Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings
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- ESRB Rating: M - (Mature)
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Genre: Action Adventure
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Asherons Call 2: Age of Incompleteness
Pros
Beautiful game, immersive environments.
Cons
Lack of content, doesn't live up to promises.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Overall, this game promises the sky, and cannot deliver. It entertains with it's polish for a week or two, then fades as it's shallow-ness is revealed.
Asheron's Call 2 (AC2 hereafter) showed great promise when it was being touted by Turbine as the true "next generation" of MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). The list of promises was amazing. Reactive environments, volumetric weather systems, multiple quests ala AC1, amazingly deep crafting systems, a player based economy, multiple quests, and the chance to rebuild the world. Quite a list, and sadly, AC2 falls well short.
Logging in, the player is confronted with a good tutorial that takes players through the basics of the game. However, even veterans have to push through it when they create new characters, no matter how long they played. The voluntary tutorial of AC1 was better in this regard.
The world is gorgeous. Details and music almost overwhelm the senses. One could get lost wandering about and watching reflections off of the water while the sun rises. Under all this gloss is a seriously lacking game.
There are innovations, to be sure. The music system is to be treasured as probably the greatest purely social achievement in an MMORPG to date. However, the game falls short in almost every category.
Crafting is shallow, focusing only on crafting weapons and armor (save for dye craft and crafts to improve other crafts). Yes, it is complex, but hardly deep. You make things that kill or keep you from being killed, or make things to help you make the things that kill. That's about it.
The player based economy has already all but collapsed, as players cannot craft items better than they can find. Why save up to trade for something when you can just kill a larger monster and get what you need from it?
The cities already exist, just in a state of decay. None of the buildings can be entered, and the "rebuilding" that was promised is nothing more than cosmetic updates to said buildings each month depending on the average population of the town. There is no housing, either, and no vendor-capabilities for players.
So with no deep crafting (nor any of value), no chance to rebuild the world, no housing to decorate and play with, no vaults to keep more items that one can carry, and no real player economy, what is left to the player?
Quests and hunting. The quests are fun in some cases, but most of the time they are "run to point A, kill creature, get item, run back" type quests. Not a whole lot of variability, and not many quests altogether. While not having many quests might be understandable in a game where the players have something more to do, having this few when there is nothing else to do is a mistake.
After the quests, there is hunting. Lots and lots and lots of hunting. Repetative for the most part, and very dull after a while. Creature AI is poor, and it is easy to defeat most creatures in the game. The ones that can't be defeated easily are constantly perched, as it is the only way most creatures of that level can be killed in a time commensurate to the awards they give.
This brings me to the meat of the problems with AC2. The balance. Balance issues abound in this game to the point where one wonders whether it was truly tested before release. Monsters incredibly difficult to kill yield little or no experience, while some monsters and relatively easy quests yield well more than their fair share. These issues are being addressed in monthly patches, but this should have been remedied before the game was released, at least to some degree.
Logging in, the player is confronted with a good tutorial that takes players through the basics of the game. However, even veterans have to push through it when they create new characters, no matter how long they played. The voluntary tutorial of AC1 was better in this regard.
The world is gorgeous. Details and music almost overwhelm the senses. One could get lost wandering about and watching reflections off of the water while the sun rises. Under all this gloss is a seriously lacking game.
There are innovations, to be sure. The music system is to be treasured as probably the greatest purely social achievement in an MMORPG to date. However, the game falls short in almost every category.
Crafting is shallow, focusing only on crafting weapons and armor (save for dye craft and crafts to improve other crafts). Yes, it is complex, but hardly deep. You make things that kill or keep you from being killed, or make things to help you make the things that kill. That's about it.
The player based economy has already all but collapsed, as players cannot craft items better than they can find. Why save up to trade for something when you can just kill a larger monster and get what you need from it?
The cities already exist, just in a state of decay. None of the buildings can be entered, and the "rebuilding" that was promised is nothing more than cosmetic updates to said buildings each month depending on the average population of the town. There is no housing, either, and no vendor-capabilities for players.
So with no deep crafting (nor any of value), no chance to rebuild the world, no housing to decorate and play with, no vaults to keep more items that one can carry, and no real player economy, what is left to the player?
Quests and hunting. The quests are fun in some cases, but most of the time they are "run to point A, kill creature, get item, run back" type quests. Not a whole lot of variability, and not many quests altogether. While not having many quests might be understandable in a game where the players have something more to do, having this few when there is nothing else to do is a mistake.
After the quests, there is hunting. Lots and lots and lots of hunting. Repetative for the most part, and very dull after a while. Creature AI is poor, and it is easy to defeat most creatures in the game. The ones that can't be defeated easily are constantly perched, as it is the only way most creatures of that level can be killed in a time commensurate to the awards they give.
This brings me to the meat of the problems with AC2. The balance. Balance issues abound in this game to the point where one wonders whether it was truly tested before release. Monsters incredibly difficult to kill yield little or no experience, while some monsters and relatively easy quests yield well more than their fair share. These issues are being addressed in monthly patches, but this should have been remedied before the game was released, at least to some degree.
