Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest Review

Developer	Snowblind Studios
Publisher	Sony Online Entertainment
Genre	Action Role-Playing

There have been a lot of hack n’ slashers hitting the market as of late, largely due to the enormous, out-of-nowhere success of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. The developers of that game – Snowblind Studios -- has since moved on, and together with Sony Online Entertainment, crafted what is without a doubt, the epitome of all dungeon hackers that came before it: the EverQuest-based Champions of Norrath.

Everything about Champions of Norrath is ultra high-quality stuff, from the startlingly-lush visuals to the more refined hack n’ slash gameplay, included online component, and limitless replayability. While not perfect, Champions of Norrath is the undisputed best dungeon hacker around.

Gameplay – Fans of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Diablo know just what to expect here. As a champion called forth to help rid Norrath of a devastating evil – one that can even unite orcs and goblins, who were once mortal enemies – players will trek across the lands, hacking and slashing their way through hundreds of enemies both big and small, ugly and uglier. Players can choose one of five classes (there is a male and female iteration of each) that will also determine the character’s race. From there, players distribute points among the character’s four main attributes, and then off they’ll go, hacking and chopping their way through monster hordes, and looting all the treasure they can find along the way. There are over 10,000 items of random generation in the game, and it’s possible to attach different magical components to your weapons and armor to give them magical properties.

As a whole, Champions is a challenging game, requiring players to not only use the much-forgotten block button, but also to use some strategy when facing numerous foes. There are three difficulty levels in which to play, and you can only unlock one at a time. This is all good, because not only is the weakest of the three settings a reasonable challenge, but thanks to Snowblind’s random dungeon and enemy placement generation, players don’t have an opportunity to memorize their way through a map, making the experience still quite fresh. And though random dungeons haven’t fared well in the past, Snowblind limits the overall size and basic layout of each map, eliminating the likelihood of having to play through boring, uninspired levels. In addition, Champions offers a much more effective way of customizing characters, allowing the player only a few points to distribute between levels. In games such as Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2, when a player reaches level-23, he’ll receive over 20 points to distribute to different feats and spells. By the time the player runs through the game for the second time, most of the more interesting spells and feats will already be maxed out, leaving the player to begin putting points into something he may not even be interested in, simply because the points are there. In Champions of Norrath, players will still be customizing away when they are on the hardest difficulty setting.

Speaking of feats and spells, though the customizing process is much better, some of the feats leave a lot to be desired. While many of the abilities in Dark Alliance 2 are tailor-made to the character class, many of the spells and feats in Champions are generic, and don’t show as much variety. Shadow Knights can summon skeletons and Barbarians can dual wield, but many of the abilities are your basic attributes, such as Endurance. Furthermore, the Erudite Wizard’s spells are basically variations of fire, cold, shock, and poison. This isn’t to say that they aren’t fun, but they do feel a bit limited in scope, like the abilities don’t fully exploit the class each character represents.

Playing through the 20-hour story is much more straightforward than Dark Alliance and its sequel. In Champions there aren’t but a scant few response trees, so players won’t be able to do much interacting with NPC’s in conversation. Luckily though, playing through is such a blast that the lack of response trees is just a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. Combat is fun, whether you’re using a melee weapon, ranged weapon, or spell. Enemies cast spells against you and far outnumber you, and many of them are fairly skilled with their weapons. The control layout is as smooth as butter and all of the button commands are very responsive, including the super-cool camera zoom. Snowblind includes an eight-way spell-mapping utility in the controller’s D-pad, allowing players to map select spells and abilities, and then assign two of them for instant use, one for the Circle button, and one for Triangle (there is no Jump). And while this method is certainly more effective than the structure used in Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, Dark Alliance 2 has a niftier system that allows the player to not only access five spells/feats to the controller, but are easier to use too. CoN’s method still has you juggling for the right spell in real time, which leaves you extremely vulnerable unless you only mess with your spells/feats when there aren’t any enemies present.

Like we mentioned above, there are thousands of items in which to find and buy, but the overwhelming majority of everything doesn’t match up to what you already have. It’s good to see that big finds are rare, but since there are a ton more drops, stopping to check to see what you have every few steps can get annoying, especially when your find doesn’t amount to anything significant. Also, when buying items, it’s equally tough to find anything that is equal to or better than what you have. If you do happen upon something you want, you’d better buy it right then and there, because as soon as you teleport out, the shop’s inventory rotates. We also noticed that “Unique” items aren’t very unique at all. The Gatorsmash Maul, for example, is a “Unique” item that we found three of just in the first Act.

The original Experience system was going to be a 60/40 ratio, where the slayer of each creature would be rewarded with 60% of the experience, and the remainder of the party shared the remaining 40%. Instead, Snowblind splits Experience points, but gives the monster’s killer a 10% bonus, which helps to keep everyone at a nice, fair balance while still rewarding the player who is making the lion’s share of the kills.

You can even add magical properties to your weapons and armor, simply by finding raw components such as fire beetle eyes after killing – you guessed it – fire beetles. Attaching this to a weapon will cause it to deal fire damage, while attaching it to armor will give the wearer fire resistance. You don’t have to do any buying either. As soon as you find something, you can immediately attach it to whatever piece of equipment that you wish (as long as it hasn’t been upgraded already, and as long as it can be upgraded), though you can never break down the magical item for its components. In addition, since you don’t have to actually earn or purchase the magical items you make, the gratification you get from building a magical item is a bit lessened. But hey – they look cool.

Sadly, there are a few instances that made us cry foul. There are a few show-stopping “A” bugs within the game’s code that doesn’t allow players to proceed if they aren’t careful. The only choice is to reload the game at the last save point, though this can lead to a lot more saving than what would normally be necessary. How these bugs weren’t found before shipping the game is a mystery, especially since it’s easy to trigger a bug in some situations. When attempting to free a prisoner in a castle dungeon, the NPC was supposed to follow us as we exited the structure. But instead of following, the character stood still, and wouldn’t leave his spot, much less the castle, which we needed him to do in order to proceed with the adventure. He didn’t move, and we were forced to reload at our last save point. There are more moments like these throughout the game, sometimes being tripped just by skipping a cutscene.

Online - Playing Champions of Norrath online can be a blast, but the options are very bare-bones. While the game does support voice chat (and keyboard), you can only enter a game or join an existing one, and there is really no way to know whether or not you want to be in the room you’re in, at least until you scour over the stats of the other players. The process is really nothing more than choosing a room, and hoping for the best. There is no buddy list, so playing the game online is best suited for friends who set up gatherings outside of the game, and less so for strangers. You pay no subscription fees, but you get exactly what you pay for. While the online experience can be fun, don’t expect the options that you get in games like SOCOM 2, despite the fact that online games and features are SOE’s forte.

Just one of the dozens of intricately-detailed armor sets to be found in Champions of Norrath.

If it’s any consolation, players have a TV screen all to themselves (with full camera zoom features) when adventuring online, and players can even run anywhere on the map that they please. But whenever one player initiates conversation with an NPC or enters a new map, all other players are zapped along for the ride.

Graphics – The PS2 has rarely looked better than what it does in Champions of Norrath, most especially in the massive variety of environments that players will be adventuring through. Each is so lush; they almost look real, thanks largely to the tilesets being non-dynamically bump mapped. The ground and walls look eerily real. Even the more cliché areas, like the fire and snow levels, are beautiful, and chock full of amazing scenery. It’s hard to think of an environment in Champions that isn’t represented. Players will explore dreary, damp caves, grassy plains and forests, deserts, temples, castles, beaches, underground labyrinths, the elemental planes, haunted caverns, graveyards, and even underwater. The effects are gorgeous, and make for a brilliant PS2 showcase. In addition, it helps to break up the action when you have fantastic new scenery to admire.

Particle effects are equally stunning, whether they be in the form of spells, magical weapons, or just the blood spewing from a creature’s wounds. There are countless effects to behold, though not all of them are in the form of spells. For example, when fighting dire badgers, the creatures will begin displaying bloody wounds as you fight it, even though most other creatures don’t. It’s a nice touch and Champions of Norrath is full of moments like this. The models of both characters and creatures are very high-poly, and animate smoothly. Armor sets vary from character to character (full plate on the barbarian looks different than full plate on the shadow knight), which is also a big plus, so the characters never look identical (even though you can customize their appearance when you create them).

The levels consist of some of the most lush and vibrant environments to be seen in a videogame. Each level is packed solid with special effects; the ground and walls are non-dynamically bump mapped. The game sports both static and real time lighting, and even the trademark water effects from the Dark Alliance games return, looking better than ever. Champions of Norrath is pure eye candy.

But despite all of the game’s graphical goodness, there a few significant snags, like frequent framerate drops and bouts of black out. Due to the code being on a dual-layered DVD, seek times are longer; the PS2 can’t stream all of the data fast enough, resulting in characters standing on areas blanketed with black. After a few seconds, the graphics would stream onto the screen, but in some cases, the blacked out areas would never mend themselves, and we found that we’d have to reload our game. As for the drop in framerate, the game does so whenever there are only a few models onscreen, or sometimes for no reason at all. At times, the game will bog down when light sources such as torches and fire pots are presented onscreen. Oddly enough, we’ve found instances where the game runs smoothly with lots of models in motion, and only bogs down when magicians fire off spells with explosive particle effects. But with each of those moments there are two where the game’s framerate dips below normal; sometimes when the screen is jammed with enemies, and sometimes just by opening a treasure chest. The inconsistency of the slowdown is more grating than the framerate drop itself.

These misfires wouldn’t be such a big deal, as none of these things really directly affect the gameplay, but the game looks so good that flaws such as this stand out much more, especially considering that the graphics in Snowblind’s previous effort, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, were pretty much perfect. Pop-in was very minimal; everything looked great with dozens of models onscreen and never bogged down. Well, almost never. In Champions, the graphics are so spectacular that finding visual flaws in a game made by a developer with Snowblind’s pedigree is a let-down. We’d prefer it if Snowblind were to reduce the quality of the visuals, if need be, to keep a much steadier (read: flawless) framerate. Luckily, the framerate stays pretty much the same no matter how many players are in the game. The amount of slowdown you’ll get won’t change much, whether you’re in a single-player game or a four-player one.

Sound – The audio in Champions is a very good one, sporting some quality voiceovers and neat sound effects. There are some truly horrible voice performances now and then that can’t even get a decent British accent going, but for the most part, the voice acting is quite solid. The musical score is much better, being an eclectic mix of battle orchestra and soft melodies. The sound effects are great too, most notably when weapons hit the enemy or characters. If fighting an armored goblin for example, you’ll hear the clanking of metal, whereas when battling with an unarmed creature, the sounds of slicing flesh can be heard. It’s a neat and underappreciated effect.

Sadly, the dual-layer DVD issue plagues the sound package slightly too. Because the PS2 is bogged down with data, it takes extra time to load the dialogue of NPC’s, often resulting in the player being able to read everything in the text box before the character even begins speaking. This can happen in cutscenes too, greatly throwing off the normally-fantastic lip synching. While not a huge deal, just the fact that little things like this weren’t addressed before the game’s release is a disappointment.

Bottom Line - A few significant bugs aside, Champions of Norrath is one of the top games on the PlayStation 2, and is by far, the pinnacle of the action/RPG subgenre. The disc is packed full with content that easily eclipses that of most other games, and its all grade-A quality from beginning to end. The game supports up to four players either online or off, and the randomly-generated content, from the vividly-detailed levels to the 10,000-plus items and random enemy placement, help make Champions of Norrath one of the most replayable games on the market. Only the dual-layer DVD bugs tarnish the experience enough to bring the score down. But even with these annoyances, the game is still phenomenal; so much so that people who wouldn’t normally like this type of game may find themselves getting hooked. It’d be criminal to let this game pass you by. Champions of Norrath kicks some serious ass.

Review by Brendon Hivner