Age of Conan Hyborian Adventure
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Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures is a Funcoms all new Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
The game has been delayed time and time again, yet finally it has arrived, and once you get past the 4 hours of patch downloads, regular FAQ forum visits, the game may well be playable.
The great thing is, put aside all of these issues as once you’re in, you may possibly, like myself realise that it has all been worth it.
I saw this game previewed almost a year ago, and the one thing that stood out and concerned most of us was the complex yet potentially fantastic combat system. My concerns still existed when I finally began to play the finished game.
What you get is an oasis of lush forest filled paradise. Cities bustling with life and lots of dead bodies scattered throughout the game. Funcom have managed to address a lot of the main issues, but there are still plenty of glitches to keep them busy for a few more months. The occasional blank mini-map, the regular grind of your state of the art pc and graphical glitches that pop up every so often leaves a lot to be desired on this resource hungry adventurer’s paradise.
Starting out you first need to design your character, choosing which faction they’re from such as Cimmeria, Aquilonia or Stygia. Give them tattoos and scars if you like then choose their class. Not all classes are available as this depends on what you have chosen to be. You can choose to be a Barbarian, so magic abilities will not be available but then there’s more chance of you lopping a giants head off then a sorcerer has. If you prefer the more stealthy approach, pick an assassin and so on. So the game begins, and your first mission requires you to rescue a scantily dressed pretty maiden in distress. Well, that was it for me. I was hooked. Killing brutes and rescuing the ladies, it’s these little things in life that make me happy. Once you have completed this and put simply, completed your induction in to the world of basic combat and understanding your HUD, you make your way through the jungle to find the city of Tortuga.
The real action begins here, eventually. Minor missions before you enter gives you a small taster of mission styles which is all pretty standard. Collect certain items and deliver them to be rewarded with another item that you may or may not need or use later. On the RPG side of the game, things can seem quite standard, that’s because we felt that they were. There was nothing truly outstanding to make you feel that the game is unique in its genre.
There has been a lot of hype regarding Age of Conan, although it has quietened slightly since its release. What is unique about Conan and what truly sets it above all others in its class is the combat. Combat has been one of the major factors in the constant delays, and I can assure all who have played the good old single devastation button press games to death which have drowned the MMORPG market of late, this is not one of them.
Developers have actually made a combat system that is fun and involving, requires the player to approach each opponent thinking and needing to time his attacks. For starters, you have to use the number pad to choose which attack to execute and from which direction. Attack their left side, their right side or straight down the middle. Just don’t expect to kill a local thug with a single strike.
Enemies will defend and block your attacks so you need to work around their weak side were there defence is not as strong whilst blocking and countering their barrage of strikes.
Combos are available as you progress which again are not executed via a single mouse click or button press.
Combat is the main factor in keeping you moving forward in the game. The missions can become a little dull after two weeks of playing so what better than trying to learn new combos in which allow you to kill in a more gruesome way. You do need to pay attention to the prompts as pulling off a five key combination with devastating results can be tricky. I say devastating because it is. Time a strike to perfection and you can even kill an opponent with that single strike. Each devastator is gruesome and thoroughly satisfying which to be fair, we never tired of it.
The levelling up system is your usual affair, but be warned, for the first 20 levels or so, you’re on you own. Once you get past this mark, that’s when the group missions start to flood in. Guilds are available to join and new features become available the higher up you get. Whether this is enough to keep you coming back is another matter. The graphics in Conan’s world beats all competition. This is another reason to some of the major grind time you’ll regularly get.
The rendering throughout the game is stunning, and some of the scenery is genuinely jaw dropping. Conan’s home lands of Cimmeria did it for me.
The soundtrack to the game is superb as the tempo changes depending on your immediate situation and the sound effects are rather good too. However, the main selling point of this game is the combat.
Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures has many flaws in these early stages, yet once these problems are ironed out over the next couple of months, what you will have is the best damn MMORPG available to date. The combat, the sound and the graphics, when the glitches are sleeping, are all the best you can get. Direct X 10 has yet to be implemented, but when that happens, prepare for eye watering beauty in a world designed to be as savage as one could imagine.
Reviewed by Montana
Publishers: Funcom
Developer: In-house
Genre: MMORPG
Website: www.ageofconan.com
