Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle

"An MMORPG that's going to get left behind"

Lineage 2 can be a good or a bad game, it depends on the player. Unfortunately, it isn't the game for most players. While I found Lineage 2 to be fun at first, the game becomes increasingly monotonous. If asked, I simply cannot recommend that anyone get this game, unless you have plenty of time on your hands and are ready for quite a long haul, not to mention being willing to put up with NCSoft's antics.

Graphics: 9/10

Perhaps the best thing about Lineage 2 is the graphics. When you first log in, you'll practically fall in love with them. Everything looks as it should, character models are well made, and combat and spellcasting effects look interesting and particularly flashy. Overall, L2's graphics hold a definite anime theme.

This isn't to say that the graphics are perfect. Often monsters in the game look completely identical to other monsters of different types, not even a slight coloration change to differentiate them. Crashers and Iron Golems, for instance, look exactly the same, and are found in the exact same location near the human starting location.

Another gripe that you'll hear often is the lack of character customization. When you create your avatar, you're limited to changing minor aspects such as your character's hair style, hair color, and face (which tends to do little more than change complexion and eye color), and even with these many will only have two, maybe three options at best. This means that it won't even take ten minutes to walk into your twin brother/sister. The only thing that differentiates these is equipment...and, sadly, this fails to do so. Players all vie for the top equipment, and it's not uncommon to see two red-haired, brown-eyed human women with pony-tails and the same ugly yellow dress.

Sound: 7/10

I can't really comment much on the sound. The sound-effects are decent...you swing a sword, you get the appropriate clang and whoosh. Music tracks are rare and located in only certain named areas, but these tend to get repetitive and annoying quick due to their complete lack of length, although they often are decent tracks.

One thing to note, however, is the voice acting. Although not necessarily good or bad (depending on your point of view), there have been complaints as to how certain characters sound (and no, you have no control over it...it's based on your race, class, and gender). Yes, elven males do scream like girls when they are hit, and the human male mystics aren't much better. Although, conversely, the dark elven females sound oddly masculine at times...

Story: 8/10

Although L2 does have a story, it's not something that's going to hit you right when you walk in. In order to unravel it, you have to go out of your way and talk to every NPC you come across and read what they say. This often leads to players saying that there is no story when there is...you just have to hunt for it. Similarly, the L2 manual contains pathetically little story information, although you can find tons on the L2 official website.

Gameplay: 2/10

This is where L2 suffers the most, and boy does it ever suffer. L2's gameplay will bore you, frustrate you, and generally drive you insane unless you are a true hardcore gamer.

The grind is a common complaint, although it alone doesn't spell disaster. It is something that we have come to expect from MMORPGs...you will level slow, because that keeps you playing for longer. This leveling grind wouldn't be so bad, except that there is pathetically little to do besides kill monsters. Though there is crafting in the game, only Dwarves are capable of doing this (and they pay for it by being weaker combatants). In order to craft items, these Dwarves require the materials to make the items. The only way to get materials: killing monsters. Similarly, quests are in the game, but besides a simple go-to quest for newbies, 99% of the quests involve one thing: killing monsters. After doing the same "kill X mob # times for $ cash" you'll be positively bored to tears. Unfortunately, it's a necessary evil to stay competitive in the game (more on that later).

The fact that every aspect of the game revolves around a single thing (killing monsters) wouldn't be so bad if killing monsters didn't feel more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. Combat in L2 is extremely simple: you click on a monster, and your character runs up to the monster and exchanges blows with it until the character dies or the monster dies. Now imagine doing this. A thousand times per level. With time in between every few battles to sit down and heal up. Yeah. This is the experience of the life of a fighter for the first 20-40 levels of his life. To be fair, he gets a couple skills thrown in that let you do extra damage, which are as involving as clicking a button to activate every few seconds. Mages are slightly more involving, though they too will become boring as you develop a certain attack pattern that works for every single mob you come across (Ice Bolt, Wind Strike, repeat, Ice Bolt, Wind Strike, repeat...)\

This boredom wouldn't be so overpowering if partying were encouraged. Instead, partying leads to getting less money per level, and often this leads to underpowered characters. Some characters will also have a very difficult time finding parties...orcs, prior to going to the mainland (where everyone around levels 15-20 go) will have very hard times finding groups because orcs completely lack any healing class. Some classes will have hard time finding groups simply because they don't do their job as someone of another class would do. This makes playing certain characters very frustrating.

Intensifying this boredom is how the class-system works. Characters choose between only two classes: fighter and mystic (Dwarves can only be fighters). These character classes have a little bit of everything...the Fighters are skilled in multiple weapons (depending on the race...elves, humans, and dark elves are skilled in bows, daggers, and swords/blunt weapons, while orcs are skilled in swords/blunt weapons and fist weapons (knuckles, etc.)) and have fairly generic skills. Mystics gets some attacks spells, some healing spells, some spells to improve ally performance, and lower enemy performance.

Now, these generic characters become more specific at certain levels...characters can change classes at level 20 and again at level 40. The classes they can change into depend on their race and class. So a human Fighter can become either a Warrior, Knight, or Rogue. Each class specializes in different things: Warriors do damage with big weapons, Knights are the defenders of the weak with high defense, and Rogues are the sneaky guys who use daggers and bows. Human Mystics get a similar choice: Clerics who specialize in magic that heal and aid allies, or Wizards that specialize in damaging spells and summons.

Unfortunately, this system possesses major flaws. Let's say you are playing a Knight, and you want to see what life is like as a Rogue. You can't do it right away, you have to make a new character and grunt through the first twenty levels of sheer boredom and monotony to get there, only to find out weeks later that you can't stand the class when, had you been able to try it out right away, you'd have realized that on the first day. Similarly, let's say you want to be a pet class (Summoner) but you detest the idea of being just a simple nuker (Offensive Mage). You have to push your way through the first twenty levels until you get to level 20 Wizard, which is when you get your first summon. You find out that the pet class system in L2 is junk and you end up with a character that you can't do anything with...the only options from Wizard are either the nuker (the class you hate) and the summoner (the class that you've learned to hate).

Now, this is also assuming that you can have fun with any of these classes, as most of them are extremely one-dimensional. The healers in the game heal and buff...that's about it (oh, and the healers can walk up to mobs and smack them with their books). Pet classes do nothing but summon, and end up with pets that often have no other ability than to walk up and repeatedly smack something (oh, and the summoners can walk up to mobs and smack them with their books). Most classes are extremely boring to play because you are severely limited in what you can do.

Next on the topic of Gameplay is PvP...the thing that L2 tries to stress. Unfortunately, it blew up in their faces. L2 sports a system for "open PvP" called the Karma System. Karma works like this: you hit a player who has no karma and your name turns purple. If you kill someone who's name is purple, that person dies and nothing else spectacular happens. Should you kill someone who's name is white, however (meaning that they don't fight back) your name will turn red, and you will gain karma. Now, karma is very, very bad. If you have karma, your chance of dropping items sky-rockets, and you'll soon find everyone in your section of the map out hunting for your blood with the promise of your precious equipment.

Now, this sounds like a good idea in theory: a person kills innocent people, he turns red and people go after him. Of course, this doesn't work nearly as well in practice. What this system supports his griefing. People will steal your kills. People will steal drops from the monsters you've killed. You can't get rid of them. Why? Because they refuse to hit you back, so if you kill them, you turn red, and you lose all of your equipment. Lose-lose situation for you. It's cheap, it's under-handed, and NCSoft supports it.

In the fabled Chronicle One (the big patch that NCSoft has delayed to late June...after delaying it from mid-June...after delaying it from early June...after delaying it from release...) there are supposed to be Castle Sieges and PvP Arenas. Unfortunately, many of these PvP options, particularly the Castle Sieges, will only be available to high level characters. So if you want to get the two hours of satisfaction every other week that the Castle Sieges are supposed to bring, you have to toughen up, level to at least level 40, and join a really good clan. Otherwise, you're not likely to get in.

Even if PvP were something besides rare in L2, it would be killed by the class balance...or lack thereof. The classes are very horribly balanced in L2. Now, while I expect that balance would never be truly perfect, what I do expect is for NCSoft to at least attempt to balance them. Imagine my surprise when, while reading patch notes for what is occurring in Chronicle One, I find out that NCSoft is is making some of the commonly known *underpowered* classes *even weaker*! Class balance kills PvP games, but NCSoft will have to find out the hard way, I guess.

One final subject on the topic of Gameplay. You'll notice that before I said that the chances of a person with karma's chances of dropping equipment was increased. Anyone can drop equipment on death, from either players or from monsters. Now, this wouldn't be so bad, except that this game is HIGHLY equipment based. A high level character with crappy gear is a crappy character. This game is extremely harsh when it comes to cash, and you have to constantly beg, bargain, and steal your way to get the next weapon. However, since a single piece of equipment (your weapon) can equate to nearly half of your total assets in cash, your character is going to be, quite literally, messed up beyond belief should he/she drop his/her weapon. Often, unless you have a clan who can support you, you'll often end up having to junk the character you have spend so many weeks or months on to make another one, just so you can catch up and remain competitive. This system is extremely harsh, and suited for only the most hardcore of gamers.

Community: 1/10

In all honesty, I have never, ever, been as ashamed of a group of people as I have many of the people who play L2.

Due to how the money system works, there is obviously those who farm money in the game and sell it for real-life money. Unfortunately, this is hard to combat...good equipment lets you reach the (few) good features at the higher levels, and the harshness of the money system in the game encourages such behavior.

Unfortunately, this has also led to a good deal of racism across the game, and it's nearly impossible to not see at least one racist comment during your first day in L2. You see, most of these adena farmers don't speak English and have little care about kill stealing, griefing, and exploiting, thus there is often a very bad reputation for the entire Chinese player-base. This often condemns innocent players who happen to speak Chinese, and tends to cause a vicious circle of hate that can potentially ruin one's experience.

One other thing to note (that particularly bugs me) is that, despite being provided with channels specifically for trade interactions and a feature that allows you to find parties, no one uses these, and instead you'll see countless "Want to sell long sword!" and "Level 18 fighter looking for group!" cries over the public Shout channel that wasn't designed for this purpose. In-game GMs refuse to do anything about it, and it can often be irritating to still see people hawking their wares when you've turned off the Trade channel so you wouldn't hear them.

Overall: 3/10 (Not an average)

Graphics are good. Sound and story are ok. Gameplay is only for those who can stand long, pointless grind with comparatively little reward at the end. Honestly, with games such as Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft well on their way, I would avoid this game for now. It simply offers nothing new, and what it does bring was very poorly executed.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/25/04