A Review of Champions Online

[Terin]

As requested by Razor I'll go ahead and review Champions Online. I'll also try to remain non-biased even though I spent 50 bones on it.

We'll start with the character creation. Right out of the gate you can pretty much customize your character anyway you want. you're choices are immense, albeit not infinite (I tried to make Baron Ünderbheit but I couldn't get him exactly how he is, BUT CLOSE!! Also it doesn't recognize special characters.) Still, I have yet to see someone who looks anything like my characters, if you're looking for noticeable uniqueness in an MMO, you got it.

Now lets move onto how quests are done. Now I never played CoX but I have played WAR, and it seems that Cryptic has taken a nod from their quest system. You get a quest, and on your map there will be a circle around the area that your quest is referring to. It will also update the circles in the event of a quest chain, which is handy.

It's also noted that if you're killing for a quest, you don't have to tag the mob first. Generally if you do any damage at all to it and some beefed up toon comes along and kills him, you'll still get credit. However I'm not sure how they handle item collection off of a dead mob, you might have to tag it first.

When your character levels up, you go to the Powerhouse (available after the opening tutorial) to learn new powers, talents, etc. Now this is where things get a little sticky for me. It seems to be a fixed system, so you may be hoping for a new power but level 12 may just give you a talent instead (talents buff your stats).

However, if you do get to choose a power, you don't have to stick to your tree. So a sorcerer type hero could dabble in gadgetry if they wanted, and you can totally customize your powers to be anything you want within any of the power trees. The only foreseeable downside is many of these powers are identical to one another, so you'd only be seeing a different animation.

Also, some powers have prerequisites that come from their respective tree, so if you want to summon a golem, you can't spend all of your time in the Munitions tree. It should also be noted that you can change your energy builder. Your energy builder is a basic power that you choose at the beginning of the game, and what you use to build your energy bar, which is what your other powers use up.

Now lets get onto one of the cool things: Flight. Flight (or, travel power as they aren't all flying) is available to you as soon as you finish the tutorial area (which will put you at around level 6.) You have many options for flying, be it basic flight, flying on a disc, swinging ala spiderman, superjumping, rocket boosters, even tunneling. That's not all of them but suffice it to say you have options.

Many people enjoy tunneling because they can't be targeted while doing so, whereas with flight if you get too low an enemy might shoot you or worse, you could fly by an anti-aircraft turret that will launch a missile at you. Of course if you're quick on, err off your feet you can zap the missile before it reaches you.

The stages are mapped out a little differently. They don't connect, but you travel between them via helicopter. I'm not sure if I like this or not, but due to the convenience of flight you're never stuck out in the middle of nowhere so getting home isn't ever a problem.

Let's move on to crafting. Crafting is divided into 3 main categories: Mysticism, Arms, and Science. From these they break down into 3 more specialized classes. You craft by collecting materials out in the stage, or alternatively you can also break down items for their parts. It's worth noting that each item has an alignment to the 3 crafting categories, and you can't break down an Arms item if you're a Mysticism crafter, or vise versa. I can say with confidence that the fastest and easiest way to raise your crafting skill is to break down items.

The music fits in most of the time with the game, and the controls are like most MMOs and the key binds are customizable. Currently the level cap is 40, but they've already announced new content. Whether or not that includes a level cap rise is yet to be seen. I could go on and on but I already feel like I'm babbling lol.

My overall score for Champions Online is 7/10. That may seem a bit low but I don't think any game comes out of the gate perfect. Is it worth 50 bucks? In my opinion, not currently, but it has the flexibility and the potential to be. Unless you have to be capped out ASAP, I'd say wait awhile. Seeing as I've already spent my cash, I'll keep the sub til I get bored.

For those in the beta, not much has changed, other than the nerf on all powers to enhance the difficulty of the game, which I agree with.

-T

[Razer]

Thanks Terin, you covered virtually anything I would have asked. I got a bit lost in some of the terms but just a few. It sounds (creatively) like GURPS (which should be an MMO) so I grasped it well...I think...we'll see when it comes out for the 360. Also, hopefully by that time it'll have some of the basic bugs worked out since I know I'll already have to deal with the console bugs it'll have.

Only thing I' left asking is whether there is a cap on chars per account. Like is it a basic total of points per account and you can make as many chars as you can buy? Is it 'X' amount per account? I see you can have more than one but what's the limit and how does it work. I would have maybe three I'd probably do (one for PO, one for myself, and maybe one for my son or daughter) so I just wanna wrap my head around this as much as possible before I jump in wildly.

Very interested in this.

[Terin]

That I don't know, I've made 3 characters and there's room for more

[Chibi Knight]

I think you can have 8 characters max, unless if you get the lifetime subscription, then its 16.

[Shino]