Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Review
The Age has come
by Elandarex
reviewed on PC
Unique
Where Age of Conan differentiates itself is with its Skills. These are passive and active abilities that must be manually improved by the player with Skill Points. Skills range from Bandaging, which improves natural health regeneration, to Run Speed, the Hide skill, all the way to Climb, which enables characters to scale special surfaces in the world. What is interesting about Skill Points is that they are not only gained through levelling up, they also accumulate along with experience gained from defeating foes, which allows for more gradual growth in capability.
Though it remains to be seen whether rapid advancement will prove a hindrance due to lack of end-game content, the possibilities for Player versus Player game play seek to rectify that happenstance. Age of Conan does sport typical crafting professions, with any character able to learn every Gathering skill and one Trade skill, but the most interest lies in the Architecture skill that allows players to build entire cities for their guilds in specially designated areas. Where this comes into play for PvP is that opposing guilds are actually able to siege each other’s towns, making for what would seem to be some ridiculously entertaining experiences.
Probably the biggest deterrent against a lacklustre end-game situation is the setting itself. Howard’s Conan mythos has been fleshed out over many decades, with input from countless other contributors. The world shares some very interesting parallels with our own, from the sunken civilization of Atlantis to the Egyptian Stygians; Hyboria is a nice change of pace from the usual high-fantasy found in most MMOs.
Showing its mettle
As this game has only recently launched it isn’t exactly the most stable platform with which to find purchase. Funcom has been doing an admirable job thus far in attempting to rectify many of its underlying faults with frequent patching. Despite this, the game suffers from memory leaks and frequent crashing. DirectX 10 still isn’t supported, despite its publicity in the stages gearing up for its release, though Funcom has said that it will be available by August. At the onset of the game’s launch, Traders were removed due to an exploit, yet they have now been reinstated, and are actually quite convenient due to their combination of the features of an Auction House, Bank, and Mail service. The frequency and length of the load times in Age of Conan do much to detract from the overall experience.
If you let these hiccups in the launch of Age of Conan stop you from trying it out, you will be doing yourself a great disservice. Even with the aforementioned issues, Age of Conan is one of the most compelling gaming experiences on the market. Once its faults are corrected and new content further enhances the already phenomenal experience, Age of Conan may well be the most engaging MMO available for many years to come.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
