Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle

"Uncertain pre-launch. Good LIVE."

BACKGROUND:
Lineage 2: The Chaotic Chronicle is an MMORPG set in the Kingdom of Aden during a time of anticipation and uncertainty. Just like the races of Humans, Elves, Dark Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves face uncertainty in-game, NCsoft and players face uncertainty in the real world. As the month-long open beta phase drew toward a close, there was great uncertainty as to the outcome of the launch of Lineage 2. After being plagued, a week before launch, with Net congestion (full servers), login issues, server crashes and lag, and unfixed bugs, many players were unsure as to if Lineage 2 was truly ready for the open market. Many said the game was not ready, that the decided launch date was too soon.

A week passed, the servers went down to signal the end of open beta, then started back up the next day to begin the first week of a commercially available Lineage 2..... Little could have been done to make the first few weeks better! Though the game is still hit with the occasional npc server crash, which causes all the mobs and npcs in-game to go into hiding, launch could not have been smoother. A seamless transition from beta to live for those who pre-ordered the game, a whole new world of excitement for the first time players who missed getting into beta.

GAMEPLAY(8/10):
For those of you who have never played an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) before, or those of you who have played, this game will introduce you to a whole new level of online gaming. Lineage 2: The Chaotic Chronicle, opens up to show you an entire world filled with mouth-watering graphics, outstanding gameplay and player control, tantalizing music and sounds, a combination of PvE and PvP gameplay, Quests, Clans, and plenty of other things to do in the Kingdom of Aden.

There are 5 different races with two classes each, Fighter and Mage, to choose from when creating a character, each with their own basic style of play. Can choose to be a Human, an Elf, a Dark Elf, an Orc, or a Dwarf. The only exception to choosing a class is Dwarf, who can only be a fighter, though he makes up for this with the fact that he is the only one who can craft items from raw materials. After you decide on a race, class, gender, and a small array of different physical characteristics, you are ready to jump into the world and start on the path of glory. You start off the game in the new character area for your character's race. Here you are walked through an easy and reasonably pain-free tutorial complete with starter quests to help you get oriented in-game. The primary activity, especially early on in the game, is hunting. You hunt mobs to gain experience, skill points, adena (gold), and a huge assortment of equipment and misc. items to aid you in your quest to greatness.

Upon reaching levels 20 and 40 you can change your class to become more powerful and specialized at certain types of gameplay. You are also allowed to use more powerful equipment. However, though levels are indeed important to the game, they are not the primary factor in deciding how powerful your character is, since leveling in Lineage 2 only increases your amount of HP, MP, and max skill level for certain abilities. The primary factor in determining character strength is the equipment you have, since leveling does not change your characters basic stats. This was an attempt by NCsoft to help out with the ever-important issue of character balance, or to keep any one race from becoming super powerful.

In-game, you may choose to participate in PvE (Player vs. Environment) gameplay, or PvP (Player vs. Player) gameplay. This is perhaps one of the primary issues that keeps gameplay from getting a 10/10. Balancing out the freedom of character to initiate PvP has continually been a subject of many online games. Some games, such as Everquest, choose to eliminate it entirely, shooting for an all PvE style of gameplay. Other games, such as Dark Age of Camelot, embrace PvP to the point that has become the most common activity in the game, sometimes signified by rampant PKing (player killing).

Lineage 2 tries to strike a balance between the two styles, shooting for both to be a prime form of gameplay. While PvE is clearly evident in the game, PvP is also a available, if somewhat restrictive in certain cases. In-game, any character can engage any other character in PvP at any time. However, to prevent, or at least discourage, the type of rampant PKing that can sometimes plague an MMO, a system that calculates the karma of a character was put in place. If you kill other characters outside of certain activities and guidelines, your character gains karma and is placed in a chaotic state that causes town guards to attack you on sight, restricting your gameplay somewhat. The primary exceptions to this system are the much hyped, Castle Siege and Clan Wars activities. I won't go into detail about them, as you can read about them on the Lineage 2 website. If you like nothing more than mindless, rampant PKing or you hate PvP to the very core of your being, this is not the game for you.

STORYLINE(1/10):
Thus far, there seems to be no solidly evident storyline in the game. Though there is a background story with lore that is supposedly going on during the game, there is very little you can do currently to interact with it. This is not the game for you if you only like games for in-depth and elaborate storylines.

PLAYTIME(6/10):
Though the casual player can still have fun playing this game, character development and advancement is extremely slow at the beginning of the game, and it just gets slower as your character gets stronger. Without significant help from other players and high-level friends, it's a long, slow road to your first class promotion and beyond. Though there is still a lot of things to do for the low level characters, don't expect to reach level 20 and above and rule over all the others players in PvP within the first few weeks.

GRAPHICS & SOUND(10/10):
The graphics in Lineage 2 are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Using a modified version of the Unreal tournament engine, Lineage 2 displays vast landscapes filled with awesome detail, ambient animation, and beautifully drawn monsters. Ranging from tall mountains, to gloomy swamps, busy towns, beautiful forests, and just about everything else in-between, Lineage 2 picks you up and dumps you into a whole new world. Your jaw will drop upon your first visit to one of the gargantuan castles that are spread throughout the kingdom. The one draw back to such detail is that you need a fairly recent video card and reasonably powerful powerful cpu to view it all in it's full glory.

CLOSING(8/10):
With so much to offer players, with promises of more to come, Lineage 2: The Chaotic Chronicle is well on it's way to being one of the best MMO-RPG yet. I give this game an 8 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone and everyone that enjoys playing fantasy based, MMO-RPGs. Though the price to play per month may seem a little steep compared to some of the other games on the market, it is definitely worth every penny. Go out and buy it now! Have you left yet? No? Well hurry and pick up a copy today! You won't regret it!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/06/04