Age of Conan

I've played the PvP beta, the open beta and now early access.  I think when reviewing I should give some of my background so my biases are clear up front.  I've played pretty much every mmorpg that has ever been released and certainly all the big ones to a pretty high lvl.

I like exploring and doing quests.  I'm not a big fan of PvP.  I've played PvP and prefer games with real pvp repercusions and/or pvp team type games.  Definitely not open pvp.  So I rolled on a PvE server when I started in EA.

I have played in EA for about 10-15 hours in two main sessions where I played a good number of hours.  I have made two characters an assassin and a hearld of X.  My assassin is lvl 24.

Graphics

I'll start with what I think is the best feature of the game.  The graphics are both technically top of the line as well as artistically.  To contrast a couple current games; Wow is a game with technically rather low end graphics capabilities however with extremely good artistry.  Vanguard other then some tech issues which cause hitching is technically very high end but artistically not very good.

So a bit more.  In AoC the artwork is very conanish.  It is brutal and exotic looking.  It is artistically done with just the right flair to feel somewhat realistic while at the same time being exotic and fantastic.  It very much breaks out of the 2d model which is to say cities are huge in both width and breadth but also in the vertical element.  There are walkways high above and intricate building structures towering over the walkways.  There is a very strong use of the vertical element in building the environments not just in cities but in the wilderness as well. 

The wilderness areas are lush with fauna, animals, and plantlife.  There are rivers and lakes and ruins and small towns everywhere.  From any hilltop you can see several interesting places to explore.

Color is used everywhere in just the right amounts to keep the environment interesting while not being excessive to feel unreal. 

Armor and equipment is also very nice being layered pretty well and varied in style and type.  So when you wear a shirt it is loose and it shows your chest as the neck is open and it looks like something a pirate or rough scoundrel would wear.  Weapons also look good.  From the last day of OB we saw some really amazing armor, my HoX looked like some exotic savage with small arrows actually poking through his cheeks and nose and a lose corded series of loops hanging down over his neck forming a tunic of sorts.

Another aspect is the environmenttals.  There are birds flying in the harbor and they are very well detailed, there are mists in the air and beams of light shining down through the trees.  Dust and things moving making the environments feel alive, exotic and sometimes spooky.  cities are kinda dirty with bottles and trash scattered appropriately or maybe a corpse of some animal with flies circling it.   In a balcony above you might see a woman looking down watching passer bys.  You will see dogs an cats and kids running around.  There are gatherings of people or soldiers roaming the streets in groups.

Water in the game is really amazing.  It ripples and moves and as you swim you leave a wake behind you.  Underneath it is misty and it deforms your vision like water.  There are bubbles as you swim.  And unlike many games there is good detail under the water.  Rocks, coral, colored reafs and shiprecks.  One thing I didn't see was any fish....

Animations are better then many games but I'd not consider them the best.  The movement of capes for example isn't as smooth as some games and the combat animations while responsive and appropriate are not the best either.  However animations are still very good.

Spell effects are ok but also not fantastic.  i'd probably consider them the least impressive part of the graphical features of the game.

Sounds

Another important aspect of the environment are the sounds.  The music is very well done and I am sure some of it was actually taken from the old conan movie.  The background music is well done and changes as you go places or enter combat.  It fades in and out adding to the game without being noise.  Sound effects are everywhere.  You hear birds or you might hear the sound of flies buzing, or a bum burping, of the sounds of trees.  As you walk your footsteps make appropriate sounds.  Water makes spashing sounds as you walk.  Or wood thumping.  The sound effects in combat are very good as well.

Quests

quests are very well done with cut scenes kinda like never winter nights as you carry on your dialog.  The writing for dialog is good with lots of lore and each interaction with an npc generally has multiple choices in the dialog tree allowing for an even richer experience.  I don't think I've seen any cases where the choice of dialog actually affects the outcome of the interaction but it is still welcome.  I was a bit disappointed in the lack of voiceovers once you leave the starting city.  It was amazingly well done and really added to the feel of the game to have these very well done voiceovers for every quest.

Another unique aspect of the quests is the use of cutscenes during the execution of quests.  This is kinda like some of the main quests in Lord of the Rings.  Typically these are instanced what are called destiny quests.  For example you might be eavesdroping on a conversation and it plays out in a cutscene like format with nice animations and voice acting.

Another nice aspect is the use of solo quests instances.  This is something that is very similar to Lord of the Rings as you do the destiny quest you spend a lot of time in solo instances which makes the game play very much like a single player rpg with some really unique scripted events and encounters.

Quest mechanics outside the solo quests are pretty standard fare.  Kill x mobs, kill mobs and collect y, goto a location, talk to someone of deliver something, harvest something.  It was good and the capabilities were creatively used but there wasn't much unique here.  I'd still say eq2 has the best quests.

Combat System

The combat system is unique in that there is no autoattack.  You hit a key to swing your weapon and it does an arc of damage.  The targeting is automatic and is mostly used to see the target shields.  Shields are brackets on the sides and above the target.  There are a total of 3 shields.  So all 3 could be on one side or one on each side.  They change as you fight and the mob adapts to where you are hitting it to defend.  This makes combat engaging and fun.  You also have special attacks that are also directional.  the icons have clips in the top center or in the corners to indicate the direction of there attacks.  This is useful so you can determine factor what side to attack and you can manipulate the mob by attacking a different side a few times to make an opening.  All in all it is great fun. 

The one down side is that special attacks are followed up with combos of regular attacks.  So you do a hotkey to do some special attack and a icon list pops up on the screen and tells you that you heed to do 4 directional attacks in a code to execute the special attack.  Maybe left, left, right, center.  If you miss one of the attacks or move then you loose the special attack and it is grayed out till it refreshes.   This can be challenging in the heat of battle when you are under attack by several mobs...  When you most need to do your special attacks the frenzy of the moment makes mistakes likely which in turn ensures death.  So good dexterity and watching the key combos is critically improtant.

Another aspect of combat is the ability to adjust your shielding and the ability to actively block.  I tested blocking and it seems to eat endurance really fast.  It might be useful for a tank in a group trying to buy some time to heal up.  I think the endurance usage needs to be decreases some for this to be useful.  Then again maybe as your endurance pool grows it will be better.  The shielding thing is like mobs you can adjust if your shields are on one side or another.  You can also see where you are being hit as your shield kinda briefly flashes on the screen when you are hit.  Also as you fight you will see the casting bar of the enemy.  So if you know what side a special attack is going to come from because you recognize the attack you have several seconds to adjust your shielding and theoretically block the incoming attack.  This will definitely enable players who are both good at manipulating the interface and learn the attacks of enemies to defeat the incoming attack.

In the end player skill at playing the UI and knowledge of the attacks will almost certainly be the deciding factor in most any encounter and most expecially pvp encounters.

Armor and equipment are pretty standard with various stats and defensive of attack characteristics.

There is no real death penalty.  At lvl 10 when you die you take 2 off your atk or spell ability.  Around lvl 13 this was a bit less then a 5% decrease.  Assuming attack goes up as you level and the debuf doesn't this will quickly be meaningless.  The debuf should last 30 minutes but it was much shorter then that for me.  You can also stack upto 5 debufs at once which would be a more meaningful debuf.  If you return to where you died there is a tomb if you recover the tomb it clears the debuf.

Finally there is a couple other features.  double taping directions and players are solid creating obsticles with their bodies.  Double tapping jumps your character in the direction you tap.  It also gives a short buf like double tapping forward causes your attack to have a chance of stunning your opponenet, double tapping back gives you an evasion bonus for melee.  Double taping to the side makes you harder to hit with thrown weapons and spells.

Instancing

The game uses a lot of instancing and is very similar to EQ2 or Lord of the Rings.  Instances can replicate based on populations in an instance and there is a simple way to switch instances.  The group leader can also summon members of the group to their instance.  When you are in a group and zone into an instance it always kept my group together.

There are various npcs like boat captains and stuff that will transport you to various zones.  So it is kinda like the bell in eq2.

Many of the dungeon areas I went to in the starting part of the game were all shared instances not private ones.  So you will see many other people and there is some competion for spawns.  However you can also swich instances pretty easily to find one that isn't so populated.  However when you swich it respawns you at a bind point which is also where you go when you die.

Instances for dungeon like areas also has an option to run in normal mode or elite modes.  This lets you fight in a small group or solo for normal or for more challenge do elite mode with a group.  Elite gives more xp per kill.  I didn't try elite mode so I'm not sure how the loot compares.

Character development

As you level you gain combat ability and spells.  This is automatic although I did see some class scroll vendors in the open beta which didn't have anything to sell but might mean that there is something you buy at some point to learn a spell?  You quickly game most of your core abilities so that by level 20 you probably have something like 80-90 of all your abilities.  After that you just get periodic upgrades.  it also felt to me like classes were move uniquely divided and that you had fewer abilities and spells then other games.

Also as you level you get skill points and you gain access to new skills.  For example everyone gains access to things like hiding, perception, climbing, etc.  You have to decide how many points to put into these skills and numberous others.  This gives some nice customization options.

Also you gain feats at lvl 10.  You can then start adding specialization in one of 3 areas.  This is very similar to wow.  This lets you specialize and gain unique abilities.

Character customization

This is the best in any game.  You have a ton of options to apply tatoos, scars, adjust facial features, etc. 

Misc features

The UI in the game is rather basic but functional.  Things like the guild UI are very sparse compared to richer games like EQ2.  Customization of the UI is limited to reforming elements and moving them around.  Moders will be at work.  The UI customization is similar to Lotr or eq2 not like wow.  There is no scripting language.

Inventory management seems pretty small.  You start with one page for items, quest items, and tradeskill materials.  There is one bag slot to upgrade your inventory space.  It seemed to me like I was always running out.  Bag upgrades are very expensive and only give a small amount of additional space.

There is a trader/mail/bank combo interface on trader npcs.  I played with it a bit on open beta and it is functional although not very fancy.  The bank inventory space was pretty large but I think might have also held items for sale.  So it's a trade off on saving space vs selling space.  Currently the traders are off in OB.

You can have a group of players and it shows dots on the mini map for group members.   The dots seems to disappear sometimes.  Loot rules are standard where you can do need before greed.  Common loot however looks like it is FFA.  However in many cases common loot is just left to rot and anyone can loot it.  Common loot isn't worth much and with the limited inventory space most people dont' want to waste space for it unless it stacks.

Technical issues

In open beta I hated the game and was frustrated beyond belief.  The game crashed continuously on me and 90% of the time I couldn't even get into the game.  The performance in game was aweful.  Zoning times were sometimes measured in more then a minute and when you were in an instance sometimes the game would stall everytime you tried moving for multiple seconds.  Giving you Seconds per Frame as opposed to Frames per second.

That said the game has been pretty flawless in EA.  I've had no performance issues and run it on high settings with some things cranked up and AA 4x at 1920x1200.  I get around 30+ fps even when standing at a zone in spot with maybe 10 other players or more.  I get no lag or stalling at all.  Performance is smooth and great.

I've had no crashes of bugs that affected game play.  I did at one time have a bug where when I switched from armor with sleaves to armor without sleaves my arm was missing.  And there are normal graphic glitches where things clip through clothing or armor.  Sometimes it can be distracting when a breast keeps poking though the tunic of a cortisan every time she breaths...

Also npcs and players tended to sometimes pop into existance much closer then you would like.  I didn't run into a problem with this adventuring but running around in town looking for a quest npc could be frustrating since the question mark doesn't appear on the map if the npc isn't appearing either.

Overall

I think AoC is one of the best games in awhile.  It feels fun and unique.  The immersiveness and the feel of the world is excellent and I'd say the best of any game to date.  The quests, lore and richness of the environment make the game interesting and immersive.  The attention to detail in things like the underwater areas and bubbles and environmentals all add up to  the best experience in any mmorpg to date.

The combat system is fun and entertaining.  The combos will not be good for everyone especially people that don't like arcade like game play.  However for people that like this style of play and get into pvp there is real potential for a combat system that will reward player skill at playing their character and knowledge of combat to far exceed the ability another player in spite of skill, level, and equipment advantages.

I personally don't like the combat system much but I can definitely see where it might be the best system yet for a PvP type game play.

funcom did a great job with the EA launch.  Assuming they continue this might be one of the best launches ever.

I would highly recommend this game to players and I'd consider it to be the best overall game on the market today considering all aspects of the game.

WOW, you were not kidding when you said LONG review, lol I kinda took that for granted.  Anyways, very good detail you have gone into, and I am glad to hear after your extensive playtimes that you highly recommend it...cant wait to play!

you hit this perfect. I agree with everything 100% on all your cons and pros

I agree with this review. I also think this is one of the best mmo launches I've seen. As far as launch quality, the game will scale with newer hardware for some time and I've had no problems running smoothly. Comparing it to so many other launches they are doing a fantastic job.

The only complaints I can come up with so far are the chat box and group tracking challenges.

Unfortunately, too many people don't care about experiencing the game, they want to blaze through the lvls and get to the end game - and then complain about having seen everything.

The quests in the early part of the game are outstanding, the voice overs add great immersion and many of them are far better than the standard kill x many of these fare, even when that's all your doing. There are many quests to do. I don't think they intended for you to do them all. You can do what you like or come along and lvl just fine.

PVP will always be a challenge. There are gankers and it's not uncommon to target a player(not in your group) on accident in the heat of battle. I accidentally waxed some poor passerby before I even realized it.

Again, this is a good review. I also would recommend this game.

Seems like a balanced review, without any "this sucks cause i dont like it" or "this is the best ever omg omg".

Nicely writter, very calm aproach and mature review.

Very nice write up and I would have to agree with just about everything you stated.