Champions: Return to Arms

"Same old formula with a lot more glitches"

Intro: Champions: Return to Arms is a good hack and slash dungeon crawl game that is severely hampered by some major glitches and design decisions.

Graphics: Champions: Return to Arms continues to use the engine first seen in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. The thing that's surprising is that after all these games the engine is still one of the best looking ones available. There are a few issues with slow down and where it fails to draw a part of the screen when it first loads the area but for the most part this is one of the most detailed games on ps2. This series has received a lot of praise for its water effects which are some of the best in any game out there. This game also has improved the textures on all the armor and weapons from the first one. (9/10)

Sound: Champions doesn't really do anything to innovate in the sound category but it's not horrible either. The sfx all sound like they should swords and shields clanging and such. The music on the other hand is nothing special. It's not bad but it's not really even noticeable. (7/10)

Game-play: This is where the game has the biggest let down. When it works right the game plays exactly the same as all the others in the series. You pretty much do the same thing through every single one. Walk here, fetch this item, and kill loads of bad guys on the way. The problem is in that the method of killing bad guys is always the same and there isn't that much difference in the variety of the monsters from this game or the first one. Another really annoying thing is that they removed the ability to add/remove players on the fly. This helps to prevent duping items and money but it's also very agitating if you want to play with other people on occasion. Fortunately when starting a new game it remembers how far you were and you can continue from the major mission section. But if you are halfway through an area and a friend wants to play you have to start all over. The second major issue is that there are loads of nasty bugs. All of the +health and +mana items do nothing at all, and if a wizard enchants your weapon with heat or cold it destroys any previous heat or cold enchantments permanently. There are also several bugs with quest logic as in doing these in a certain order that's wrong can make it impossible to continue due to stuff not appearing and such. What's worse is the fact the first Champions of Norrath game also had a ton of bugs and the developer touted how they were fixing all the bugs with this one. (2/10 would be a 6 if the game was more playable)

Replay-ability: This game is all about replaying it again with the same characters on harder difficulties. It's very unlikely that you'll be able to get the best items and max level with replaying many times. It's too bad that by replaying you just do the same exact thing over and over and over. (4/10)

Final Score: It's a game that had some potential but is very frustrating to play due to the bugs and issues with design.(5/10)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/05