"It's Everquest 2, a game you need a super computer to play it on!"

Aaaalrighty then. There's been a lot of hype over EQ2 around here, both good and bad. I've been playing this game for about 2 days now, I thought it might be fun to write a little review on it. I'm no professional, but I'll give it a shot. Gonna put it in simple pro-con format.

Pros:
-Audio. They tried something I've never really seen before, which is voice acting NPCs. Almost every NPC you come across in this game will actually talk to you. It makes it much much easier for lazy people like myself. No more reading! hurray! Being that I watch way too much anime, I'm very verry pissy at voice actors most of the time. Considering that, I gotta say that the voice acting was phenominal. Just really really good.

-Graphics. I'm sure everyone's seen screenshots of this game, the graphics are super duper spiffeh! Kinda has a cartoony look in game, but very very detailed.

Characters. Wow. This was really cool. The character creator went almost waaaay too into it. Alright, you start off with male female, then race, then skin color (including fur color or tatoos), then you choose from lots of hairstyles, color chart for hair, color chart for hilights. Then we go into the face, this is where it starts getting freakishly detailed. You choose the eye tilt, size, color, eyebrows, cheeks, chin, nose, lips, ears. It takes a good half hour just making your character O.o;;

-Gameplay. Gameplay's pretty upbeat. Rather similar to FFXI, only there's no real battle mode. More of an action pace to it. Can't say too much about the gameplay yet, been doing quest mostly so far. Leading up to my next point:

-Quests! You can get quests from basically every single person you talk to. What's nice is you have your quest status in the upper right corner with a checklist telling you what you've done and what you need to do. Some might think it makes it too easy, I like it.

You knew it was comming....

Cons:

-Audio. Yea, ok. So we got really good voice acting. The problem here is, the npcs are very realistic. Too realistic actually. They'll yell at you while you walk by them, you can hear their conversations. It's kinda cool at first, but it can get really REALLY ANNOYING. They'll say the same thing every time you get within 5 feet of them. After hearing "Waaaa! My kitty! someone get my kitty! come back kitty! mister will you get my kitty?!" for the sixth time, I wanted to fuggin STAB that little kid. Children should be seen and not heard.

-Graphics. Alright, I don't know if it's the graphics or the game or what the hell is doing it, but the lag is HORRIBLE. Walking around town is basically like walking around in Lower Jeuno on a bad day times 5. When you read the minimum requirements on the box, that means that's what you need to actually get the game running. The reccomended is the REAL minimum requirements. You might've heard rumors about this game being way ahead of it's time. Yes, it's way ahead of it's time. So far infact, that your average computer CAN'T FUGGIN RUN IT. The lag hurt me so bad, I had to shove 3 giant wooden splintered sporks up my a$$ to ease the pain. Oh, and zoning. How could I forget zoning. 8 minutes. Yea, took me 8 minutes to zone. I pray it was just me.

-Quests. Ok, they have some of the best and worst quests I've ever done in this game. Being in cons now, I'll have to list the worst. The collecting quests. These aren't fun, just frustrating. Basically, you have to collect 5 certain items that are gathered from "?"s that spawn randomly around the area you're in. The item they give is random too, so there's no guarantee you'll be able to finish the collection. It took me and Tei at least a good hour or two to gather 5 crummy seashells all within a hundred yard radis of eachother.

So to sum it up, Everquest2 is a great game if you have a freaky expensive super computer. If you don't, then well, you better get a super computer or something.

-Credit for Saiato for playing-

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/04