Member
Reviews: Review
Lineage II Yourself!
Pros
• major updates in the form of
Chronicles
• beautiful graphics
• nice beginning tutorial
• Castle Sieges
• uber monster
• focus on clans
Cons
• extremely
limited character customization
• laggy in crowded areas
• sluggish controls
• time investment is too high to get
to the good stuff
• lacks strong hook to get you
excited about the game early
The Bottom
Line - Hardcore gamers should enjoy all
the content directed towards them, but casual and
even regular gamers will be turned off by the
game's very slow pace.
Link: Official
Site
Review
Let's say someone
asked you whether Lineage or EverQuest had
more subscribers worldwide. If you replied
"What is Lineage?" you would not be in
the minority if you lived in the United States.
Surprisingly, Lineage hammered EverQuest in terms
of subscribers due its enormous popularity in
Korea. However, Lineage did not make a great
impact when it finally made it to the U.S. in
2001.
Now, the sequel
is being released in the U.S. from the start with
vastly improved graphics. This game is truly
beautiful to behold and you can see that beauty as
early as the log-in screen believe it or not. You
are instantly greeted with a lush scene that
almost feels like a real paradise. The beautiful
graphics do not decline one bit in the actual game
either. However, you will run across my first
complaint with this game not more than few seconds
after that gorgeous log-in screen. For such an
amazing looking game, you have very little control
over what your character looks like. For example,
I created an Orc and I saw dozens of carbon copies
of myself walking around villages. Not exactly a
way to go about getting people interested in their
online avatars.
Moving back to
getting started in the game, Lineage 2 does a good
job of walking you through all the steps of
learning the basics of the game. You are assigned
a few mundane tasks and you carry them out with
hints along the way. When doing these tasks you
will notice that your character moves rather
awkwardly. Maybe the best way to describe it would
be like a hunchback. In addition, the interface
feels a little awkward as well since you have to
click on an NPC or monster twice to do anything.
In the game
itself, you will notice a very vibrant world that
is usually fairly busy. It is in the real busy
areas that you will experience significant amounts
of lag. A few times I was even booted off the
server because it got so bad. Once you get past
this lag, you will start hunting with training
weapons and SLOWLY gain levels and money. I was
somewhat amazed at how expensive all the equipment
was even after gaining 4 or 5 levels. Thus, you
will need to spend an enormous amount of time in
Lineage 2 if you want to do anything worthwhile in
the game. In fact, this is one of the slowest
paced MMORPGs that I have played yet.
However, Lineage
2 does have a lot to offer MMORPGers besides just
great looking graphics. Look for massive updates
known as Chronicles on a regular basis to provide
a nice steady supply of new content. The first
Chronicle finally delivered one of the more hyped
features of Lineage 2, Castle Sieges. Castle
Sieges can occur on 5 castles and you must make
appointments for them. Unlike other massively
multiplayer games such as Dark Age of Camelot,
Anarchy Online, and PlanetSide, these high profile
events are performed by player-created clans
instead of preset factions.
Although special
events like Castle Sieges garner more attention,
the feature that interested me the most was having
one ultimate monster, Antharas the Land Dragon.
Yes, millions of video and PC games have had an
ultimate end boss in the past but I like the fact
that its being done in a high profile way on a
MMORPG. Besides, players that have spent enough
time to get strong enough to face this monster
deserve to have one clearly definable uber
confrontation. Due to this extremely high time
investment, Lineage 2 will only likely appeal to
the hardcore gamer.
Game Ogre's
Rating (out of 10):
8.75
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