Review: Age of Conan
Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronciler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
INTRODUCTION
Age of Conan is an MMO based on the popular fantasy series by Robert E. Howard in 1932, long time for the old Barbarian to be kickin. So it's high time the Cimmerian had a bloody good game, this just might be it.
GETTING STARTED/TECHNICAL INFO
To play AoC, you need Windows XP SP2 or Vista, 1g of Ram, an Nvidia 6600 or equivalent. A 3Ghz Processor or equivalent, quad-speed DVD ROM, and a WHOPPING 32gb of Hard Drive space...
Now, that is some serious real estate for any video game, MMO or otherwise. And considering that doesn't include any patches, why so big? Well, it's not just a Cimmerian size issue. Every bit of dialog has actual, honest to goodness voice acting ... Yeap, everytime you do a quest to kill some demons and collect their hearts, or talk to a soldier down by the docks, the NPC will actually speak. Add to this, the impressive visuals, and good sound quality along with overall professional sounding voice acting adds up to some prime space on your hard drive.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There are two modes of character creation, simple and advanced. In simple mode you are presented with basic options, such as hair color and style, overall height vs girth on a triangular scale, etc. In the advanced mode however, you get to control varying minutia normally glossed over in the character generation of any MMO or regular RPG.
A QUEST
Once in the game you find yourself staring down a cut scene, a slave ship crashes and you as one of the hapless slaves nearly drown. You reach the shore to find your first NPC encounter, an old man who offers some help. From here, you quickly find a female NPC (Casilda), this is your first quest a simple escort to town. Along the way you'll run across another quick quest. The town of Tortage is a quest hub and general point of departure for much of your early adventuring career.
Questing in AoC is fast paced, and you'll receive arrow ques to objectives on your area map and hud. A big plus for those new to the game with a tendancy toward being lost.
D CUPS, FULL OF JUSTICE
Before going further, I feel it necessary to explain something about this game. If you've an aversion for scantilly clad buxom ladies, you might want to skip the rest of the review and this game entirely. It seems even the old and infirm of Conan's world have D cups.
WATER WATER EVERYWHERE
Terrain is beautiful in the game, the water effects at default settings actually got me killed in the game. I was running along and noticed the distorting and realistic effect of the water as I ran along on a new quest before running into an entire camp of baddies. Aquatic environments have beautiful reflective qualities, and it really moves, the water isn't static. Yes, I hate to gush about water (an unfortunate pun I know, but necessary) but they really did do an incredible job on the environments in this game.
COMBAT
For melee heavy classes, the game has a bit of a learning curve. Combos are the flavor of the day, similar to a lot of RPGs like Lost Odyssey and Legend of Dragoon, first you activate the combo such as Swipe for example. Then an arrow comes up on your screen, you have a few seconds to attack in the direction of the arrow before your combo is wasted. There is no auto attack, just attacks to specific areas. (High, High Left, High Right, Low Left, Low, and Low Right)
INTERFACE
One of my favorite UI features of the game is the Map, not only is it nice to look at, but comes in two flavors. Area map, and world map. Both of these are expandable, you simple click and drag on a side of the map and it resizes just like a window in Windows.
The chat window leaves a little to be desired however, overall though I like the UI it does what it's supposed to and doesn't clutter my screen. Oh, and did I mention the blood splatters that at time smear the screen during combat?
DAY 2
I decided to try out a spellcaster, the Dark Templar is fun, melee combat is fast paced and gratifying in this game. But I wanted to give a Demonologist a try. I was not disappointed...
SPELLCASTING
Spellcasting runs on a mechanic familiar to Dark Ages of Camelot veterans, press the button to launch a lightning bolt once, and the spell is cast once. Press the same button twice, and the spell is cast once, then a second time. And so on. Also there is an interesting approach to downtime here, food/water will give you an hour long buff that gives you more Stamina, HP, or Mana and regenerates the appropriate stat by a percentage when out of combat. Also, when resting you regenerate to full in a matter of seconds. All of this adds up to reduced downtime, and increased time actually playing the game ... huzzah!
A NOVEL APPROACH
At this time, I'd like to introduce you to one of the many enjoyable features of AoC. Reduced downtime ... you don't have to spend an hour going back to town to train new spell levels or buy regeants, or any of that crap anymore. Just to sell and upgrade gear and turn in quests. Sat it with me ... KROM! Yes, and at level 9, the Demonologist gains that most important ability spell: Demon Familiar. There is no regeant for summoning the beast, only mana.
And what a little beast she is.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For all it's gory goodness there are a few snags in the game, but mostly launch day issues. Currently the game isn't firing on all cores. It's showing my Q6600 only using 1 Core while running AoC. Same for SLI, and DX10 is also grayed out. However, all of these are issues that the makers of the game are already aware of, the options are there in the game, they've just not been fully implemented yet.
Age of Conan delivers, it's got everything fans of the fiction could want. Chicks, blood, and fast paced ultra violence. After getting past the learning curve, you will find an enjoyable hybrid of MMO and standard RPG. At night, you can solo quest in Destiny Mode, or go around by day doing normal quests in the company of other people. Be assured though, this game is serious PVP, free for all everywhere. So don't make the jump to a PVP server lightly. You can attack anyone, anywhere, anytime and vice versa.
Later in the game siege warfare with upwards of 80 people per side is possible (beats the heck out of Alterac Valley). If you're looking for something different, a fast paced brutal MMO where you absolutely, positively, gotta kill every last mofo in the room ... accept no substitutes.
Reply With Quote
just waiting for more to come in so I can pick this bad boy up.
