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| A clan war rages. |
The game experience changes when you reach higher levels. At level 20 you can
switch to a specialized profession beyond the game’s two starting choices,
magic-user and fighter. You’ll also have access to more special abilities to
make the battles more exciting. Most importantly, you’ll be able to start
getting into the game’s clan play. Lineage II is really designed for players who
want to become part of a large clan and go out and fight other clans. The game
has even introduced castles that clans can siege and then try to defend from
assault. Dragon battles are promised in the future as well, and will require the
large number of players that only a clan can field to take down. If you’re a
solo player or want to play with a small group of friends, then you’re going to
miss out on the game’s primary focus of play. Without being a member of a large
clan network, you’ll find that it is just about impossible to gain the
experience and adena that you’ll need to advance much farther than level 20 and
equip yourself with the gear needed to take on higher level monsters. Also, the
clan focus means that it is up to the players to build the game’s history.
There’s little in the way of backstory or of an evolving storyline that many RPG
fans will expect to find in a MMOG.
Lineage II gives new players a bit of a clue that this is not a good game for
solo individuals during the character creation process. There are only a small
handful of hairstyles and other features from which to choose, so there are
plenty of clones running around in the game. There’s no room for adding an
individualistic or unique flair to your character – you can customize your
appearance further by the clothes that you wear, but you’ll still resemble
plenty of other players. The surprising side of this is that there is no support
for clothing or logos to identify a player’s clan. Other than a small symbol
near a player’s name there’s no easy way to identify your clanmates on sight.
The gameworld itself looks very good, with realistic landscapes filled with
hills, waterfalls, and other features and detailed cities. There are also a lot
of other touches such as abandoned ruins or altars scattered through the
wilderness, although they seem to be placed there more for atmosphere than
anything else. I think that this graphic beauty comes at a bit of a price,
though, as the game experienced regular lag and slow down when in areas with
numerous players or creatures.
If you are really looking for a player versus player MMOG and have the time and
patience to invest in reaching the higher levels, then you will probably enjoy
Lineage II. Most other RPG gamers will find that the work to get there is too
slow and repetitive, and that there is not much there for those who don’t want
to tread the player versus player path.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
66%. There’s just too much of a time commitment to repetitive and slow
advancement to recommend the game to anyone other than those who really, really
want to be a part of a game that supports a clan war system.
System Requirements: Pentium III 800; 256 MB RAM; 32 MB
Video RAM; 2.2 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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