"This is good!"

Welcome to my review of yet another Guild Wars game! I am TakaRagranok, an avid fan of this CORPG! It is my hope that I can attempt to help you figure out whether you want to buy this or not! (although I pray you already concieved the notion that yes, you want to buy this).

First off, before I get to anything, I need to mention: GW: Eye of the North is an EXPANSION ONLY! There are only level 20 (or level 10 and up, during ANet's promotion) characters allowed into the Far Shiverpeaks. No new adventurers. Sorry. In any case, you need at least 1 campaign registered before you can play GWEN. If you don't have any previous campaigns and you're looking for a quick game fix, I might recommend Guild Wars Nightfall, as this will give you the maximum number of skills available to the ten Heroes that you can unlock in GWEN.

Heroes, you ask? Essentially, they are smarter AI, and you control their weapons and skill sets. Very handy. Nightfall (NF) has the widest range of skills to give, having skills for all 10 professions (although you can only play as 8 in NF, the other 2 require Factions).

Anyway, on to the ACTUAL review!

Story: 7/10

Honestly, the story isn't bad. It isn't going to wow anyone, but....it still passes as decent, and the ending (which gives us the prelude to GW2 ) is fair. The obvious fanservice was thankfully granted to GW players: A certain girl from the Presearing area has finally reappeared in the care of the Ebon Vanguard, a small group of soldiers that have set up camp in the Eye of the North. Honestly, I thought there would be a bit more to the EN, but sadly, no. :( But, I digress. We get introduced to two new races, the Norn and the Asura. The Norn seem to be Celtic warriors that are quite a bit taller than humans. The Asura are small, and look like a combination of Orc and Goblin, and is about the size of a Dwarf.

Graphics: Honestly, this varies by perspective. I say around a 7/10 yet again, do to the fact that my graphics card isn't as frickin awesome as most out there. However, assuming you do have a decent card, you can get some jaw dropping backdrops, and the character designs have more subtle details to them, as do some weapons (I'm looking at you, Destroyer Sword!). In truth, Guild Wars tends to look pretty good all the time.

Music: 10/10:

Ah, Jeremy Soule does it once again! My my my.....how I love his work! Honestly, there's not a single track in this game I don't like, and that's quite a feat; there were many tracks in NF I didn't prefer. Factions.....well, I click with Asian-themed music. The general music for the mountains was pretty good, and the opening score.....well, that was perhaps the greatest orchestral song I've ever heard, minus One-Winged Angel. In short, I hope they get a CD for this; I'd pay for it.

Control/Strategic Elements: 9/10

Honestly, how do you not have perfect control on PC RPGs? I'm not sure, although....this is pretty good. Easy to keep running, easy to target....this works well. For the PvE, there's really not that many strategic elements, vut there are times where inexperienced players might scratch their heads. In addition, the whole, only 8 skills to bring out of 100 works really well. Someone can pretty much throw random skills available to them on the Skill Bar and probably find some way to make it playable.

Bonus Round!

This game gets an extra point for allowing us to keep our hard earned achievements (such as cartography titles), weapons (sadly, only the destroyer weapons), elite (most often, 15k per piece armor), mini pets and animal companions, and Heroes (so long as they have an armor upgrade) in the Hall of Monuments, located in the EN.

I personally find the Hall of Monuments to be a good thing, although for people who only like PvP only characters, they kinda get bitten in the rear. Regardless, for those of us who do a bit of both, it serves to push us a bit farther. I therefore award this game an extra point!

Have fun playing! ~Taka Ragranok

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/08

Game Release: Guild Wars: Eye of the North (US, 08/28/07)