Champions of Norrath

"A very glitched and poor quality game"

When I read pre-release reviews of Champions of Norrath, I was thrilled. I couldn't wait to play it, since it was reported as better than Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance or all the similar clones which arose at the same time. Unfortunately, the game was like many other multiplayer games, poorly designed and ultimately so flawed to make it an absolutely unenjoyable experience.

Graphics: 5/10
Graphically the game is average. The camera is fairly far out in comparison to Champions of Norrath's top competitor, Baldur's Gate 2: Dark Alliance, and the models are all vague and difficult to distinguish. Often times when playing, especially with four players, you cannot tell which character is actually yours except by the coloured circle underneath them.

Sound: 2/10
The music of Champions of Norrath is amazingly bad. I was appalled by how dull and uninspired each area was. You never notice the music during play. At best, you'll just notice its absence. Areas tend to have mediocre and unmemorable tracks. Further, the music actually will stop itself and has taken approximately ten minutes to loop. It is difficult to notice the difference between the music being turned off, and it simply having been running for awhile. The sound effects are dull, and include the general fantasy game fare. The only sound which was even remotely noticeable was the Dark Elf Shadowknight's projectile attack. It was a disease ball which included the sound of someone violently throwing up.

Storyline: 1/10
The Hack-And-Slash genre of games are not known for their excellent or well thought out storylines. Frequently they are at best difficult to follow, and at worst so incoherent as to simply be ignored by 90% of players. Champions of Norrath involves the struggles of your characters chasing a single orcish chieftain from the elfish city of Kelethein all across the face of the world. Why? That's a fine question. In my play experience, it was never answered, as my fellow players became so bored by the story that they simply skipped anything related to it.

Difficulty: 5/10
This is by no means an easy game. Glitches aside, it plays similarly to the PC game Everquest on which it was based; when playing alone you will find many encounters near impossible while playing with a group they will pass by without a second thought. The difficulty is not in any way scaled for group size, and so what is a difficult encounter with a group will prove to be monumentally tough for a single player to survive.

Gameplay: 1/10
The final nail of the coffin in this game compared to others is that it is nearly unplayable due to constant glitches. The most prominent was the load time errors we received. When the game would load a new area, the load screen would simply continue cycling through. We patiently waited for almost a minute before we began attempting to open and close the Playstation 2(which on occasion worked to correct the error) in order to fix the problem. This happened to us approximately five times during the course of the game, each resulting in the loss of about half an hour to an hour's worth of gameplay each time. This occurred three times in the Third Act with the Tropical Islands, an area with minimal save points and many difficult enemies.

Overall: 3/10
This game should have sat longer in testing, due to the phenomenal amount of errors. I at first thought it was simply my copy, however I've seen other reviews complaining of the constant glitches as well. If ever asked I would strongly recommend not purchasing this game. If you absolutely must play it, rent it first. If this game had remained in play testing and had all the errors worked out of it, it would have had great potential. However, as it stands, it's an embarrassment to Sony Entertainment, the Everquest brand name and Snow Blind studios.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/04