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| From: Eidos
Category: Video Games
List Price: £34.99
Buy New: £16.99
You Save: £18.00 (51%)
New (26) Used (12) from £3.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 3970
Platform: Windows Xp
Media: Video Game
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5021290031609
ASIN: B0012PN1TE
Release Date: May 23, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
This is not WOW, but not in a good way. May 31, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Level 1-20 is a feature-rich experience with full voice-acting and some cinematics for the quests. Then you're on your own and suddenly it's all just kill them/collect that. I've played for a couple of weeks now and made the point of not posting a review until I'd experienced everything the game had to offer.
But what the game can offer is currently pretty limited.
The combat is pretty annoying, even once you've figured it out. The combo system is okay but it's not a proper combo system, like Street Fighter, it's just a matter of hitting the right keys in order to activate an attack. So you have an attack but you can only use it if you hit some keys in the right order. The term combo seems misleading because people will assume something more fluid and dynamic than what there is. A typical combo involves hitting the key for the combo then waiting until the directional "menu" comes up. Then hit the first key in the sequence and wait for that to register, then hit the next key and so on. You don't pull off keyboard-battering sequences of moves, precisely timed for maximum devastation. In contrast you're actually playing a very slow game of Dance Dance Revolution.
Another issue currently with combat in Player vs Player is so-called "bunny hopping". This is the act of jumping around your opponent to avoid getting hit by confusing "facing". There's a dodge system in game which costs stamina whereas the bunny hopping doesn't. I suspect this is going to be one of the big things they need to fix to make combat look less ridiculous. Imagine how epic guild battles are going to look with forty warriors hacking at each other while apparently mounted on space-hoppers.
What there is in quests is slick enough but it's shallow. The end-game between 50 and 80 is lacking apparently, but not just to make it harder I'd guess. It looks like there's an entire continent of expansions just waiting to happen.
The early quests are story-driven but once you leave the starter town you're going to have a lot of quests that come down to killing X number of variations on the local baddies and perhaps additionally collecting Y number of trophies from them. This is just grinding with an XP pay-off once you finish the quest.
EDIT: I'm back with my views to level 50. I had two weeks left on my free 30 days so I started playing again and did get quite hooked on the 30-50 level zones.
I'm now using a Logitech G15 keyboard to take some of the irritation out of the combo system and that's working well. The majority of the quests are still of the kill X amount of that to progress but there are some quite entertaining quests in the Tarantia Nobles district, including a murder investigation that had a bit of a twist.
Unfortunately, despite a current semi-addiction to the game akin to a monkey hammering at a lever for peanuts, further play (and I'm now into the paying period of 10.50 per month (8.99 + VAT), or almost 60% more than it costs in the US) has highlighted other problems. I started another character and had to go through the same rich Tortage starter quests, complete with unskippable cut-scenes (EDIT2 - this isn't actually true, there's an interface option to make cut-scenes optional but the bulk of the quests are still the same. You can also turn off hints.) and helpful hints popping up left and right. Fortunately now I know what I'm doing I was out of Tortaga and level 20 within a day.
More seriously life for both my characters is now a social blur as my new friends message and mail me continuously. Unfortunately they're gold-spammers and very little seems to be done so far to contain them. I play on a role-play server and this is killing the mood for me. You can /ignore them but the names are changed every few hours and now they know who I am there's no way to stop the spam.
I've also tried crafting but it's as tedious and unrewarding as every other crafting system out there.
EDIT2: It's July now and we're into a new round of character nerfs. Basically there are a few over-powered classes (mainly the healing ones) and gradually they're having their powers trimmed back, but along with this they seem to be giving everyone a harder time, cutting damage potential and making mobs harder. It's pretty clear that maxing out your level in a couple of weeks and then having little or no endgame content has led to people leaving in droves so they want to slow that down. I'm still playing and still quite enjoying myself but I haven't maxed out a character in a MMO since Mist at Essex. They should at least open up the official forums so people can see what's really going on instead of reading magazine previews that only dealt with the first, admittedly excellent, 20 levels.
On the plus side I'm not getting anywhere near as much goldseller spam - rats abandoning a sinking ship I suspect.
You might need to buy a new PC May 29, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
This game tries very hard NOT to be wow... but basically, its like someone took wow and tried to improve it in lots of ways and take it to another level. The graphics are much less cartoon-like and more visually impressive.
Don't kid yourself though, I didn't even look at the tech specs on this game because I run every game I buy on medium to medium high settings... BUT YOU SHOULD!! I;ve tried every fix suggested (lowering graphics to utterly low, reloading all my drivers etc) and the best I can get is 10-14 fps. That means that with a pretty decent pc (top end 18 months ago) this game barely runs on graphics setting set so low I cant even see a npc unless Im within 20feet.
In conclusion... unless the graphics issues are caused by something patchable... its not worth buying this game unless you have a very high-end pc or you want to buy a new pc just to play this.
 A good game so far, even with the flaws discussed in previous reviews. May 26, 2008
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
I had the pre release from Amazon, it got to me on time as promised, as did the game itself. Thanks for the great service Amazon!
The game itself is beautiful and despite its flaws fantasticly fun to play. The graphics are amazing and I very quickly became immersed in the rich storyline and seamless gameplay.
However things started to go horribly wrong when I left the starter Island and moved to the main play area.
The NPC voiceovers stopped, apparently they are only on the starter island and nowhere else. The Trading system, bank and mail services do not work at all. Many of the quests up to level 54 (my current level) are completely unplayable due to bugs. The chat system, friends list, guild maintenace are basic and badly designed, much of the text in the chat window is completely unreadable. Some of the skills are also completely broken or dont do what they are supposed to do. The charge skill for instance, catapults you 300m away from the enemy!
Some unscrupulous beta testers also have been exploiting leveling bugs and the broken trading system to level their characters to max level in 3 days, these people are also riding around on expensive mounts they shouldnt be able to own after 3 days.
The list of faults, ommisions and bugs is enormous but after nearly 2 weeks I am still playing Age of Conan, It's still so much fun to play. I've given it 2 stars although it easily has the capbility to earn 5 stars if funcom pull their fingers out and fix the game quickly.
It's such a shame that the excellence of the starter island did not continue into the rest of the game... Perhaps the PC magazine reviewers only got to test the starter Island?
Great next-gen mmorpg IF YOU HAVE THE GRAPHICS May 26, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
Short & sweet...
This is the first mmorpg I have played that I would truly hail as part of the next generation - it has the enlightened aspects of Guild Wars ( no item degradation, trivial death penalty, teleportation ), the depth of Warcraft ( crafting, mounts, trading ) and a sprinkling of innovations ( active combat, non-repetitive crafting, guild villages, 'mature' content ).
The graphics are POTENTIALLY great, but if your machine cannot meet the lofty technical expectations then they are truly terrible to play with ; ugly as can be, see only a tiny distance, textures in constant flux, characters take upwards of 30 seconds to become visble.
So if you can run it well then I cannot recommend AoC enough, but if you know or believe you cannot then be warned ; all seven shades of ugly await you !
Awkwardly of course, there is no consensus regarding exactly what the technical requirements are - you can browse the various forums but I advise you to be aware of the difference between what specs people are running it well with and those people are 'running it ugly' with.
My specs can serve as a starting point though : Vista, Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz, 2046 MB Ram and GeForce 7900 GS = unplayably bad graphics.
UPDATE - I have subsequently made some upgrades to my PC : now 4GB Ram and GeForce 8500 GT = still unacceptable graphics and performance, to the point of unplayability.
Conan v WoW May 25, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
i,ve been playing World of Warcraft for over 3 years and felt it was time to try something new so i went and got age of Conan.
my system is a duel core 2.66 ghz cpu,4gb ddr2,250gb sata drive x2,xfx 8500gt(1gb ddr2) grapics,22in widescreen display set at 1680x1050 and 20mb broadband.
it installed easy and downloaded all the updates with no problems.
once the game started i was getting 5fps so i put all the game setting to the lowest they could go this gave me a max of 20fps just about playable(i am getting 40fps in high sttings in wow)(up todate drivers installed).
what ever character/race you make you always start off in the same location so this can get boring if you want to make multi characters.
getting to lvl 20 was easy loads of quests which are easy to find.the user interface is simple and easy to use.combat is fast with good effects.
grapics are very good but you need a very good computer to get the best out of this game.i will give it a few more days but more than likely i,ll be going back to wow and wait for warhammer online to hit the shops.
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