Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle

"Haven't I seen this somewhere before?"

Oh yeah that's right, this game is quite familiar - it's another boring-treadmill, seriously gameplay-flawed MMORPG.

Graphics/Sound - 9/10
This is pretty much the only department where they succeeded, which doesn't say much. Although having great graphics you will need a good graphics card or otherwise experience harsh gameplay lag or turn your graphical settings down.

Gameplay - 3/10

Hunting/Explore - For the first few days this can be quite exciting and new, however the level grind is this game is long it will quickly become repetitive, tedious, and outright boring without enough game content to compensate for the slowness of leveling. Furthermore, when you die you loose exp (ok) and levels (bad) and you exp when dieing to other players (bad).

PvP - The idea of an open PvP system is very very bad. It permits and promotes grieifing and lack of ANY sense of role-playing. It also is a great way to destroy social aspects and trust among players. Let me spell it out - it's a Massive Multi-player Game, people should should band together to accomplish similar goals of interest, not senselessly kill each other. And that's all the PvP is - senseless killing - with the exception of castle sieges, which you don't even see until level 40+ and thats months away from level 1.

Now there is a system to prevent griefers called the Karma System, which is pretty screwed up in itself. If you want to be a rebel of society and/or an infamous evil killer, forget it - your character is already destroyed before you began, thats the way the karma system works...it's completely anti-pvp. If your name is red (which flags you as a killer) you stand a high chance of losing items upon death - and if you stay red you WILL die, and once you've lost all your equipment you are nothing more than an easy target for PK slayers.

Overall the pvp system is completely stupid, there should have been good and evil, at least two factions that fight against each other, instead of the childish free for all frag fest it is now.

Customization - Almost nonexistent. Expect to run around looking like everyone else during the early stages of the game (level 1-40)

Buy? No. It seems this game was rushed before it was ready, it had potential.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04