"Being evil never felt so good."

City of Villains is the successor to City of Heroes. In City of Heroes you played as a lone hero along side other players in the fictional location of Paragon City rescuing hostages, recovering items, defusing bombs, stopping gang warfare, etc. Now City of Villains comes along and reverses all of that. Instead of rescuing you're kidnapping, instead of recovering items, you're recovering them for you're own wealth or for someone else who has a bigger plan for it, and my personal favorites you get pull of some really fun heists.

Gameplay: The gameplay is generally the same as City of Heroes. So if you played CoH, then you're going to feel right at home with CoV. One of aspects that makes CoV's gameplay so great is all the different options for building your character, and not just through leveling, but before you even start playing. Before players actually enter the Rogue Isle they get to choose an archetype which include Brute, Dominator, Mastermind, Corrupter, and Stalker. If that isn't enough, within each archetype there are many different routes you can go. So let's say you were making a brute, you could make a brute that uses fire attacks and fire armor, or a brute that uses the powers of the dark world to heighten their defense as well as provide some DoT's, or maybe you would want to go back to the roots and have a super strength brute with invulnerability powers, and so much more for not only the brute but all the archetypes.

One thing that throws people off right away is that in most MMORPG's they're used to getting different items like armor, swords, gloves, etc. CoV really doesn't focus on that at all. What enhances your character in CoV are enhancements that you can get by either purchasing through use of infamy (the in game currency) killing an enemy, or completing missions, task forces, or story archs. These enhancements are placed in slots within each power you have chosen. You can up the accuracy, damage, recharge time, etc. So no more playing for 60 hours trying to get some gloves.

If you're into soloing this game really is probably the best MMORPG to get, because the majority of missions are what CoV players call "door missions." Where you actually leave the world server, and go onto what's known as a mission map. Think of World of Warcraft dungeons, or as they're also known as, "instances." Where a bunch of people can be doing the same dungeon (or mission in our case), and you'll never see them because each group goes into their own version. Within these door missions the enemies are set to the amount of people on the team. if you're by yourself you'll usually run into groups of enemies anywhere from 2 to 4, but if you're in a group of 8 you might be staring the face of around 18 enemies. Also CoV allows you to change the difficulty of your missions resulting in higher experience bonuses.

Soloing is all fun and can be great at times, but where CoV really shines is team play. The way all the archetypes mesh together is fantastic. You can get some really fun and interesting gameplay happening, especially in the higher levels when players have a lot more powers to work with.

CoH players will also notice the addition of PVP zones and super group bases, both now available in CoH as well. PVP zones are just what you think, they're areas in the game in which both heroes and villains on the same server can enter and have some super battles. One of the cool features is that heroes and villains can complete missions within the PVP zones, and let's say the villains complete a mission, the defense of all the heroes in the area will be lowered. It adds an interesting aspect to the pvp gameplay.


The Arch: City of Villains in the beginning claims your character to be the "destined one." However, the game kind of forgets about that whole idea after level 2 or so. After that you will be getting different contacts to complete story archs as they're known in the comic world, or those who aren't familiar with the term it's basically separate storylines in which completing results in a reward and an experience bonus. Now with the soon release of issue 7 one of the features is that the level 40+ content is suppose to explore the destined one storyline further. Some of the archs are really boring and tedious, and others are really interesting and fun to be a part of.


Graphics: City of Villains includes realist textures and objects. This is nice because normally when you think of comic books you think of a cartoonish look with lots of bright colors and what not. However, CoV brings a feel of realism, or as real as you can get in a game based on comics. My only gripe is that way too many missions just look the same with minor adjustments. You'll feel like you've been in the same office building a hundred times before the day is over with, but that aside the game does look fantastic, especially compared to its CoH counterpart.

The soundtrack is great in some parts of the game and you'll actually wish that it could loop all the time, and then there are other tracks that get old fast due to their dullness. The actual sound effects are simply fantastic. I especially love the sound of energy blasts. Really a nice attention to detail as far as the sound effects go, which is definitely an important part of a comic book based game.


Replayability: With all the archetypes and all the possibilities within each archetype you'll be making new characters for a long time. You might not even make it to a new archetype and just go a different route within the same archetype for at least a few hundred hours. Plus the badge feature gives players looking for more to do with their villain something to do. I have about 400 hours into the game and I'm not sick of it one bit.


The wrap: City of Villains is a great choice for fans of MMORPG's looking for something a little different, and even better for fans of comics in general. With the interesting gameplay, all the archetypes and tiers, this is definitely a game that'll have you hooked for a long time to come.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/04/06, Updated 09/19/07

Game Release: City of Villains (US, 10/31/05)