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Playing on a gigantic continent, players will chose from the normal race and classes for their character. Each character will start off doing rudimentary quests for their trainers and will end up with enough equipment to hold their own with the smaller foes. Unless the player teams up with a group, they can look forward to hours upon hours of killing vultures, beetles, snakes, spiders, and more. I dabbled with groups, but ended up going solo with one particular character and I have to say that I am officially feared by all minor creatures within the game. It's a fact. After slaying thousands of insects, birds, and weak robbers, I think I struck enough fear into the game because I ended up encountering either extremely deadly enemies or weak ones that weren't worth the time and effort to kill. Advising joining a party for an online role-playing game seems a bit pointless, but there's some characters, like my Necromancer, that should be able to travel around on their own and be one of those crazy nomads that no one wants to talk to; and he was, until level 10, at which point there were no more spells to purchase and the enemies worth any experience were far away from my homestead. So, even if a character seems like they should be solo, they shouldn't. Alas, I held my own, and traversed the continent in search of amazing adventures and fanciful sights; unfortunately, all I got were some angular trees and boring fetch quests. The graphics are minimal, with only bigger creatures and certain spells standing out as eye-catching, so the rolling plains and gorgeous coastlines that one would expect by seeing the main menu - complete with houses in trees and birds flying past - are going to be in for a surprise. But, hey, they're serviceable and the imagination can kick in a bit to compensate, so it shouldn't be that big of a problem. However, what was a problem were NPCs giving incorrect directions, the camera getting fidgety, and quests that could be repeated without penalty. Because there is only a map in the manual that shows a bird's eye view of the continent, and because there's none in the game, maps from the official site have to be used; there was nothing more annoying than going from monitor-television-monitor-television-monitor-television, all because a NPC told me to go to a certain gate and the person to meet wasn't there, forcing me to obsessively check to make sure I was exactly where I needed to be. Not to mention that there were several quests I would complete and then do over and over, just to see if I would be told another story other than the initial 'woe is me, help me' bit; while I did appreciate the extra goods, I would've preferred something more so that the characters in the world would seem more alive. What was really disappointing was that after the initial quests for the trainer, they drop the gamer like a brick, leaving them to just wander around and see what they can do. EverQuest Online Adventures does manage to do some things right. There are a handful of servers, but also 8 slots for a character on each, leaving plenty of room for additional characters for yourself or friends. The servers handled themselves well with the massive influx of new players, which is something some older games still struggle with. Also, despite being stripped down, the developers did an impressive job of streamlining the menus for a controller, and there are several ideas that I really enjoy. Instead of having all of the experience taken away whenever a character dies, it all remains, but whatever is gained afterwards will be split with some going towards the 'experience debt' and the rest going towards leveling up. This is a great idea and I found it very helpful in keeping things to speed along. The player can also perform a spell when leveling up or moving away, which was a nice change of pace from the cancellations that occur in the same situations in Dark Age of Camelot. I also liked the targeting system: enemies and NPCs are targeted with one button, and party members with another, but what I really liked was that it had a wide range and it - along with the compass that marked targets - made finding far-off people a whole lot easier than in most other games. The only problem I found was that I couldn't go back to a previous target, if the intended person was accidentally skipped over, it would start the list of available targets over again - a small nuisance. I also enjoyed combat. Aside from the basics acquired during training, the player will also get loot from dead enemies or merchants, including spells - which I found odd, since spells seemed to always be given in other RPGs, and can anyone explain to me why a sword is weaker than a club with a nail in it? The menus made selecting a weapon, item, or said spells very easy. Being able to perform spells and attacks at the same time really kept the action fast, and it that made the game fit in very well with the console 'quick-action' mythos. Killing certain things will also lower, or enhance, the player's reputation with others of the same kind. So, killing a ton of Deathpawns will be good for the experience, but they'll also be more aware of their killer and be more vicious. It's a shame that, save for a handful, most enemies just aren't all that interesting, and so all those attacks will be wasted on generic fantasy creatures. The feeling of being uninterested really
permeated throughout EverQuest Online Adventures. Sure, there
were moments of addiction, but those tend to subside fairly quickly
once the realization sets in that the continent - as it is now -
only holds so many different things to kill and there are only so
many boring quests to partake in before things get old. Playing
with friends is a great way to kill some time and shoot the breeze,
but it really doesn't do much for the game itself, although they
did do a nice job with guild and group accesses, along with the
extras that go along with practices. There have been updates, but
most are just additional quests for high level characters, fixes,
or a movement of a character; there just wasn't anything there to
hold my interest. Graphics: 6/10 Control: 5/10 Overall: 6.5/10 [ top ] |
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