Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

"Having been forced to be released early, it's hard to give this game a definite score."

Now, I bought this game because my brother plays it. I also enjoy MMO games. And another one of my friends shall be getting it soon. Also, I was incredibly tired of WoW.

WoW is actually my only real MMO experienced game. Though I don't believe there's too many real hardcore MMO gamers here either, so I think my review should appeal to most everyone here.

First off, I've heard this game was released earlier than the developers had originally wanted because SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) had forced to them to. Why? I have no idea. Is it true? Well, I don't know honestly, I don't really force myself to stay in the know about a lot of things for the simple reason that I don't care. However, I'm going to lean towards the fact that it's probably true because the game is incredibly buggy right now and certain graphical effects are still being added.

I understand most games of this nature start out rough and this game is going to have it more so than others because of this reason. So this is why I'm saying it's so hard to give this game a definite score. I certainly won't hold it against it for now.

So lets talk about graphics. As I said certain graphical effects are still being added. Though from the looks of this game it's really nice. Reflective objects, nice looking terrain. It does a nice job of putting you in the mind of an adventurer. Now this brings me to my next point and that most everyone should pay attention to.

This game is really system heavy. I'm running a pretty good custom made machine and I'm still getting some choppy effects and I meet the recommended requirements as well. I can really only bare to play it on "High Performance" settings. Again this may be due to the game having been released so early. But, my point still remains that you need to know your system specs and what the game requires. You should do this for any PC game actually because most stores don't take back used PC games but they let you exchange it for the same game. Which of course doesn't help you at all.

Sound wise the voice acting is cheesy, but sometimes in the way that it's funny. Whether that's what the developers were going for, I don't know, but it doesn't bother me and it shouldn't bother you either. The music is decent. I can bear it without being bored for a little bit but you may end up turning on your own music as I do. Other than that you have your basic decent sounding sword clanks and stab sounds here.

Gameplay wise there's a ton to explain here. I won't go into any in-depth analysis because that would take way too long.

Questing is your basic, talk to an NPC, kill X amount of monsters and what not. Nothing most gamers haven't experienced. It's called "Adventuring" though in this game. Along with Adventuring you also have crafting and diplomacy to level up.

Since WoW is the only game I can relate to I'm going to say Crafting is a nice breath of fresh air from WoWs. In WoW, you simply collect the materials and click create. It's really easy (unless you need some sort of .0% drop rate item), but boring. In Vanguard however, not only do you collect the materials needed but it's also required that you actually select options to make your item. It's an in-depth process that I can't explain as well as the in-game tutorial, but know that if you want something more out of your crafting, this game delivers.

Diplomacy is something I've never experienced before in an MMO. I guess WoW somewhat had one, but it was a reputation thing. Which you got by completing quest or grind killing monsters. So in a sense you could say it was a half-ass idea. Vanguard though actually has you talk with NPCs in what could be considered a card battle. I know a lot gamers on here are sour against card battles, but this game does it right. Diplomacy has even more to it to explain so I wont bother making this read longer than it has to be. It may take some people a little while to grasp the concept. Basically you lay down cards against your NPC opponent to move this wax seal to your side of the board. For each turn that the wax seal is on your side you decrease the number amount that it has to be on your side in order to win. The first to zero wins. But your cards have what is called "expression" on them. And it either feeds the other players expression or your own, but maybe giving you a higher number to move the wax seal to your side. It's pretty tactical and you have to think ahead a few moves. I find it to be innovative and really fun.

Pretty early on in the game you will experience dungeons and group quests. This was nice I thought. Though the dungeons aren't instanced. This disappointed me. What I mean by this is that you can't go into a dungeon have it to where just you and your group can do the whole thing without other players in there to bother you. So far though it hasn't proved to be too much of a problem. The respawns have been fast and no boss has been stolen from me yet.

One thing that I really cannot stand is dying. Now usually I don't mind if I die in a game it happens. But in this game when you die you a ressed at the nearest outpost and you have to run all the way back to your body in a completely vulnerable state. Because in this game when you die, all your stuff aside from a few pieces of equipped armor stay at your corpse. Reminiscent of Diablo 1 only people can't steal it. So if you died near a lot of monsters by accident you're completely boned because you have no weapons. And if you die again you have another tombstone to loot. You drop XP even at these stones, but when you loot them you get it back. So, hopefully this will be tweaked a little more in the near future.

There's housing as well in this game. Which means you can own your own house and plot of land. This is something I've not experienced yet, but not sure if I want to yet if I get there if the game is still buggy.

So all in all since the game has been released so early this game has a definite room for improvement through patches and what not and probably shouldn't be viewed too harshly as of right now. I'm actually pretty excited about it because it seems to have quite a bit of potential.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/07