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How can the apple fall so far...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

...from such a great tree.

- skill design is unbalanced and restrictive

- some skills are different in name only but sold to players as "different" skills

- combat amounts to pressing autoattack and then waiting like Pavlov's dog for the monster to go vuln so you can be a good little monkey and press your special attack button and get a treat.

- chat system is painful to use

- inventory organizational ability is nonexistant

- crafting weapons is fine until you get past the first few levels and discover that you have to go and camp a mob a fifth your level to get a rare item drop.

- crafting armor is pointless due to the fact that each tier of armor crafting only returns armor with a protection value equal to that level. So tier 3 armor will make armor level 3. That's fine but the ingredients you'll use to make that armor will have armor levels in excess of 10, so there's not much point.

- I'll stop here and say that on a good note AC2 is the most beautiful game I've ever seen and it should win any and all graphics awards for gaming. That doesn't change anything though.

Merely OK - Wait to buy.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game in beta and have done some background to see what has changed since early Nov. (when they added beta). In my opinion, the game way not "complete" then. I don't mean it had bugs, but it could have been more. I konw they have added new events and stuff, but no real new systems have been added. The game this reminds me of is Dark Age of Camelot: you have fun the first week, stay amused the second week, get the feeling of repition the third, and fourth month, the game becomes an annoyance and you quit.

Saying that here are the reasons why I dislike it:
1) Focuses primarily on combat.
2) Combat repetitive.
3) You do not feel meaning in PvP or Kvk
4) Crafting system too easy to advance in making your own equipment obsolete quickly. (I enjoy walking in a game and recognizing a person by appearence, ex. I walk into town and see someone clad in bronze and I know its JoeBob; I see Theif Sam in a black robe and know to stay back; ect...
5) Your decisions in combat do not have a large enough impact on your win/loss.
6) The kindoms are too "close" relationship wise to have actually enemies. It is natural for people to want to hate someone, and it makes the experience in a game more emotional. But, this also has a bad side; people's emotions can lead to a less fun gaming environment for others. It should be balanced so you feel tense while around other kingdoms, but not afraid.
7) (Maybe this is just players who have been around longer...) The game is too simple (This doesn't mean too easy!). There is not enough going on at once and there is not enough strategy involved in what you do. There is not enough factors to winning or losing a battle to make someone "good" at the game, being "good" depends on where you specialize. In my opinion this means people will be clones of each other's stats.
8) Leveling is tedious at higher levels and one of your only big goals. Experience is too slow and makes you feel obligated to level (maybe just a mental thing because I am used to losing xp in games). They should make levels less of an achievement by taking away the large amounts of skill points you get and then spread out the skill requirements on them. This way you can get to level 40 faster, but you will be challenged by a good level 35 player.

Now that I have ranted, here is what I do like about the game.
1) Excellent graphics. (Though I do wish they would have grass be actual 3D figures instead of "grids" of flat grass when looked at from above)
2) Combat effects (scars, wounds, blood) are a graphical way of showing your condition.
3) Possibility to expand
4) Unique Gameplay: there are really not too many games like it. I always like originality.

What would make me buy it:
1) Make combat have different settings: beginner, easy, advanced, and expert or something along those lines. By doing this you could put the current system in beginner restricting the player from doing advanced tactical moves. In easy you could put in things like quick attacks based on your movement (kinda like lightsaber use in JK2 but more RPG like). Advanced would give you Combos that you set up before battles. Expert would allow you to customize moves: adding speed to your attacks by sacrificing damage, ect... You could also make it so all these were availible at different levels or always availible.
2) Add housing or city building. This would give you an additional feeling of progress besides levels. Ok, you say you "can" build cities by using the forge. I say this is not an individual achievement to a player. He sees the forge upgrade before his eyes and say, "Oh good, now I can build better, but I don't really care that much because it isn't mine." Maybe its just me but I don't really care about the city I am stoping in for a few moments while not in combat.
3) Add other professions - there are no NPC farmers, so how the heck do people in Dereth get there food? Don't tell me they are independent and chop their own wood, farm there own food, ect... In AC1 there were farmers, skulpters and other NPC people. Since there are no NPC's you should have players growing food for a living, but still being able to defend his or her crops from the pesky drudge.

All of this and more can be accomplished by an expansion pack. AC1 had an expansion back that added housing so it could be possible here. I will not buy this game until then, and unless you want to play for only a month or two, I would wait for some additional patches or an expansion. I do expect the game to get better, the AC series has been know so far for great add-ons, so maybe I will re-evaluate it a month or two later.

A very very disappoint follow up to the orginal game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The game lacks the playablity, orginality, and creativity that made the orginal Asheron's Call a success, in my mind

From my beta testing experience

Its graphics make the game cumbersome and extremely laggy, it needs a very top of the line system with a DSL or better connection to function. Its lacks abilty to be truely unqiue like in AC I. The whole system seems less realitic and a cheap mock of Dark Ages of Camelot (a game i can barey stand to play)

I cannot stress enough to play at a friends house or beta test AC II before considering buying

I relaize some better issue will be resolved but not enough to make it worthwhile

Maybe they will include Dark Majesty with AC 2 to bring fresh faces to the wonderful Asheron's Call Dark Majesty community

A warning to any potential buyers

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

As almost every review has stated this game is pretty to look at, but this game has MAJOR design flaws. You can also ignore the "wait 6 months for content" posts because content addition will not fix these flaws.

1. The game is level based. A level 25 will beat a level 22 no matter what. Every level 25 lugian is running around with the exact same health. Level based = no variation. This they cannot change post release.

2. Quite a few skills are meaningless and undocumented. In other words many of their skills have no visible effect after putting experience into them. This means everyone will be selecting the skills that do work and running around with the same template. Again everyone will have similar skills. This will take years to get straightened out, by then everyone will be playing Starwars online anyway.

3. Combat is too simplistic. You click a button until the mob flashes yellow and then click your special attack (which is usually an instakill). The game has unbelievably, repetitive, boring combat. And this is the core of the game. This will not be changed post release.

4. This is minor, but the movement has a very sloppy feeling. You skate around like your on rollerskates. This is the one thing that can be changed post-release.

To summarize, someone at Turbine made some very POOR design decisions. They wrote a great game engine, which is beautiful to look at, but then weighted it down with the worst aspects of most games. I realized as I was going through Beta that the basic design of the game was flawed and because of their time table for release, Turbine did not want to address these problems. I'm not talking content here, I'm not talking buggy problems during beta here, I'm talking about a game that is poor at its core. You can't change that with a patch. Do yourself a favor and wait for another upcoming MPOG.

first time gamer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is my first online role playing game that I have ever played and I must say that I really enjoy playing Asherons Call 2. A friend of mine convinced me to try it because it was fun and had great graphics. Well I tried it and I'm still playing it and I cannot give it up. It has excellant graphics and I usually never get bored. The game has alot of lag but you just have to get through it and turn down your graphics and it is usually no problem.
There are so many things you can do in this game. You can become a hero of Dereth at level 45 which is really cool to do. It allows you use hero skills and to do quests unless you are not a hero. You can talk to people from all over the world and I have made some friends since I started playing this game. I like the different allegiances that you can get into. The people in the allegiances are there for helping each other out whether it is on quests or just needing some quest items that you have a hard time finding off of mobs.
I cannot compare to Asherons Call 1 because I never played it but there has been many good changes made to Asherons Call 2 since I started playing the game. They have changed the loot that mobs drop, which makes it better. They have also changed some of the quests to where they are repeatable and the experience that is rewarded. They changed the level cap which is now 150, basically the game is never ending. They are finally going to do something with the vendors which has been long awaited by alot of players.
You never have a problem finding people to fellow with to complete a quest in which you cannot solo which is always fun to do. This game is great all around to play. I will never give it up no matter what game comes out. I cannot wait until the expansion comes out. Not only do we have four continents to play on now, they are adding another continent with a new class of characters, armor, and new quests.

Excellent Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I played AC2 1 month short of a year starting after I got into beta after attending the 2002 ACPL. I really enjoyed it while I played. I was a monarch on SnowReap for what eventually became the oldest shadow monarchy on the server. Unfortunately our server was the first to be merged. As some people in the game industry have pointed out, Meridian had server consolidations before its demise.

The main problems with the game didn't really bother me. The chat server and authentication server problems did affect me, but didn't really cause interference with my gameplay.

I loved all the features AC2 had that AC1 lacked, like the ability to look through an allegiance heirarchy. Plus all the added chat features including allegaince chat, regional chat, and global chat.

The graphics were and still are the best. The water, fog, tile detail, grass, light sources, charachter models, and smoothness were all amazing.

The music was great. Especially with player music and being able to setup a shortcut bar for all 10 of the beats.

The variety of roles was amazing too. Especially with the pet classes. With hivekeepers, invokers, tacticians, and elementalists players had a great variety.

I liked how fellowships actually had meaning. In AC1 when you were hunting for XP you could spend hours in a fellow without even seeing or interacting with the other members. In AC2 the different roles compliment each other. The group buffs were great.

I liked the quest timers, but it was annoying that each week you had to go out a little later to redo the quest. Maybe the redo timer should have been based off the start time of the quest and not the finish. Some weeks the Mage Armor quest were at 3 am and we would still consider doing it the following week at 3:30 or 4 am. If you skipped the late session you might not be able to get the same people you used to do the quest with, or anybody at all.

I loved KvK. I loved the battles. It sounds like KvK and all PK is being ignored. KvK points were certainly ruined when the mining changes were made. They really should have had an Elo style ratings system. I suspect this is influenced by the fact that one of Turbine's most prominent employees is against PK. This is a main reason I don't plan on trying it again even with the new content.

The reason my allegaince broke up was that, in the end, I was the only member who had been the allegaince from the start. All of the other founding members quit. It got sickening making friends just to lose them when they ran out of content.

Personnally I leveled a bit slower then some. I played about 25 hours a week and did not exploit. Exploiting was why I was happy to leave AC1, which got me very disgusted with AC2. I think exploits need to be removed quickly and exploiters should be punished.

The main reason I left was that upon hitting 50 there really was nothing more to do. Sure, I could start another character and level to 50 again, but even though the vehicle would be different the road would have been the same. This was a few months before the "100 levels" were added. While I knew changes were coming at the time they were advertised as more tools in the toolbox. I was not willing to pay and wait for the changes so I quit.

I still think the low monthly cost is why the game was a failure for me. Had they charged $50 a month, like Ken Troop has proposed for the genre, they would have been able to add enough content before I quit to keep me playing. They were to slow to react and they may never recover the product now. You can't even find AC2 in stores anymore, yet it got a game of the year award!

Player Information:
Bean of Snowreap
Legume of Snowreap
Shadow Alliance of Grey (beta)
Yoshi of Red and Blue (beta)

Most people's complaints are already obsoleted

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The first patch came out two weeks ago, and tackled people's biggest complaints. NPCs were added, an epic quest was added, fellowship looting options were added, and there are a lot of new things to do and see. There aren't many legitimate complaints left.

Most people who are still comlaining about the game are AC1 fans who wanted this game to be just like AC1, but it isn't. It's an entirely new game. It's easier to learn, which makes people call it "dumbed down". Sorry, but I don't consider easy-to-use user-interfaces to be a bad thing. These people are used to interfaces with hundreds of pointless buttons and complex interfaces that you must read the manual to understand. The complexity in AC2 is in how you use things, not in which button you press. It has the same level of overall complexity, but you can work into it gradually rather than being bombarded by things the first minute you start.

So what major complaints are still left? The game is still a resource hog -- even a top-end machine will probably need to play on "Medium" setting. But it looks mighty nice on Medium or even Low setting, so no big loss. The other thing is that there are still not enough high-end quests to keep me happy. But each monthly update brings a big batch of new things to do, so by the time you read this, there may already be a bunch of new quests in place.

Anyway, this is an addictive, beautiful, accessible game. Don't let the whiners convince you otherwise.

You are all stupid

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you ever played AC1 and played beta of AC@ and dissed it, then you must have your head up your you know what. The unique thing about AC1 was the evolving story, no one played AC1 for the graphics, or the leveling, xp, or anything else, other then the fact that hey one morning you wake up and the world went to a complete chaos, then after fighting the new quest and winning you actually CHANGED!!!! something in the game. AC2 if run like AC1 will be a unique game, with amazing graphics. I've been playing the beta hard core, and at first it was boring, but the patch yesterday, where they made it to be "almost" like retail, cleaned it up incredibly. I'm now questing, and figuring out the story, and when Turbine starts changing the world, and adding to it, it's going to be one new game every update.

AC2 is currently the best MMORPG out there

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Back in the early days Asheron's Call was one of the best online RPGs becasue the team at Turbine updated and changed the world every 3 or 4 weeks and was always adding new stuff. The only things holding it back were its poor graphics and lack of any other races with any real diversity.

Asherons Call 2 addresses all these issues. There are now 3 races that are each incredibly different. You progress through the game using skill trees and each races' trees have totally different skills. Whats even better is if you choose a skill that you dont like you can untrain it at no penalty whatsoever.

There are also some other new features like crafting which is tight. I thought I wouldnt like the fact that there are no NPC's in the game and would never go to a town again but I found that to be untrue. Towns can give your crafting a bonus and so I always head there after some good looting.

The game is still based on killing stuff so if that isnt your thing stay away, but if you do then you should give their new PVP and Kingdom vs Kingdom a try. This is a great game and it isnt even out of beta yet.

I may be new to this whole thing but.....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm a Counter-Strike player. I love live-action, hardcore, adrenaline racing, screaming and swearing, Counter-Strike type games. Quake3, Jedi Knight 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, etc. These are my kind of games. I saw this beta in a weekly email I get, so I figured I would try it. I like Final Fantasy sure, but I figured this would get boring, or just be [weak] to begin with. Well I was completely wrong. We all agree that the environments are beautiful, but I for one thing the whole game is amazing. I am an official addict, and the only cure will be in November when this college student can't afford to pay-to-play. The interface may be a bit clunky and awkward at times, but the sheer magnitude of character development is amazing. This isn't just about monster hunting and hack-and-slash. This is an MMORPG, see that ends with RPG, meaning that Interaction between Players is a key part of the game. You form a Community, an Allegiance, a Kingdom, or whatever. If you want a game that combines beautiful (stunning even) visuals, an extremely wide variety of ways to develop your character as an individual, and a strong social system (RPG, remember, it's an RPG), then I HIGHLY recommend this game. And this is only the beta I've been playing......

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