Age of Conan Review

Age of Conan is an MMORPG game that takes place 10,000 BC where the player takes control of an avatar with the goal of improving that avatar. To improve their avatar, the player explores many diverse areas with the goals of defeating different enemies and completing quests. Players are rewarded for killing increasingly difficult enemies with experience, which allows their character to level up, granting new skills, improved stats, and the ability to equip new items. Quests of increasing difficulty reward the player with items, money, and experience. Many players play online together in the same game world, where they can battle each other or work together to battle non-player-character enemies. The game has no end goal -- its appeal revolves around becoming attached to one character and continually improving that character while encountering new and exciting enemies, items, and areas. Unlike most role-playing-games, combat is strategic and collision based, rather than turn based.

As someone who has played a variety of MMORPG's, playing Age of Conan was both a refreshing and enjoyable change from the traditional MMORPG. Many MMORPGS have tons of controls and hard to understand user interfaces, but Age of Conan really found a way to arrange the user interface so that it is easy to find what you are looking for. Not only that, but right from the start, in game tips of a variety of topics are displayed on the screen, and the first 30 minutes of the game is a single player RPG with my character that teaches me how to play (cleverly disguised as a quest with the goal of reaching the area where all the other human players are). This in game quest fits into the storyline of my character, and so is immersive and fun, but at the same time I am unconsciously learning how to play the game, so that once I reach the real open world MMORPG I know the basics.

Right from the start, the combat system was very enjoyable. Instead of being slow and turn based, it is based on where I choose to attack, and whoever is in my path gets hurt. In other words, you don't press a button to attack an enemy then wait as he attacks you and repeat, as you do in most MMORPGs. Instead, you press a button to swing your sword/club/axe a certain direction. If the enemy is defending in that direction, you will do less damage, so you must strategically aim your attacks. Also, the swinging of the sword will hurt any enemies that the physical sword object touches, just like a sword would in real life. This is different from other games where you click on an enemy and damage him specifically, regardless of how many enemies are around you and how many you are constantly hitting as you swing your weapon.

The fact that you can hit a group of enemies in front of you with a single blow also makes the game more fun because it allows you to fight many enemies who come at you at once without being in a highly difficult scenario--and it feels much cooler to take down a group of enemies than to fight enemies one at a time, and have to repeat that many times for all the enemies in the area. Also, as you level up you earn new skills which each affect you enemies in different ways. You also earn "finishers," which are similar to the finishing moves in the Mortal Combat franchise, where you completely own your enemy (by decapitation, stab through the heart back, ect.) as the last move when you kill them. These finishing moves happen somewhat randomly, but they happen enough to keep combat fresh and enjoyable - it is quite enjoyable to decapitate an enemy when normally he just falls to the ground dead, just as it is in Mortal Combat games.

Progression through the game was also enjoyable. As you progress farther from a safe zone and deeper into a setting, enemies appear more often and are tougher. Also, the types of enemies are both diverse and similar. By that I mean within a region it isn't hard to find many different types of enemies, all which require different strategies, but at the same time it is also easy to find groups of enemies within a context. For example, while hunting crocodiles, panthers, and apes, I encountered a village of poachers, went into the various buildings inside and killed the poachers, and eventually found the head poacher who acted as a boss and granted a good item when I killed him. In this way I created my own 'mini-quest,' where I set the goal to raid the village and kill the leader. The game doesn't specifically tell you to do things like that, but provides groups of enemies like that and allows you to progress through different environments in an open-world fashion and do what you please. This freedom was very invigorating and fun. As I did this I became very attached to my character, and so wanted to explore and fight even more enemies to further improve his stats, weapons, and items.

Overall, the combination of interactive, realistic combat with diverse enemies, areas, and items allowed me to have many different enjoyable experiences in this game. And when you add on top of that the fact that you're playing online with thousands of other real people, all who can interact with you in different ways, means this game will never play the same way twice.

After playing the game for a second session, although I still enjoy the game overall, I do have some complaints. For one, many quests don't have waypoints showing you where to go. Early in the game, I would really like to have a waypoint to where I am supposed to go because I don't really know my way around yet. Then I wouldn't just be wondering around aimlessly. Instead, I'd be able to quickly orientate myself as to where different things in the area are, so that later I'd fully know my way around different areas.
However, during this game play session, I leveled up enough to unlock some skills that highlighted the games gory potential. Some skills, when pulled off correctly, will do extra damage to the enemy and splatter blood across the screen. At first this is kind of cool because it makes my avatar seems awesome, but after a while of seeing these blood spatters it seems unnecessary. For one, the blood spatter covers around a 4th of the screen, and when I'm fighting multiple enemies at once, it stops me from seeing which sides they are defending, and so is annoying because it makes the fight harder. It becomes distracting to perform these moves, so I end up not using them even though they do more damage.

Age of Conan does a great job of immersing the player in the game. To draw you deeper in the game world, whenever you talk to a non player character, rather than simply showing text for you to read, you get a close-up face shot of the non-player character actually talking. The character's lips move, faces show emotion, and every word is voice dialogued. This allows you to actually feel emotion in the interactions you have with non-player characters, and in the quest you do for these characters. This makes the continual process of leveling up seem less boring because each quest is not only unique, but emotion-driven. In addition, every non-player character you converse with has multiple story branches to explore - you get to really have a conversation with the non-player character, rather than just sitting there while they talk. When you add on top of that the fact that the game has awesome (graphically and action-wise) cut scenes when you defeat key bosses and at key parts of the story arc, it becomes very hard to remember you just playing a game.

Age of Conan's visual design is also very beautiful. Lush jungles, sandy beaches, and hardened strongholds are just some of the places you can explore in this game. While the graphics of every area are all visually stunning, most environments are at least somewhat dark and gritty to contribute to the games theme of barbarism. This game was designed to be open world, so you can literally go anywhere at any time (provided you aren't killed be enemies inhabiting an area), and you can waste hours just exploring the beauty of new areas you encounter. This element is very important to an MMORPG. When it comes down to it, MMORPGs are all about grinding (continually killing enemies and completing quests to level up and get new items so you can kill tougher enemies and complete harder quests, so on and so forth), and Age of Conan does a great job making this process fun, based on the sheer amount of both beauty and diversity in its different areas and enemies.

Most importantly, this game was designed for player to player interaction. Multiplayer games often offer more replay value than single player games due to the fact that playing with the computer only offers as many play options as the computer was programmed for, but playing with other players offers unlimited interactions. And MMOs are very, very multiplayer. This allows games, including Age of Conan to offer things non-MMOs simply can't offer. For example, because this game was designed for many people to play together, you can easily get a group of 8 real people and go out into the wilderness and fight in epic battles against groups of enemies that you could never beat alone. Winning giant battles, or battles where the odds were stacked against you but you used teamwork to survive, are much more satisfying than beating one enemy at a time on your own. Not only are you happy, but you can share in the success and triumphs of others as they complete their goals, helping to immerse you into the game even more.