Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings

"More Productive / Less Frustrating"

This game is a big step in the right direction for the mmorpg genre, More Productive, Less Frustration.

Lemme start this off by saying, Ive played UO, Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Ragnarok Online, and a Little Original Asheron's call. So, im not new to this genre.

Gameplay:10 Well theres alot to do, and most of your time isnt spent sitting down waiting for mana and hit points regenerate just so you could kill that one monster when it spawns again. You can fight/craft/quest/explore and its all worth doing. When you fight you can do combos and use skills as to make combat stray from the ordinary ''Press R and wait for monster to kill you'', Another fun aspect in combat is critical hits, they can turn the tide of a battle easily, they will get an orange star shining inside them, and if you do a successful specail move itll do unbelieveable damage, and it happens often enough. Theres no Class's so everyone has the pick of which mage buffs melee and ranged attacks you want on the same character, But dont feel bad if you put some points in something you realise you dont need, cause you can untrain and get back all the points you spent. Quests make leveling alot easier and take a break from the usual hunting, to gain rewards that are more then worth it. Theres so much to talk about under gameplay, but ill try to finish up quickly... Crafting, Anyone can do it, and from anywhere!, no need to go to town to sell, you can turn your items into gold on the spot if you wish. (yes this takes away from RPG'ness of it, but its better this way)No need to go to town unless you wish to. Now lets move to Death... When you die, you keep all of your items (no corpse looting), Dont lose XP (No precious hours wasted regaining lost XP) But you do lose vitae, Its HP and Vigor, when you die you lose 5% of HP/Vigor which can be regaining by gaining XP. So death aint so bad. I could go on but im gona stop here on gameplay and move on.

Story: 7 The story is done in patchs, Like every month or so (not sure dont quote me) they release another part of the story. and you can watch and gain movies of the story through ingame vaults. (kinda like a dungeon, but it has a boss) but when it comes to mmorpgs games story isnt there main concern.

Audio/Video:10+ Yikes, this is some killer graphics and audio... Graphics are amazing, truely, Grass, Mountains, terrain, monsters, avatars come to life in this amazing work of art (I dont suggest anything lower then a 1.3ghz GF4) And the sounds are really good too, the music is more background stuff thats changes depending on area your in but it really sets the mood.

Replayability:10 I dont need to go into this, everyone knows that these games are endless.

Closing Comments: With so much to do, So little down time, and amazing visuals, I put this way way way above the rest of the mmorpgs on the current market, I give this game a solid 10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/02, Updated 12/08/02