I kinda liked Dark Alliance, but as time went on, the repetition with
the game got to me and it just got plain ol' boring. I figured they
would work things out with this new Champions of Norrath, but no, it's
the same flaws and errors I found in Dark Alliance but multiplied. This
game is so freaking boring and reptitive. There's barely a hint of
story, or a single interesting character.
So basically this
is the same boring game made by the people that brought you Dark
Alliance, and they didn't feel like improving anything about it.
----------Battle System----------
Champions of Norrath is an down-top-view dungeon crawling Action RPG.
The point of the entire game is to crawl through a dungeon and make it
to the exit, or find an item for a fetch mission, there's really no
puzzles within the game or anything that require thought. You just run
through it unmapping the unexplored randomly generated dungeon.
You gain experience for each monster killed, but none for completeing a
quest. After each level, your character will get ability points to
distribute amoung the four ability sets, Strength, Intelligence,
Dexterity and Stamina. After you sort out your points, you then get to
add another point to your Skill set, which gives you Melee attacks or
new spells.
There's only one person within the town that
sells you weapons and armor, but what he sells is totally random.
Monsters drop items at random at a REALLY high rather, and it seems
ridiculous that a Giant Ant will drop an Ax after you kill it, but
whatever. Your character will have a weight limit, so the more items he
picks up the faster he'll reach his limit and can't pick up any more.
What you have to do at this point is to warp back into town and sell
all the worthless crap you picked up, and then warp back to your spot,
you'll be doing this OVER and OVER again, it gets old.
The
only difference about this game and Dark Alliance is the fact that you
can play four players instead of two, and you can go online with your
game. That's really it, Champions of Norrath is the same exact game.
----------Characters / Story---------
At the start of the game you pick your character out of a selection of
five classes, I choose a Barbarian. You are opened up with a
conversation with the Elvin King, who is at war with some Goblins and
Orcs. Your "goal" is to be the "Champion of Norrath" but the further
you get into the game you unveil the real plot.
I loved the
first Act of the game, but there's honestly not much story within the
game. After the first Act you get thrown into a dwarf world that's
battling giant Ants for about 2 hours, and then you get thrown into a
Water stage for no reason, I mean, the Acts barely connect, they just
seem so random.
The dialog and "character development" are
really really bad. Your character is a silent hero that says what you
tell him to say, but there's really no expanded options like in Jade
Empire for example. The dialog the NPC say is so worthless it's not
even worth reading.
----------Graphics----------
Compared to Dark Alliance, the character models haven't improved, and
in some cases they devolved. The level designs are completely random
this time, so they aren't as creative (but.. I'm not saying Dark
Alliance had creative stages). The water effects look great, and theres
more little things like frogs and birds that appear in the background.
It's a slightly prettier game, but I hate the randomly made dungeons,
which shows how lazy the developers are. The camera is better compared
to Dark Alliance, since you can zoom in and out. You create your
character at the beginning of the game, so there's slightly more
options on your characters appearance, but it doesn't really matter in
the end because the only times you REALLY get to see your character is
in the status screens when you equip new armor, and even then most of
the armor obscure his face.
The biggest problem with the
graphics is the overall generic presentation, there's nothing creative
about any of the level designs, the character models or anything. The
dialog scenes are very crappy, it's just close ups of characters
talking while they headnod and flail their hands around, no realistic
movements. The editing within the dialog scenes is also poor, from the
way they go from scene to scene, it's very choppy. The game also
features a few glitches where when you start of the game, the
background slowly loads up while you run around waiting for the floor
to load, and sometimes the game will slowly load as you rotate a camera
a little to fast aswell.
----------Sound----------
The
music is really good, not very rememberable, but it was great
background music that kept you focused on hacking and slashing away.
The voice work is better than Dark Alliance, but still not good
compared to any other game out there. The actors just sound so bored.
The main character doesn't speak, but they give him stupid one-liners
within battle like when you first enter a dungeon he'll say something
stupid.
The biggest flaw with the sound is the delay with the
dialog scenes. When you walk up to a character and initiate a chat with
them, the dialog box will pop up, and slowly scroll the words. By the
time you are done reading what the dialog says, the voice FINALLY kicks
in. This delay was really distracting, although it only was affected
during chats where you start. If there's a full blown cutscene, then
the voice makes the words.
----------World Map----------
The world map is the same worthless hub-world like in Dark Alliance.
You start in one safe area with one person that sells and buys items,
you then branch out into fields and dungeons within each hub. You'll
find Portals that can transport you around the world. You also have to
your traveling advantage is the Magic Scrolls that transport you back
to the guy that buys/sells you items.
The game is broken
into Acts, five in all, and within each Act is a new world, which feels
like there is no connect at ALL between them. You can't travel between
Acts either, so if there was a sidequest you wanted to get back to,
you're screwed and can't finish it. Because you can't backtrack between
Acts, and the Acts being quite short, the game feels very very linear
(just like Dark Alliance).
----------Time to Complete Game----------
Time is not recorded, so I'm not sure how long I actually played it,
but it might be between 10 or 15 hours at the most. After you beat the
game you can restart with all your levels and fight harder enemies, big
deal.
