Champions: Return to Arms

"Hack'n and a Slashin'"

Return to Arms is a great looking hack'n slash with an emphasis on teamwork and knowing whether to fight or flee.

At first glance the game looks great, it has improved on the Champions of Norrath (CoN)
formula with an awesome Arena Mode and a Medallion challenge mode. Thankfully the first thing you'll notice is the lack of serious and hideous bugs that plauged the first game and the new improved lobby, which is a bit confusing but still has cool options.

This game forces you to put your trust in the party members to the extent that if you join a bad party you might as well leave. You can't just use one character class to beat this game as easily as in the original CoN. The bosses will crush you, especially if you're a poor little magic user.

The skill tree has an added depth as you will have to decide which areas to develop, and magic users will have to pick even more carefully since some enemies have extreme immunities to certain spells and some other spells are more useful.

For old comers from CoN importing your characters may not pay off as much as you'd think since the balancing of power nerfs certain abilities and spells, a quick look at the skills tree will show you that things have changed and this may upset some players hoping to come back to more of the same.

Graphically the spells have a bit more umph to them, and they are fun to use. Meele wise you will have great fun watching all the enemies' animations and learning their attack patterns. There is way more depth in this game when it comes to knowing when to block and looking for an opening to break through an enemies guard. It's pretty cool since sometimes blocking is the best option or sometimes running for your life is the best.

This is a great looking game with some excellent innovations when it comes to the hack and slash genre. Simple strategies are needed to beat bosses, and nothing can bring a strategy together like voice chat. Voice chat is great in this game, and is totally improved from CoN. It frees up your hands and it's always funny to hear someone's expressions when they are getting their ass handed to them.

The sounds in this game are great except for the cheesey voice acting. To go along with the cheesey voice acting comes really cheesey cinematics! It's hillarious to watch a coven of undead witches talk about some plan to take over the plane of something or another. It's golden moments like this that make the voice chat worth it just to share a few laughs.

Some reviewers have said that this is more of the same, yet to me I think that this game is a huge improvement over CoN. The bugs that plauged that game and the disc read errors which rendered that game almost worthless at some points are gone. This game for the most part runs pretty smoothly but still contains enough bugs to have me drop the score a point.

Snowblind is getting closer and closer to making the perfect hack and slash, and this is one game not to miss if you're a fan of the genre.

As for the flaws in this game, it is important to know that the online lobby is confusing and that starting a party is a pain in the but, especially a good party. Worst of all is that people can not join an existing game, so if a player drops and if this was a key party member, the game is over.

Another thing which is not a true flaw but a way to force players into teamplay is that you can't play online alone. This sucks especially for wizards since the warriors can and will pick up all the drops and they will sell the drops even if you so badly need armor. So again, this game will force you to make buddy that you go treasure hunting with.

Which brings up another flaw... The friend's list doesn't work as well as it should and it's hard to work it.

Finally the last flaw is that there is no secure way of trading items so it's all a matter of trust. And when greed is involved, trust means nothing.

Once you learn to use these limitations you will have a lot of fun.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/05