Guild Wars Nightfall

"Another standalone campaign of the Guild Wars franchise... this time night has fallen."

"This time night has fallen..."

The original Guild Wars impressed many gamers around the world with its outstanding graphics and its requirement of strategy and skill rather than excessive leveling. It is classified as a CORPG (competitive online role-playing game) rather than an MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game). Then Guild Wars Factions came out, and although most agree that it was not as good as the original, it still kept the Guild Wars legacy going. Now, Nightfall. So much to say...

Graphics
Still very good. You don't need that great of a computer to be able to run the graphics on high. The graphics range from each blade of grass swaying from the wind, to pieces of armor literally shining in the sun.

I would give the graphics a 9/10.

Sound
As great of a game as this is, this is its weakest aspect just because the other aspects are so well fleshed out. The music actually is very good, and so are the sound effects. For some reason, sometimes there is no music playing. I don't know if it's done purposely, but Jeremy Soule does it again with this Guild Wars campaign. With a great soundtrack and moderate sound effects, the sounds of Guild Wars likely please the average gamer.

8/10 for the sound.

Gameplay
The gameplay of this game is pretty much exactly the same to the first two games. Guild Wars Nightfall is an RPG (role-playing game), and plays like most other RPG's. You take quests, you level up, you do missions, etc. There are two parts to this game: PvE (player versus environment) and PvP (player versus player). The party size in Nightfall ranges from four to eight. The level cap is only 20, which can be reached with ease. The reason for such a short level cap is to put the players on an equal playing field, and this makes the game much more skill-based rather than level-based. Also, the fact that only eight skills can be taken by each character at once makes the game much more strategic. In PvP, these eight-skill-templates, called "builds", determine which side wins the battle.

In the first two games, henchmen could be recruited for your party if you could not find enough human players. In Guild Wars Nightfall, special characters called heroes were added. Heroes are pretty much customizable henchmen, and are highly useful. The only downside to heroes is that each player can only take along three.

In the original Guild Wars, six classes were playable: Warrior, Elementalist, Ranger, Monk, Mesmer, and Necromancer. In Guild Wars Factions, the Assassin and Ritualist were added. In Guild Wars Nightfall, two new professions, the Dervish and Paragon, were added. The Dervish is a scythe-wielding melee attacker, and a Paragon is a spear-throwing ranged attacker.

This section gets a 9/10.

Story
For an RPG, the story is probably the best out there, considering most online RPG's don't have stories. I enjoyed the story more than Guild Wars Factions, but the original Guild Wars had a story that no online RPG has yet matched in my opinion. If you honestly care about the story of online RPG's, then you should be satisfied. Don't expect to be sucked in like you're playing Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, but those are single-player RPG's.

The story gets a 7/10.

Conclusion
To conclude, Nightfall is more of the same if you've played either of the first two campaigns. In this case, that's a good thing. Guild Wars Nightfall is a great game that will keep you entertained for months, perhaps even years. If you only buy one RPG this year, why not have it be Nightfall? It's a great game, and I bet you you'll appreciate it as a Guild Wars fan or even just an RPG fan.

Final score: 8.4/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/08, Updated 08/10/09

Game Release: Guild Wars Nightfall (US, 10/26/06)