks stunning. There are a few little niggles, like the odd character whose mouth doesn't move when they're speaking, but nothing that isn't par for the course with an ambitious new title like this.

One other minor problem occurred during our introductory hours with the game – at one point, a button prompt to use an item popped up on the screen, but pressing the buttons requested didn't seem to actually do anything. This did cause a momentary flash of frustration, because the quest wouldn't 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.

All in all, we're impressed with Lost Ark so far, although it feels like there could be a lot more to come for this title in future. It's an eye-catching world filled with great-feeling attacks, bolstered by a compelling gameplay loop that's packed with nicely varied quests. There's 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'll certainly watch this one develop with great interest.

Lost Ark launches Friday 11th February 2022 on PC. Players who buy a Founder's Pack will get early access from 5pm GMT on Tuesday 8th February.

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