Champs of Norrath

[Guden Oden]

OMG, this is SUCH a blatant Diablo2/LoTR rip-off... LOL!

Also, that weird guy who sounds as if he has a frog down his throat from Outcast is doing voices for the game... Hehehe!

Okay, seriously now. The game's pretty good, though fairly tough I have to say, especially if one does not play a barbarian. Okay, so I haven't tried the cleric yet, but the wizards have a terrible start of the game without doubt (mana being a precious commodity). Also, the ranger class is pretty fragile. I did well with a dark elf girl until I reached the big bad-ass orc dude at the end of the spider level, he is rediculously overpowered for a char of the level one is when meeting him. I barely beat him using my barb using pretty much all my potions, it sure wasn't easy. Dunno how the fuck to do it with my dark elf tho, his melee attack seems pretty much unblockable, and I am not high level enough to bring a skeleton along to tank for me...

The inventory and shopping system is unneccessarily fiddly. When buying weapons and armor it's annoying having to exit just to doublecheck the properties of the stuff I'm already wearing. Also, just lumping together the items I wear and the items in my backpack (only discerning difference is stuff worn on my body is displayed with a green background). The weapon switch is nifty and stolen straight from Diablo2, but it's annoying it only switches between ranged weapons and melee, and not - for example - 1 2-handed weapon and a 1-handed + a shield.

It's weird skills don't display how much mana they cost when used, or that the game doesn't list the hit percentage anywhere so I know how much to invest in dexterity if I'm not a ranger-type character... The game designers should have copied more from Diablo2.

Other little quirks belong in the bug department. I was once bopped straight through a dungeon wall by an ant and "fell" down to the bottom of the level. All I could do was teleport to town and then run the (very long) way back through the level. As a bonus though, I got to pick up some shit I overlooked the first time + kill a bunch more ants too.

There's plenty of slowdown and no tearing. Frankly, I prefer that to the severe jerkiness that plagues this game for no particular reason. Sometimes it just starts graphics-lagging without there being anything shown on-screen that could explain why. Other graphics bugs include the occational see-through wall from behind, or misplaced torch INSIDE walls. Somewhat more annoying though is the tendency of the game to show black squares as the camera is swiveled around its axis, squares that gets filled in a few moments after they appear (sometimes accompanied with "swapping" from the DVD drive).

Overall though, these complaints are fairly minor, and don't ruin what is mostly a neat hack&slash adventure. Some of the skills seem unbalanced and useless though, like the barbarian's cyclone. It barely dents enemies at level 1, and it costs a shitload of mana, so it's probably not something that is viable until after a bucketload of points has been poured into it...

Oops. I just smashed my controller after dying for the millionth time with my dark elf against that orc boss motherfucker. Oh well.

 

[cthellis42]

Main issue I had with CoN was just coming from the cleric, and the fact that it was infuriating to play. Not that you couldn't have good weapons or good armor, but that there was the whole "healing? WTF is tha...? Oh, HEALING! Yeah, wait until level 20, then you might be able to do some."

Some other stuff was annoying, especially seeing how BGA2 fixed them (like gold sharing), but they were mainly minor details that didn't make me hate BGA, so hardly dragged the game down.

Offhand I liked the look, feel, and visuals of it a lot more than the DA's--and especially liked the option of up-to-four-players--so it was satisfying enough. They're all on rather the same plateau, though, with some trade-offs from one to the other. I DO like being able to break from 3rd Edition D&D once in a while, at least! Hehe...

 

[3dcgi]

Champions of Norath isn't a clone of Diablo 2 at all. It's a clone of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, but set in the Everquest world. Ok, so that's pretty darn similar to Diablo. I played it a little this weekend at a friends house. Even though it's made by the same developer as BGA, I don't think it's quite as good. The part I played was still fun though. I agree with cthellis42 that BGA 2 made some improvements that Champions of Norath should have had.

 

[randycat99]

Being able to customize your own uber weapons with jewel stones is a pretty cool feature in BGA2.

I liked both games, though. Either one have their rough edges, but both were enjoyable.

The thing I hate the most is that neither game lets you start a new game in the max skill level with your "seasoned" character PLUS all the goodies accumulated from past games. You got to play the WHOOOLE game over in incremental skill levels to be allowed in. It's like, WTH- no, I'm not interested in playing the same linear storyline over and over and over again, but I would like a 2nd time through with all my badass equipment and character level!

I would have liked more scenes with the mermaid...

 

[Barnabas]

What's really infuriating is that i can't destroy skeletons with my wizards magic skills. Having to hack them to pieces with a non-melee character isn't fun.

 

[randycat99]

Wouldn't it stand to reason that reanimated skeletons rely on magic to be as such? Is there a magic spell that leverages shock? I think using shocking weapons is unusually effective on that kind of thing, no? Can the wizard wield a shocking staff, perhaps?

 

[Guden Oden]

There's quite a few skills in the game that are "borrowed" pretty much straight from Diablo 2. Not saying it's a bad thing, just that it doesn't hurt to acknowledge one's sources of inspiration.

The (rather frequent) slowdown is annoying btw, I'd have preferred some tearing and faster screen updates rather than this chuggyness.

 

[zurich]

I would have preferred CoN to be have been built ground up for the EQ universe, rather than have it tacked on afterwards (which is painfully apparent to anyone having played EQ!).

 

[Phil]

Guden:

I take it you're playing the PAL version? What a shame... I heard they had quite a few bugs and fixed them a long with the slowdown. What a pity. Dark Alliance was almost flaweless.

 

[Guden Oden]

Guden:

I take it you're playing the PAL version? What a shame... I heard they had quite a few bugs and fixed them a long with the slowdown.

?

Why would the PAL version be any buggier than any other territory's release? If anything it should be less, since we usually get to wait the longest for games to come out.

 

[Rodéric]

Why would the PAL version be any buggier than any other territory's release? If anything it should be less, since we usually get to wait the longest for games to come out.

We often get less buggy games indeed.
Sometimes however we get games before the US, and so get the bugs...

First served = the one getting the bugs

 

[3dcgi]

I'm in the US and the version I played had a number of slowdowns. It almost seemed as if certain textures were responsible for the slowdowns rather than a lot of characters being on the screen.

 

[Phil]

Guden:

I take it you're playing the PAL version? What a shame... I heard they had quite a few bugs and fixed them a long with the slowdown.

?

Why would the PAL version be any buggier than any other territory's release? If anything it should be less, since we usually get to wait the longest for games to come out.

Sorry, I should have worded it more clearly. What I ment was that the NTSC version suffered from numerous bugs and slowdowns. Champions of Norath was set to release first in March, then April overhere. Due to the bugs the game was pushed back until July/August? I was hoping they might have been able to fix all the bugs and the slowdowns for the PAL release in Europe.

 

[marconelly!]

Being able to customize your own uber weapons with jewel stones is a pretty cool feature in BGA2.

Can't you do that in Champions as well? I remember that was one of the advertised features.

Has anyone played this game in four players, either offline or online? Are the slowdowns any more apparent than if you play in one or two player mode?

 

[randycat99]

Yes, you can, but the caveat is once you have built one up, you cannot tear it down to reuse the gems on a different weapon. So you always face the conundrum of using up your jewels on something that you might end up replacing very soon with something better that falls into your hands.

Being able to tear stuff down ends up being a costly proposition, but you don't have to worry about losing access to all the gems you have accumulated, to use on your latest great weapon. In the later stages of the game, if you got the jewel stones in numbers and the $'s, you can fabricate some ridiculously cool weapons. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the # of jewel stones you can use to build-up a weapon, unlike CoN where the best weapons seem to only have one space open (2 if you are lucky) for a jewel and then that is the end of the line for it.

 

[Guden Oden]

The jewels in CoN, at least early on, seem to be more like a minor bonus really, they don't do that much difference. On the other hand, it's possible to stuff every piece of armor full of them too for even more bonuses.

As far as difficulty goes, it's relatively hard to die unless one gets swarmed. The bosses in comparison are much much much more difficult. The orc leader is a total PITA, and the spider isn't much better. The ant is OK, I trapped her in the scenery of the level and beat her to death with my barb, it wasn't too hard. My dark elf has to rely on disease missiles to kill bosses tho and it's SLOW going.

I need to spend more points in the skill to make the bolts track better, they hardly do that at all at the moment. Is there a fixed limit to how high a level a skill can be brought? Other than the current character level of course... I checked the manual but couldn't find anything.

 

[cthellis42]

I need to spend more points in the skill to make the bolts track better, they hardly do that at all at the moment. Is there a fixed limit to how high a level a skill can be brought? Other than the current character level of course... I checked the manual but couldn't find anything.

I believe that, similarly to Diablo II, there is. If you're behind on a skill, you can buy a lot to catch it up, but I believe there's a cap on how far it can be pushed.

 

[ban25]

The Ranger is probably the easiest character to play, and is the most powerful next to the Barbarian. A ranger with a godly speed bow and maxed critical hit is extremely deadly. The Wizard can be very powerful at high levels with the appropriate skills (ice/fire storms). The Shadow Knight and Cleric are both significantly weaker. The max level limit on skills is 20. If you want to look at your current armor while in the shop, just go to the sell option.