Also, on a side-note, I'm working on making and implementing a more standardized review layout/template, so don't be surprised if you see some things changing a bit over my next few reviews. I'm trying to find what looks best and what would work for y'all and myself. If you guys have any suggestions/comments/opinions, I'm glad to listen to them.
Anyway... On with the review!
Game Basics:
Title: Age of Conan (played the free, "Unchained" version/edition/etc)
Publisher: Funcom
Genre: Fantasy "action-oriented" MMO
Website: http://www.ageofconan.com/
Website: http://www.ageofconan.com/
Cost: Free to Play, premium account unlocks full game/content
Ratings:
Graphics: 4/5
Character Customization: 2/5
Class Skills, Character Development, etc.: 4/5
Beginning/Tutorial: 2/3
Story, Quests, Content: 3/5
Ratings:
Graphics: 4/5
Character Customization: 2/5
Class Skills, Character Development, etc.: 4/5
Beginning/Tutorial: 2/3
Story, Quests, Content: 3/5
All right, let's start with why I chose to play this game. Honestly, in a general sense, Age of Conan isn't something I'd typically play. I'd heard about it, sure. My first thoughts were "...It sounds like it came from that movie, Age of Conan." And it did, or at least was inspired by it. You know, this movie!
(this was put in mostly because I nearly died of laughter when I saw it.)
I never saw the movie. I never cared to. So when I thought about playing a game based off of it, I was kinda put off by it. Why the hell would I want to play it? Honestly, it was because of a recommendation from a fellow healer on a forum I was on. They said that the healing style was very unique and required more skill, thus was more challenging and entertaining. A new healing style, eh? Sounded like something I simply had to look into! So, I poked around the game's site and decided it was worth a try.
Graphics & Character Customization
I was actually rather surprised with the graphic quality of this game. I had heard about Age of Conan a very long time ago, so I figured the graphics would be either outdated or not of a great quality. I don't recall at the moment if the game has revamped itself [relatively] recently or not, but the graphics were surprisingly pretty.
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| Both screenshots were taken from the Age of Conan's "Media" section of the site. |
The attention to environmental detail was rather enjoyable, actually. The world felt alive around you and it looked like the development team took their time and worked hard to make everything pop and make you feel immersed in the game's overall environment. I notice every now and then that some games make the characters, NPCs, and villages seem like they were just dropped into an alien territory and that they didn't necessarily look like they belonged in that world. Like, the character designs were too bright and the environment was too dark, or the village designs or the environment were incredibly simplistic while character designs were incredibly detailed or complex. Things like that. But I think Age of Conan does well with this balance. The characters you play fit in with the places you go and the other characters you see. The animation of skills and attacks were nice, too. The skills that I had used in gameplay (at least, so far) weren't overly flashy but they were still nice to look at and the enemies I was fighting had good, fluid animations as well.
Character customization was... interesting. The character creation screen was actually incorporated into the game's opening so that you had a small amount of video before the game put you at the character customization interface. While this was cool when I created my first character, I don't know if I'd like having to sit through some animation before I could actually work on creating my character. In terms of the level of customization, I both loved and hated it. The game gives you a lot of things to customize but the actual options given to you were limited. You could change the voice, body type/size, height, skin color, tattoos/markings, overall face, eye color and style, and separate facial markings. But within those categories, your actual options are rather limited, in my opinion. I think that part of it was that the game wanted to stick closer to Conan the Barbarian's world, where unusual hair colors, body types, skin colors, etc. wouldn't be realistic. I can understand that but at the same time, there are more than just four skin colors for a human person. I also don't really appreciate the general... look? of either sex. Women are curvacious and have large breasts; men are fit and muscular. There's hardly any flexibility in that. And while I understand that these features are more appealing on a general level on the player market, I like playing unusual body types. What if I want to play the guy who has no muscles or the girl who actually can hold a two-handed sword? Sorry, it's not allowed. But I digress.
If you want to see the customization interface, MMO Vids did videos on it. They posted separate videos for Males and Females, so I'll just post the links instead of both videos.
Class-Related Things
Age of Conan follows the 4-Archetype mold and expands on it. Each archetype is then broken up into three individual classes with different play styles based on that archetype, creating twelve classes for the player to choose from. However, each class can only be played by certain races, which while I disapprove of, the canon lore might explain it better than their site or the creation interface does. 'Cause I don't recall either one explaining why only certain races could be certain classes. In terms of the Priest archetype classes, this fantastic thread right over here breaks down each class, gives a summary and a list of pros and cons for each of them. I'll recap what the original poster said on the thread for y'all.
Bear Shaman
Play Style: Melee healer. You do impressive amounts of DPS for a healer and many of the class's feats help in your healing as well. Think of a Paladin. You get to beat people in the face AND heal others at the same time. If that appeals, choose this class. If you're more of the arcane, heal-from-safely-afar type, you probably won't enjoy this. Aside from DPS, you have amazing regen abilities for health, mana, and stamina. You also have access to medium armor, which is really good for a healer. According to the thread-author, Bear Shamans are the 4th best-armored class in-game. At the same time, though, you have long fights to deal with ("you rocky balboa your fights," says the thread-author). Early-game leveling is tough, up until about level 20. Once you hit around 25, the class really starts to develop and become easier to play. Good for both PvE and PvP, solo or in groups, as you have a nice balance of stats and abilities with this class.
Priest of Mitra
Play Style: traditional healer, in the "healbot" sense. This class focuses on crowd-control abilities and doing damage, but the damage it does isn't that great in comparison to other healing classes. The way healing works in this game means that even though this is the more "traditional" healing class, you'd still have to relearn how to play a healer in this game. From what I've heard, those who play this class have enjoyed it once they've learned how to play it. (I'll explain how healing works in this game later on). If you like playing the more standard Priest classes in MMOs, odds are, you'll enjoy this. if you're more interested in dealing damage or don't like managing crowd-control that much, you might want to rethink playing this class (then again, if you're more concerned with damage, don't roll a healer at all, in my opinion, but that's beside the point...)
Tempest of Set
Play Style: Mage-Priest. I say this because this class focuses on AoE skills that Mages in other games would have and also has Priest healing abilities. This class loves AoE attacks, giving it one of the higher DPS rates in the game. I believe, at least from what the thread had suggested, that Tempests also have AoE healing abilities as well, but I don't know. Unfortunately, the Tempest doesn't have the crowd control abilities of the Priest or the armor of the Bear Shaman, so they're a bit on the squishier side of healers. If you love being able to deal mass-damage to numerous foes at once and heal, then this is the class for you. I would think to balance this out, the Tempest wouldn't have as strong healing abilities as the Priest, but I could be wrong.
For the record, I rolled a Priest of Mitra (which I want to keep typing as "Mithra"...) and have gotten to level 9 or so. So I haven't actually been able to work with group PvE or instances to be able to comment on how those work. But once I can get into those, I'll be sure to discuss that.
Now, I know I've been talking about how Age of Conan's healing style is different than other MMOs. And it is. Healing spells don't really work like they do in other games; you don't click on a target, select your appropriate spell, and poof! done. Instead, each heal has certain conditions and the vast majority of them require the healer to be in close proximity of those they want to heal. Some spells will only heal within a cone radius in front of the character. Others will heal in a specific degree-range arc. Other spells do 360-degree healing. This means that as a healer, you have to be aware of what's going on around you and your relation to others in your party at all times in order to heal well. While I haven't been able to do group PvE yet, I think that this is an interesting, innovative way for healers to work. It gets really boring, just click-click-click healing all the time, only having to worry about your position when you have AoE damage or your target is out of your rage. With this system, you have to know where your target is in relation to you at all times. You also have to know which skills have what conditions. It'd suck if you went into the middle of your group, expected to do a 360-degree heal and found that you accidentally popped a "cone in front of caster" heal instead. Of course, the individual spells and healing styles will vary depending on the class itself; Priests of Mitra will heavily utilize HoTs while Bear Shamans will have more cone-style heals and buffs from their totems to benefit their party members, for example.
Beginner's Tutorial
I was relatively pleased with the beginning tutorial. It had you start out in a zoned-in instance for your character where you learn all the controls and basic features necessary in order to play the game, giving you quests and things while you learned. Essentially, you start out rescuing an NPC who you then have to escort through the jungle. You learn how to fight (and you get neat attack styles, such as punching in different directions, that can later be used for making combo attacks), how to pick up items, and all that good stuff. I wish that there was a way to skip most of it, if not all of it, though. As a person who's played lots of MMOs, beginner tutorials like these can get very boring. Age of Conan's tutorial also felt a bit slow-paced, in terms of explanations and actual completion. I was able to finish the quests and such fairly quickly but it felt like the tutorial was never going to end! At the same time, if you're slow to learn how to handle MMOs, are relatively new to them, or anything like that, then you'll probably enjoy the starter zone.
Low-Level Quests
These were actually enjoyable, as they were not only relatively easy, but were a nice mixture of grinding, item collecting, errands, and talking to different NPCs. I'm still currently in the middle of most of them, having not even made it to double-digit levels, but so far, I've been pleased. They also don't send you all over the place, either; you tend to stay in one part of a zone for several quests. Nothing is more frustrating when you have an errand quest that starts on one side of a zone and ends on the opposite side of it. The beginning area, Tortage, also introduces players to an interesting player-only instancing system, which is Night quests. I don't know if these occur in other areas, but at least for Tortage, players have access to quests which can only be completed or progressed at night. Nighttime can be accessed by talking to a specific NPC in the tavern/inn, zoning you into the town at night. Obviously, at night, merchants are gone, shops are closed, and more "shady" characters pop up. For the most part, Tortage is empty at night but you can find certain NPCs wandering around. In order to get back to Daytime, you simply talk to the NPC again and you get zoned out.
Miscellaneous
Like most other MMOs, Age of Conan offers mounts and crafting to its players as well as things like guilds, PvP. I can't really tell you much on any of these, as I haven't played enough to encounter them, honestly. I've seen some screenshots of various mounts, from different horses to even tigers that players can ride. So far, the ones I've seen look very interesting and some (like the tiger... Sorry, but I can't imagine a person being able to leap on one and expect to not be mauled to death....) add a bit of a fantasy element that most people expect in MMOs. Crafting is.. Weird. From what I understand, at level 20, you gain the ability to gather items for questing, and at 40, you can actually start crafting. There are numerous types of crafting and gathering skills you can learn and I have no idea if you're limited to how many of each you can learn.
Age of Conan offers unique perks and features for guilds. You can, of course, create or join a guild, and every action you do, from fighting monsters to completing quests, makes your guild more renown. As your guild acquires more renown, various features become available to you. You can create different items and even create your own guild city with inhabitants, which is something I've never seen in an MMO until now. Guilds can also participate in guild-versus-guild PvP combat. Age of Conan really makes PvP a strong selling point for itself. There are different types of PvP. Aside from guild-oriented PvP, there is open-world PvP on their PvP servers and different mini-games, such as "Capture the Skull." As you participate in different PvP events, you gain experience and rise in ranks, gaining all sorts of rewards. On the same token, though, if you participate in "anti-social PvP" (like ganking, I imagine), you run the risk of becoming a hunted criminal, which is interesting.
The one thing I really can't stand about this game, however, is its site. I want a site that gives me information and answers to my question. The "official site" honestly feels more like a game-seller than anything else. Every page only gives you very brief bits of information and it's written in a sales-pitch, marketing-style tone that makes me feel like the game is just trying to sell itself as often as it can, like a stripper putting a neon, flashing light in front of her crotch and waving it about for every passerby to see. I don't mind if a game has a "splash" page or two with general information for those not sure about playing a game. That's fine as it gives just enough for the person to want to know more about the game to pursue it further. But when your official website has less information than the forums... There's a problem, in my opinion.
For instance, the official site only lists the races available and doesn't even give a page for that info; that info is just tacked on the classes page in a list of which races can be X class or is found on a general page where it lists all the races. What the fuck is a "Cimmerian"? What do they look like? Are they human? I sure as hell hope so! But I wouldn't know just by looking at the official site. The site doesn't even mention mounts or crafting (at least that I've seen, and I've been on every page in the "Gameplay" section) at all. The Classes page also has no form of organization to it; the classes aren't alphabetical nor are they grouped by archetype. Please pick one and use it, site. Or at least say what archetype the class falls under on that page. I don't want to spend 10 minutes trying to figure out if a "Herald of Xotli" is a Mage- or a Hunter-type class.
I also dislike the amount of content unavailable to free players. I'm sorry, but I thought this game was "Free to Play," as, y'know, that's what it says on their site.
But hey, I guess I can be wrong. "Play For Free" actually means "here, demo this game and if you like it, buy it to actually get half the shit we highlight on our site." You can't participate in sieges, you have a limited number of character slots, half the personal bank space available, The game even goes so far as to have premium member-exclusive dungeons AND limited character classes available. What the hell!? Seriously?! That's probably the stupidest thing I've heard in a considerable amount of time. If you really want to make it free-to-play, then actually make it free-to-play, not free-to-demo.
Overall, this game is actually fairly decent. It's well-made, visually (even though the style might not be something I personally prefer), the class and healing system is intriguing, and it offers a variety of things to entertain its players. At the same time, though, the "free to play" thing seems like an incredible misclaimer (and yes, it's totally a word, I don't know what you're talking about! >_> ) to me. The free to play features available to players really makes it seem more like a demo and less like a full game. I understand the game was, originally, a pay-to-play game. But if you're going to be free-to-play, do so well. You can have premium member benefits, such as discounts at an item store, premium items like mounts or equipment, or other small perks. But when you take out a significant portion of the game content, it doesn't really feel like it's actually free-to-play, in my opinion. I'd say give it a try, though, if you're looking for a unique healing system and different healing classes. The content itself is actually rather decent for MMOs and offers unique challenges, rewards, and other features that you typically don't find in other MMOs.
Have a game you want me to review? Have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc.? Feel free to comment below, send a message, post on FB or Twitter, or somethin'. I'll happily listen to what you have to say. :) That being said, guess who's got access to Sevencore's beta testing! :D
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