Fun with Factions
I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by! It's almost November at this point, which means the deluge of Christmas titles is about to hit! And what does that mean? It means I'm going to break the bank buying games for the next two months, and half of them won't even get around to being played until sometime in the middle of next summer. Hell, I still haven't broken the shrink-wrap on F.E.A.R., and it's been in my game drawer since spring.
Most importantly, we are weeks away from Neverwinter Nights 2 landing in my hands. D&D in videogame format is drug that I have no natural resistances to. I failed my save long ago. The fact that the old Black Isle guys (now Obsidian) built the game is icing on the cake. To this day, Planescape: Torment remains the best story-in-game-form I have every played. I just can't wait.
In the mean time, I've been playing quite of bit of Guild Wars: Factions. To be honest, the whole Guild Wars thing was kind of lost on me the first time around. I bought the game and tried to play it a couple of times, but it just never made sense. Not that it's a particularly complex game, but it definitely has its own conventions. The Prophecies campaign (at least the pre-searing piece) was gorgeous but just felt completely empty to me. The skill system seemed limiting, and I never could figure out the crafting/item system. To make matters worse, just about the time I started feeling vaguely comfortable with the game's basic mechanics, they threw The Searing at me, completely pulling the rug out from under me again.
Needless to say, factions came and went with little interest on my part. Finally, a few weeks back, I started to jones for some MMO goodness, but with NWN2 and FFXII on the horizon, I wanted MMO without the long-term commitment. So, I decided to pick up Factions, figuring that I could play for a bit, and then put in on hold while I dove into the aforementioned titles. Luckily, I ended up much more impressed with Factions than I ever was with the original. While the core mechanics remain mostly unchanged, the new player experience has improved by leaps and bounds. Things like classes & subclasses, skills, attributes and item crafting are all explained much more directly, and the chain of opening quests are entertaining while doing a great job of leading you through the game's core mechanics. I suddenly got it, and now I'm fascinated with the whole meta-game of skill collection and selection. The game has so many levels of strategy and nuance that I can suddenly see why it has it has such a huge following.
Within just a couple days I had my Ritualist/Mesmer up to level 15. I look forward to finishing this campaign and going back and playing the first campaign now that it all makes sense. Nightfall looks impressive as well, adding an entire third campaign with a decidedly middle-eastern flavor. Compared to the first game, I've also like the addition of more utility-type classes. I was a big fan of the Paladin and Shaman classes in WoW, and it was nice to see the same type of support classes appear in Guild Wars. I can't wait to try out the new Paragon class from Nightfall. Too bad you can use the new classes to start the earlier campaigns. That would have been a really neat feature...
I am a little confused that I'm already level 15 in a game that level caps at 20, and I've just gotten out of the starter area. I'm guessing that most of the missions are ran after you have already capped out? This would mean that the real focus of the game is coming up with strategically useful and synergistic skill combinations, as well as the out-and-out PVP battles - which I'm okay with. I'm already starting to feel my computer-controlled henchmen become less effective, and I'm wondering if the the game is trying to push me out of the nest into real grouping... Either way, I'm having fun with it, and it's nice to see a sequel that not only focuses on adding lots of new content for the hardcore player, but also tunes the game's presentation to bring in new players. The experience give me high hopes that Nightfall will continue this trend, and might just be be the most polished Guild Wars yet.
Most importantly, we are weeks away from Neverwinter Nights 2 landing in my hands. D&D in videogame format is drug that I have no natural resistances to. I failed my save long ago. The fact that the old Black Isle guys (now Obsidian) built the game is icing on the cake. To this day, Planescape: Torment remains the best story-in-game-form I have every played. I just can't wait.
In the mean time, I've been playing quite of bit of Guild Wars: Factions. To be honest, the whole Guild Wars thing was kind of lost on me the first time around. I bought the game and tried to play it a couple of times, but it just never made sense. Not that it's a particularly complex game, but it definitely has its own conventions. The Prophecies campaign (at least the pre-searing piece) was gorgeous but just felt completely empty to me. The skill system seemed limiting, and I never could figure out the crafting/item system. To make matters worse, just about the time I started feeling vaguely comfortable with the game's basic mechanics, they threw The Searing at me, completely pulling the rug out from under me again.
Needless to say, factions came and went with little interest on my part. Finally, a few weeks back, I started to jones for some MMO goodness, but with NWN2 and FFXII on the horizon, I wanted MMO without the long-term commitment. So, I decided to pick up Factions, figuring that I could play for a bit, and then put in on hold while I dove into the aforementioned titles. Luckily, I ended up much more impressed with Factions than I ever was with the original. While the core mechanics remain mostly unchanged, the new player experience has improved by leaps and bounds. Things like classes & subclasses, skills, attributes and item crafting are all explained much more directly, and the chain of opening quests are entertaining while doing a great job of leading you through the game's core mechanics. I suddenly got it, and now I'm fascinated with the whole meta-game of skill collection and selection. The game has so many levels of strategy and nuance that I can suddenly see why it has it has such a huge following.
Within just a couple days I had my Ritualist/Mesmer up to level 15. I look forward to finishing this campaign and going back and playing the first campaign now that it all makes sense. Nightfall looks impressive as well, adding an entire third campaign with a decidedly middle-eastern flavor. Compared to the first game, I've also like the addition of more utility-type classes. I was a big fan of the Paladin and Shaman classes in WoW, and it was nice to see the same type of support classes appear in Guild Wars. I can't wait to try out the new Paragon class from Nightfall. Too bad you can use the new classes to start the earlier campaigns. That would have been a really neat feature...
I am a little confused that I'm already level 15 in a game that level caps at 20, and I've just gotten out of the starter area. I'm guessing that most of the missions are ran after you have already capped out? This would mean that the real focus of the game is coming up with strategically useful and synergistic skill combinations, as well as the out-and-out PVP battles - which I'm okay with. I'm already starting to feel my computer-controlled henchmen become less effective, and I'm wondering if the the game is trying to push me out of the nest into real grouping... Either way, I'm having fun with it, and it's nice to see a sequel that not only focuses on adding lots of new content for the hardcore player, but also tunes the game's presentation to bring in new players. The experience give me high hopes that Nightfall will continue this trend, and might just be be the most polished Guild Wars yet.
Labels: Dungeons and Dragons, MMORPGs, PC games, RPGs, video games
