A technical look at Lost Ark: excellent sound and double-edged graphics

This article was originally published by our content partner «PC Games Hardware». Here’s the original article.

Scouring the Internet for notes on Lost Ark’s technology, you’ll come across a forgotten graphics engine called «Unreal Engine 3» and support for Direct X 9. The former was introduced in 2006 and used for games such as Gears of War or Darksiders, while the latter saw the light of day back in 2002 and is completely technically outdated from today’s perspective. Lost Ark, on the other hand, has only been around since 2019 and was exclusively playable on Microsoft Windows in South Korea. The game didn’t appear in Europe and North America until late 2021, early 2022. We received a Platinum’s Founders Pack from publisher and developer Smilegate for testing, but this won’t influence our technical first impression of the MMORPG F2P title Lost Ark.

Lost Ark in a technical hands-on: an impressive prelude

Since this article is mainly about tech, we’ll refer you to the review of Lost Ark by our colleagues here at PC Games, which is dedicated to the gameplay in depth. As author Daniel Link concludes, «However, if you give Lost Ark a chance despite Free2Play concerns, you’ll get a beautifully crafted world, masterclass action-RPG gameplay, and so much content that you won’t know where to start.» While we didn’t invest as many hours as Link, we fully agree with him – you’ll be practically smothered as a newcomer. Nevertheless, you’ll always want more, since it doesn’t seem long-winded despite the scope.

After you’ve made your way through the character editor and tutorial, the «Open World» starts right away. However, since this is an MMO, your first tasks are limited to «get this, do that, go here and kill that». After talking to some NPCs, you’ll probably have noticed the great dubbing. The German version reviewed includes famous narrators such as Biaca Kahl, Fabian Oscar Wien, Tino Kießling, Daniel Kröhnert and Uve Teschner. But it isn’t just the voices that work, the background music is also harmonious and attack effects sound crystal clear. It’s even more fun to watch your mage casting spells as ice cracks, a smoky fire blazes, lightning hisses, and water splashes down onto your enemies.

Lost Ark in a technical hands-on: graphics from today and back then

We are, of course, aware that Lost Ark wants to be an MMORPG for as many players as possible. It’s probably also why the game should or must run smoothly on almost any box. Smilegate reached deep into its bag of tricks. The most noticeable thing is your own character in contrast to other NPCs. Take a look at the following comparison:

The first picture displays our heroine during a cutscene. Its graphics are top-notch for an MMO. And as long as you play using the default view, namely from far above, the NPCs look normal too, as Figure 2 shows. However, if you zoom into the action, as in picture 3, those cut corners start to show up – compared to our character, others look rather angular and low-resolution. This runs throughout Lost Ark. The closer you zoom in on details, the messier it gets. Some textures are incredibly muddy and unattractive.

You really don’t want to see anything like that in 2022. Still, the graphics are surprising in many places, and positively so. No matter where you are, lots of particles, lighting and shadows contribute to a pleasant overall look, especially considering the old Unreal Engine 3. Apart from cities, you encounter lush grasslands, harmoniously shaded forest areas and large gorges, rocks and intertwined rivers. In large halls, reflections bouncing off surrounding walls shimmer in the water, adding immensely to the atmosphere. Shadows contribute the most to this beautiful image, just compare the following two images:

In a direct comparison, the shadows are particularly noticeable. They aren’t just higher res on better graphics settings, they also make textures appear more vivid. Unfortunately, there’s little in the way of those; an optional HD texture pack would be ideal here, as offered by many other role-playing games.

Lost Ark in a technical hands-on: performance

As is almost typical for MMOs, your processor plays a very big role. We tested Lost Ark with an Intel Core i9-10900K, 32 GB of DDR4-3600 RAM and an RTX 3090, and still hit a CPU limit at maximum details and in UHD resolution. We therefore strongly recommend that you use Direct-X-11 mode. Using DX9, the game hardly runs slower from an average FPS point of view, but reload jerks are a bit more frequent, since fewer draw calls can be calculated simultaneously in contrast to DX11. In order to test the performance of weaker systems, we used a trick: we reduced the CPU’s performance with the help of an energy-saving mode, thus achieving a maximum clock of only 3 GHz, which is around 2 GHz below the actual clock of this CPU. Since we still achieved triple-digit frame rates with this setting, we reduced the clock further. However, even with 1.8 GHz on all CPU cores, we still achieved an average of 90 fps at maximum details, even though reload stutters now occurred a bit more often.

We can therefore give the all-clear. Load is primarily on the processor, but it doesn’t have to be powerful in any way. Nevertheless, we recommend at least a quad core, even a six core to be on the safe side, as the afterload jerks can otherwise get out of hand and disturb game flow. We didn’t notice any other technical flaws while playing, and the performance is almost always clean and stable. Sound never dropped out and we didn’t encounter any bugs. Since the game is free, it might be worth a look if you’re a role-playing game fan. How about you, have you explored the world of Lost Ark? What was your impression, from a technical point of view?