Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Review
The Age has come
by Elandarex
reviewed on PC
Sliding your character
Newcomers to Hyboria are presented with a selection of three Human cultures to choose from as well as twelve classes separated into Soldiers, Priests, Rogues, and Mages. And yes, you can create a female character and take their top off. Where Character creation really shines is in the control you have over your avatar’s appearance. Apart from a plentiful array of various faces, hair styles, tattoos and scars, sliders are available that enable you to customize the size of every body part, ranging from arm and chest size to eye angle and chin width.
With so much effort put into creating your persona it’s a good thing that the visuals in Age of Conan are top-notch, even rivalling many of the latest single player experiences. Of course, that’s only if you have a machine that can push it to its fullest. The game’s steep system requirements will prevent many from experiencing the graphical splendour of Hyboria’s beautifully realized environments. Fortunately, the graphics scale quite well.
Inner workings
Age of Conan’s interface certainly doesn’t look bad, but it is ultimately no more than serviceable. It abides by most of the conventions set by World of Warcraft several years back, which makes it come off as feeling somewhat stale. One improvement Funcom made to the HUD was in the Journal page, which is split across the screen with the quest list on one side, and the descriptions on the other. The improvement I speak of however is the map located underneath the quest list that provides clear directions to the selected quest’s objectives; nothing revolutionary, but a welcome convenience nonetheless.
The quests are a marked improvement over what is typically encountered in the MMORPG genre. Though the quests themselves are standard MMO fare, Funcom opted to employ a dialogue system first made famous in Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic. With the ability to select responses from your character’s perspective when interacting with NPCs instead of simply hitting accept, the immersion of Age of Conan’s story has been improved immensely. Couple that with full voice acting consisting of excellent quality in the expansive starter area, as well as competent lip synching, and the story in Age of Conan actually becomes an experience that is worth paying heed to.
It’s only natural then with such an emphasis on story that Age of Conan would be very solo-friendly, though thankfully it doesn’t leave more social gamers out to rot. Every major questing field has two distinct forms of instancing: Normal and Epic. While players are free to group in the normal instance, grouping is essential to the epic ones. The only difference between the two is that epic enemies have scads of health and provide greater experience rewards as well as improved loot. This effectively satisfies both gaming styles, leaving no one hanging out to dry. The lack of built-in voice chat is something of a let-down for grouping, though most players make use of their own chat servers so it isn’t a big deal by any means.
One aspect of Age of Conan that may put off the hardcore and draw in the casual is how quickly character’s advance in level. The level cap in Age of Conan is 80, yet despite the imposing number it is a ceiling that is easier to reach than almost any other MMO. This isn’t really a drawback, as it reduces the grind somewhat, and levelling up is very rewarding. Every class gains abilities automatically which is a refreshing change of pace from having to pay trainers to improve. Primary stats are also automatic, and every level from 10 on provides the character with Feat Points which are essentially the Talent system ripped straight from World of Warcraft.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
