Lost Reavers Beta Impressions

Last week, the Lost Reavers Beta came out on the Wii U eshop. There have been no others betas on the Wii U before; the closest thing was the Splatoon Global Testfire. A beta is a really good chance for a developer to test out the online servers of a game. I played Lost Reavers over the weekend and here are my impressions of the game so far.

The Lost Reavers Beta has four characters to play as at the moment and two online maps. There is a tutorial that you can play for each of the four characters too. I tried out all of the characters and their tutorials, plus I played the two online maps some!

There are two female characters and two male characters to play as. Three of the characters, the two female and one male, play in a third person perspective and the other male character plays in a first person mode or you can play him in third person mode. The third person mode is great for the three characters that are naturally in that mode. These characters move fast and the action gameplay is fun. However, the character who can play in first person mode doesn’t play great in either first or third person. This character is a “tank” character. He has a lot of weapons, but he moves slow and the camera even turns slow. I didn’t like the controls for this character at all. I suppose there will be some people who like it though. The third person action characters are a lot better in my opinion.

The Lost Reavers Beta also has some light rpg elements. Your character will level up after every mission and eventually you’ll get skills points that you can use to improve your character. I like that it has these rpg elements, but the game is definitely more of an action game than anything else.

As for the games levels, I wish I could say I was impressed. One level is a tomb level and the other is a factory level. Both levels are pretty dull and the only thing that makes them half way interesting is the fast paced action characters. Fighting enemies can be fun. But I wish these levels were more complex and interesting. They do seem to change a little bit every so often, but overall, I can see myself getting bored of these two levels fast. Of course, this is just a beta, so I’m sure there will be more levels when the actual game comes out.

You might be wondering about how the game’s plays online. My experience, overall, was pretty good. There was no lag, even playing with players in Europe. I just had a problem where the game froze up on me once. The problem with betas though (and regular online games) is that your connection online will only be as good as how your internet is, how good the people you are connected to are, and how good the developers servers are. I had a good experience mostly. But I heard at least one person online who said they were running into lag. With any online game, you’ll run into different experiences on how good the online game works.

The Lost Reavers Beta is not bad. The online seems to work fine and the action characters are cool. I just wish the first person character was better and that the levels available were more interesting. As a free-to-play game, Lost Reavers should be alright but I’m not sure how much fun it’ll be in the long term. I was not blown by the Lost Reavers beta. I haven’t even mentioned what I thought about the beta’s graphics. Honestly, there’s not much to talk about there. The game is very PS2/Wii looking (I know the Wii U can do better than this). Overall, I have played better betas on other systems.  Lost Reavers could get better as it goes; here’s hoping that it turns out to be a really good game.

Have you played the Lost Reavers Beta? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments!