Lost Ark
Tripod Studio · MMO, RPG, ARPG, Action
Overview
Embark on an odyssey for the Lost Ark in a vast, vibrant world: explore new lands, seek out lost treasures, and test yourself in thrilling action combat in this action-packed free-to-play RPG.
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Embark on an odyssey for the Lost Ark in a vast, vibrant world: explore new lands, seek out lost treasures, and test yourself in thrilling action combat. Define your fighting style with your class and advanced class, and customize your skills, weapons, and gear to bring your might to bear as you fight against hordes of enemies, colossal bosses, and dark forces seeking the power of the Ark in this action-packed free-to-play RPG.
Discover a World Brimming with Adventure
Explore seven vast, varied continents and the seas between them to find vibrant cultures, strange and fantastical beasts, and all the unexpected marvels waiting to be discovered. Delve into the secrets of Arkesia, prove your might in battles and raids, compete against other players in PvP, travel to distant islands in search of hidden riches, face packs of enemies and colossal bosses in the open world, and more.
Your Odyssey Awaits
Splash into massively satisfying ARPG-style combat and progression as you quest, raid, and fight on the scope of an MMO. Whether you want to play solo, in groups with friends, or matched up with other adventurers in the world, there’s an epic adventure waiting for you. Fight in the open world or delve into chaos dungeons, go head-to-head in expert PvP duels, test your mettle on epic quests, raid against bosses big and small, and hold your own in the fight against the Demon Legion to reclaim the power and light of the Lost Ark.
Define Your Fight
Lost Ark offers easy-to-learn features with unexpected depth and room for customization. Hit the ground running with pick-up-and-play action then take control of your combat with the unique Tripod system. Unlock three tiers of customization for each of your abilities, giving you powerful control of exactly how you fight. Lost Ark’s ever-expanding roster of iconic classes—each with their own distinct advanced classes—offers plenty of room to explore until you find the combat style that’s just right for you.
The same goes for other features: as you continue your journey, you’ll find non-combat skills, crafting, guilds and social systems, and other rich features that bring the world alive. Whether you want to skim along the surface or dive deep into the details is up to you.
ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES:
Personalize your adventure with accessibility settings before game play. Enable numerous options including chat text enlargement, color blindness filters, photosensitivity mode, toggleable camera shake, and subtitle settings to create your optimal experience. Define your audio preferences with settings for volume controls, mono sound, stereo sound, and surround sound. You can also adjust game inputs via input remapping options and mouse/keyboard control settings. Lastly, define game inputs via input remapping options, and make sure no message is missed with chat text-to-speech and speech-to-text.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,998 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Lost Ark splits its reviewers almost exactly in half, and both halves describe its combat in much the same words. Combat or gameplay comes up in 19% of substantive reviews, and negative reviews praise the fighting far more often than they criticize it, usually before explaining why they quit. Their complaints are about what surrounds the combat: gear upgrades ("honing") that run on low-percentage RNG and can be sped up with real money, daily and weekly chores repeated across a roster of alts, and an endgame community that turns away anyone below the expected item level. Pay-to-win language appears in 15% of substantive reviews and grind or "homework" language in 18%. Even among positive reviews, 24% raise pay-to-win, RNG or grind as a cost the reviewer has accepted.
A second line of complaint comes from people who never got far. Newcomers and returning players report empty early zones, matchmaking that never fills for older content, an overwhelming pile of systems, and permanent "botting" bans on accounts that had barely been played. Reviewers credit the newer solo modes and raid changes with bringing some returning players back. The reviews mostly agree on what Lost Ark does well and what it costs, and they divide on whether the one is worth the other.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Combat and classesHigh
Positive and negative reviewers describe the combat in the same terms: fast, flashy and responsive, with impactful skill animations and enough classes and subclasses for everyone to find a favorite. "Best combat and gameplay out of any MMO, period," wrote one long-time player, and a newer player's scorecard review gave combat and gameplay 10/10, adding that "Every class feels impactful." Comparisons to Diablo, Path of Exile and other ARPGs come up in 6% of substantive reviews, often in Lost Ark's favor on the feel of the fighting. In negative reviews the praise tends to come first, as the setup for the complaint: "Fantastic combat ruined by the terrible progression systems patch after patch." Criticism of the combat itself is rare. A handful of players found the leveling fights too easy or the combos repetitive over time, and some dislike the isometric click-to-move controls (covered under the split themes).
Raid and boss designHigh
Raids come up in 17% of substantive reviews, and players single out the boss fights. Legion raids such as Valtan and Kakul-Saydon are named as highlights. The same scorecard review said "the boss mechanics in Legion Raids (like Valtan or Kakul-Saydon) are incredibly satisfying to learn and conquer" and called the raid music "absolutely S-tier." A veteran who has since quit described the time spent "progging new, interesting bosses with friends" as "some of the most fun I've ever had gaming." Raid fans also call the fights hard and punishing ("One shot mechs and no rez is what causes gate keeping"), reviewers note that the newest content needs eight players, and access depends on gear and on other players, which feeds the frustrations below.
Visuals, animations and musicMedium
Graphics, visuals or animations come up in 10% of substantive reviews, mostly as praise; only a handful call the graphics dated or the animations clunky. Players call the world colorful and detailed, praise the character creator, and single out the soundtrack, especially in raids. A few mention the size of the download.
A large free game with plenty to do outside the endgameMedium
Free-to-play value comes up in 11% of substantive reviews, and the positive reviews in this group frame Lost Ark as a big free ARPG you can enjoy without chasing the endgame. One player wrote "i'm a broke man and the fact they give you 6 characters for free, with free passes and events every season, is reason enough to play this game." Sailing, islands, collectibles such as mokoko seeds and other "horizontal" content get regular praise ("The horizontal content is worth the playthrough"), mostly from players who play casually. Negative reviewers also use the word "free," sarcastically, to say the endgame is free only in name.
Where players are split
The story and the road to level 50High
Story, questing and leveling come up in 13% of substantive reviews, and opinion on them divides. Some players enjoy the campaign, the lore and the rapport side stories, and a few call it a long single-player ARPG journey worth playing on its own. Others find it a slow series of errands: "Fun combat, but you do WAY too many fetch quests or back and forth 'talk to x person' quests between any good dungeon." The scorecard review quoted above sat in between: "Leveling 1-50 is a slog, but the later lore is decent." Voice acting gets a few comments in both directions, and some players complain that leveling feels like a long tutorial before the real game starts.
Solo modes and the push toward casual playMedium
Solo play comes up in 7% of substantive reviews. Some players say solo raids and solo modes brought them back because they no longer need a static group, and long-time players note the change: "Can be played solo now too except for the last few endgame raids." One veteran described a 2025 patch as making raids "more new-player friendly and stress free with resurrects and there also solo modes if you are into that." The objections are about coverage. Solo modes stop short of the newest raids, and one returning player found the gap at the other end: "Only solo mode on high end content, so a returning person either has to do the fast pass to the current meta level or bring 7 friends to be able to do the lower content because you will never get a match." Several players ask for more solo raids, and a few say solo rewards were later capped or cut.
Power passes, express events and skipping aheadLow
Power passes and express (catch-up) events come up in under 3% of substantive reviews. Some players like being boosted straight to the endgame and recommend doing the story once and passing the rest of the roster. Others felt misled. One player "Received a powerpass, used it not knowing it was going to auto complete the rest of the story instant and destroy my whole immersion of the game." Another described express events as "honey trap for new players" because the boosted character then runs into time and combat-power gates. One 2026 newcomer welcomed the removal of the old T2/T3 honing system, which lets new players start the first act of the story straight away.
The isometric, click-to-move control schemeLow
Under 2% of substantive reviews raise the top-down camera or click-to-move movement, but it ends some trials immediately ("No WASD movement. Uninstalled."). Others say the view is exactly why they play. Controller support draws a few complaints of its own.
What frustrates players
Daily homework, alts and a grind that feels like a jobHigh
Grind, dailies, chores and homework come up in 18% of substantive reviews, and long-time players raise this complaint more often than any other. Progress in the endgame depends on running the same daily and weekly content on several characters for gold and materials, which players describe as a second job; 4% of substantive reviews use job language directly ("If you're looking for a full time job that doesn't pay then this is the game for you"). Missing days creates a fear of falling behind your group (6% of substantive reviews talk about keeping up or catching up). Several veterans with thousands of hours write their reviews as an exit note: "I stopped playing for a month while travelling and felt so much better without that constant need to keep up." A few positive reviewers find the loop relaxing, or say you can skip a couple of days and still get decent rewards.
Pay-to-win monetizationHigh
Pay-to-win, cash-shop, whale or "predatory" language appears in 15% of substantive reviews. The complaint is specific: gear progression can be bought with real money, so spending sets the pace for everyone else. One long-time player asked "How can you justify needing to pay 100x more dollars than the next guy to make the same progression?" Reviewers mention honing packs, card packs, value packs, passes and lootbox-style rewards, and say each new progression system (elixirs, transcendence, the Ark Grid) adds another place to spend. Players disagree on how much this matters. Some positive reviewers say free players can still reach most of the content without spending, while a few negative reviewers answer that playing free means putting in full-time hours.
New and returning players hit a wallHigh
New or returning players are the subject of 10% of substantive reviews, and several problems stack up here. The early zones and older content feel empty ("The early game locations are completely dead; I can play for hours and not see a single other person and the matchmaking for the dungeons is nonexistent"). One player trying a guardian raid "waited for 30 minutes and then started one alone," failed it and uninstalled. The number of systems, currencies and pop-ups overwhelms newcomers ("The number of systems can feel overwhelming when you're getting started"), and some say they needed outside guides just to do the daily content. Returning players find their old gear obsolete and the catch-up cost in gold enormous. Talk of a dying or empty game appears in 5% of substantive reviews.
Gatekeeping and a hostile endgame communityMedium
Gatekeeping, toxicity or elitism comes up in 10% of substantive reviews. One review opens "Worst community in gaming." Players describe party leaders who reject anyone below a high item level, roster level or combat power, demand clear titles, or kick players after a single mistake; one put it as "Every single progression raid is blocked off from new players." Reviewers tie this directly to raid design (one-shot mechanics, few revives, eight-player groups) and to the progression pressure above, and some say the only fix is to bring your own friends or a static group.
Bots and real-money gold tradingMedium
Bots come up in 9% of substantive reviews. Players report "Hoards of bots in every town channel" and bot-run dungeons, and connect bots and real-money gold sellers to the in-game market and to inflated gold costs. The complaint is often paired with the bans below: players feel enforcement misses the real bots ("They say they ban bots but they don't.") while hitting ordinary accounts. A few reviews say bot numbers have since fallen, and one long-time player added in an edit that the player base had shrunk along with them.
Honing RNG and gear progressionMedium
Honing and RNG come up in 7% of substantive reviews, and they sit underneath both the pay-to-win and grind complaints. Players describe saving materials for weeks and losing them in a few failed attempts: "After hundreds of hours farming for materials the game pushes you to max pity which wastes all your materials." Luck creates gaps between friends in the same group, and newer systems are seen as layering more chance on top ("With every new system that comes out, it is just another rng hoop to jump through"). One positive reviewer says plainly that they love the game because they have been lucky, and that they feel bad for players who haven't.
Ban waves that hit innocent and inactive accountsMedium
Bans come up in 6% of substantive reviews. The story told most often is of a player who tried the game briefly at launch, came back years later and found a permanent ban for "botting behavior" on an account that had barely been played; others were banned during their first days. "i have 51 minutes of playtime, maybe 10 AFK and a whole perma-ban for botting behavior," wrote one; another said "Did a little research and discovered this is a pretty common problem for people with brand new accounts." Players describe appeals as automated and rarely successful. Ban stories come mostly from players with under 50 hours. Related smaller complaints cover the "trusted status" system (new or VPN-using accounts flagged as untrustworthy and restricted) and character names or characters removed after long inactivity.
Anti-cheat, launch problems and queuesLow
Technical complaints are a small share but recur. Easy Anti-Cheat is blamed for failed launches, disconnects ("EAC Offline"), network problems ("Fun combat, but anti-cheat keeps breaking my pc."), and for blocking Linux and Steam Deck players for long stretches ("Game does not run on Steam Deck, despite saying playable, because of garbage EAC."). Reviews first written at launch in February 2022 describe server queues of thousands ("My desire to login immediately drops to near zero when hit with a 7k+ queue no matter the time"), and some players in Oceania and South America complain about ping or regional server situations.
Removed content and optionsLow
A small group of reviews complains about features taken out of the game: PvP modes and guild-versus-guild that dedicated PvP players valued, and language and keyboard-layout options ("They removed several languages from the game, as well as AZERTY controls for absolutely no reason"). There are few of these, and they come from committed players.
3. The player conversation
Many negative reviews come from players with thousands of hours who say they loved the game and write as if leaving a long relationship, some with a string of dated edits that flip between recommending and not recommending. Their complaints are about the endgame economy: raids, grind and homework, pay-to-win, and gatekeeping, which comes up far more often among reviewers with 500 or more hours than among newer players. Reviewers with under 50 hours raise different things: the story and leveling, the visuals, whether the free game is worth trying, and sudden bans. Jokes and one-line insults make up a large part of the corpus, so the useful detail sits in the longer reviews.
Reviews first written in 2023 were the warmest (61% positive). Those first written in 2022, the launch year, sat at 37%, and those first written in 2026 at 40%. Reviews written in 2025 and 2026 return to the same progression complaints, with newer systems such as the Ark Grid named as the latest example, alongside worries about a shrinking player base and whether solo modes and reduced dailies are enough to carry new players through to the current raids.
4. What the developers could do
- Take real money out of gear progression for raid access. Long-time players who explain why they quit often name pay-to-win and honing RNG, and one asked how anyone can justify needing to pay "100x more dollars than the next guy" for the same progression.
- Cut the daily and weekly homework across alts. Grind and chore language appears in 18% of substantive reviews, and one veteran named a 2025 patch that reduced dailies as the reason it was a good time to return.
- Give new and returning players a working path to current content. Newcomers report empty early zones, unfilled matchmaking for older raids and express boosts that dead-end at combat-power gates, and players asked for solo modes on lower and older content as well as more solo raids.
- Fix false botting bans and make appeals human-reviewed. Players with only a few hours describe permanent bans on barely played or long-inactive accounts and automated appeal denials.
- Remove bots and gold sellers from the game world and the market. Bots appear in 9% of substantive reviews, and players link them to inflated gold costs and an unfair market.
- Design raids to reduce gatekeeping. Players tie gatekeeping to one-shot mechanics and few revives, and one veteran credited a 2025 patch that added resurrects with making raids less stressful.
- Fix anti-cheat compatibility. Players report EAC launch failures, disconnects, broken network settings, and Linux and Steam Deck blocks.
- Explain the systems and warn before skipping the story. Newcomers say the systems overwhelmed them and that they needed outside guides, and one player lost the rest of the campaign to a power pass that auto-completed it without warning.
