Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Review

The latest MMORPG (massive mulitplayer online role-playing game) is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes developed by Sigil Games Online, Inc. Vanguard comes from the makers of EverQuest. The game was released January 17, 2007.

Vanguard has three areas of play: adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy. Adventuring allows you to earn money by killing foes and completing quests. When you accept a quest it goes into your quest journal for easy tracking. The journal is pretty handy and a lot better than trying to track down your quests by writing them down by hand in notebooks.

Crafting allows you to make items for yourself, trade, or to sell and make a profit. You can also get "work orders" from NPCs. A work order is a request by the NPC for a certain amount of a particular item. When the work order is completed a reward is obtained.

Vanguard has added diplomacy to MMOs. Diplomacy is an interesting aspect that adds a more to the game. This was a feature that I was quite curious about. I like using the diplomacy part of the game. With diplomacy, you use statement cards to influence the outcome of the diplomacy encounter. You use diplomacy to get what you want by negotiating.

There are several races and classes in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. For the races, you have three starting regions and they are Thestra, Qalia, and Kojan. Thestra races are: Human, Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Vulmane, Varanjar, and Lesser Giant. Kojan races are: Human, Wood Elf, Half Elf, Orc, Goblin, and Raki. Qalia races are: Human, Gnome, Dark Elf, Kurashasha, Morbedi Human, and Varathari.

The classes in Vanguard are: Warrior, Paladin, Dread Knight, Rogue, Ranger, Monk, Bard, Cleric, Disciple, Shaman, Blood Mage, Sorcerer, Druid, Necromancer, and Psionicist. Not every race can play every class. Since this is the case, you need to choose wisely want class you truly want to play. For example, if you wanted to play a Monk or Disciple then you will not be able to play a race from Thestra.

Another feature that I looked forward to was travel. There is not the instant porting from one place to the other. You walk, ride a horse, fly, or use a ship. Ships are player made. Horses you can buy starting at level 10.

The Vanguard: Saga of Heroes graphics are done extremely well. You will need a computer with some pretty good power to run the graphics at a high level of detail. You do have the ability to adjust the settings to get better performance out of your computer.

The required specs for Vanguard are: Windows 2000 or later, 2.4 GHz Intel or 2400+ AMD processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 128 MB video card, and 20 gigabytes of space on your hard drive. If you are just at the required specs, I suggest adding more RAM and upgrading the video card when you are able.

I highly recommend playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It is a fun game that should give its players a more of a challenge than some of the recent MMOs. Adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy in Vanguard make the game enjoyable.