Despite the immense popularity of the Snowblind engine, Champions of Norrath is the first game of its type that I have ever played. I was immediately impressed by the terrific graphics and customizable options for your character of choice. This is a game that feeds off of the atmosphere and the hordes of enemies you're forced to cut down. There are a few features that really turned me off to the game for a while, but the whole package is definitely one of the better RPG offerings on the PS2. Smashing and bashing stuff do death is always fun in my book, so for the first few hours I was incredibly addicted. CoN may not be as good as my initial reactions, but it is still a solid game that anyone can enjoy.
The story is simple, and well, relatively cliched. The realm of Norrath is in some serious trouble, due to an alliance forged between the Orcs and goblins. They launch a surprisingly well-organized and brutal attack upon Kelethin, the treetop city of the Faydwer wood elves. Calling together a council, the Elven King Leithkorias begs for your assistance. Something terrible lays in wait at the back lines of the Orcs, something more sinister than any of the Elves could ever guess. It's up to you to take out this evil, and restore order. Your quest will take through a sprawling forest, dank dungeons, lava fields, under the sea and even high above to the clouds. You'll meet a whole slew of characters on the way, from Gnomes to Vampire lords and one ferocious Orc leader. But who are you, exactly?
This is where the game begins. Before you can get to the slashing, you'll have to create your own character. You have 5 classes to choose from, those being: Barbarian Warrior (pure melee combat), Wood Elf Ranger (Good with ranged attacks and some magic), High Elf Cleric (Good with blunt weapons and powerful healers), Erudite Wizard (Pure magic), Dark Elf Shadowknight (both melee combat and good magic). Once you've got your class figured out, you'll be able to change their appearance by picking different skin colors, hair styles, and hair colors. If you want to give your barbarian a mohawk, you go right ahead and do that. Next, you must assign 20 points to several attributes. This is where knowing what your class specializes in comes in handy. A barbarian doesn't need intelligence, so pumping up his strength and stamina would be a wise move. Likewise, a ranger would need a high dexterity to inflict more damage with his bow. All that's left is a name, and then you're off to do battle with the pillaging hordes!
What follows is pure repetition with a few quests thrown in to give the game some story. Once you start hacking away at goblins and spiders though, you'll probably forget that this game even has a story. As you kill more and more monsters, you'll gain levels, and points with them. With these points, you can level up current stats, like how effective your slashing weapons are or how fast you heal; or you can learn new abilities. The abilities are different for each class: a barbarian can learn Ancestral Call, which raises the damage of his blows, while a Shadowknight can raise a skeleton soldier to fight along with him. Learning new abilities is a lot of fun, and maxxing them out is the best part. To use the abilities, you simply assign them using the directional button to either the triangle or circle button. You can only have two equipped at once, but you can change them whenever you need to. The difficulty is rather high in the beginning, but as with any RPG, once you start to get a feel for the game and acquire higher weapons and armor, the difficulty will ease up on you. Not only that, but once you complete the game the first time through, you can go back through on a higher difficulty with your leveled character to try and max him all the way out. What makes it even better is that when going through the game for a second and third time, all the maps will change. It will be the same dungeon, but all of the pathways and enemies will be completely re-arranged, allowing you to explore a seemingly new environment.
Of course, the most important element to a slasher like this is, of course, all the cool weapons you can get. As you defeat enemies, they will drop gold, weapons and armor that you pick right up. This is where you'll find most of the good stuff, but you can buy weapons and armor from shops if you really need to. Once you find a better sword to replace that rusty axe you're carrying, you can sell it to the shop, along with anything else that is useless to you. This will get you a ton of money, though you may not spend much of it depending on your class. The armor is just as fun as the weapons, since there is so much of it. Decking out your character in matching armor not only looks cool, but it separates you from the rest of the crowd. This is important in the online mode, which allows you to complete the game with a four member party. Everyone will look different, and it adds a ton of variety, considering that the armor changes its look for each class. You can also play a game of multi-player offline, also up to four players. This is great fun, especially if everyone in your party is a different class. It allows for some great use of strategy, and you can have fun for hours and hours before ever getting tired of it.
Norrath is one beautiful realm. From the tall trees of Faydark Forest to the gloom of an anthill, the textures and locations are stunning. Rats scurry along the ground, water collects in broken tiles and birds will fly over head. The Snowblind engine forces you to play from an overhead perspective, which can limit your vision, but allows for prettier scenes. If you prefer to use the close-up camera angle, you'll be able to make out little nuances in your armor that you may have never seen before. The fight scenes are pure, unadulterated chaos, in which you will probably lose track of your character more than once. Wizards can blast off some magnificent spells, like ice bolts and fire raining from the sky. Fixing elements to your weapons will result in their emanating that element. If you fix fire on to your sword, flames will run down the blade. Setting all of your enemies on fire before you kill them is really a treat to see. My only complaint is that all of the enemies are for the most part unoriginal in design. There wasn't any particular monster that really shocked me or took my breath away for a moment. In fact, there is one that seems directly ripped off from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. All they did was change a letter in the creatures name. In other words, You've seen it all before.
As you jog through the Forest, dodging flaming debris from nearby catapults, whimsical music will waft through the air overhead. It's extremely fitting for this time of a game, and does a great job of capturing the beautiful world of Norrath and the tragedy and despair it contains. It can be subtle, but it always good. The voices are good, if not too typical. Elves primarily have a British accent and the barbarians have a Scottish one. There's really no variety, but they sound good, so that's all that matters. Most of the characters will have a personality to get your mind off of it. The clashing of steel on steel is where the real action is at, and it sounds like real action. You can hear your sword cutting through the flesh of the orc, or your flaming arrow setting their bodies ablaze. Most of the creatures will yell and screech during the battle, making it even more authentic.
So while this appears to be a very good game, it does have several problems that keep it from achieving real greatness. CoN is apparently riddled with all sorts of glitches and bugs. Once you've hacked all the way through a dungeon only to have your game freeze, you'll experience a terrible bout of frustration and anger, which will most likely result with the player just quitting altogether. The loads times are awful, and will often get stuck in a continuous loop that never takes you back to your game. It can really kill the experience if you're one to get easily frustrated. I've also encountered a glitch that wouldn't allow me to access any menu other than the one for my weapons. If this happens, it could potentially ruin your whole game., Thankfully, it doesn't happen very often.
If you've never played a game like this before, I would advise renting it or trying it out with a friend. It's not for everyone, but for those who put in some real effort, it will be a great time and worth your money. While the loading times could use some work, the gameplay is just too fantastic to pass by. Now that I've played a game like this, I'm sure I'll play many more. I highly recommend this game to all PS2 owners. It's plain fun, and that's the important part.