Score
Gameplay:	10
Graphics:	9
Sound:	8
FunFactor:	9
PlasmaFactor:	10
Overall:	9.2

Age of Conan Review
June 18, 2008 by Gabe Goldman

Funcom’s Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures innovates the way an MMO’s are played by keeping the player involved and engaged in every aspect of the game. Combat is face paced and rewards players who pay attention to the details of the system while still being simple enough to allow for new MMO players to keep pace. The physical look of the game is streamlined and gives an authentic feeling that you are head deep in the savage, brutal, and deadly world of Conan the barbarian. This review will look more in depth at the first 25 levels of the game, which alone would equal the content of some console games.

When your ship wrecks, grab an oar and fight

When first logging into Age of Conan, you find your avatar as one of many enslaved on a work ship. It is here, on the ship, where you make the decisions about the gender, class, race, and overall look of your character. Independent of which class you choose, you begin the game waking up on the beach of Tortage island with only the loin cloth you had on the ship. After talking to a mysterious stranger who alludes to your past and future, you receive your first weapon – a part of the wrecked ship. It is at this point that you are thrust into the story – finding your purpose in Hyboria. Tortage is, for arguments sake, a newbie island at heart. But unlike many other MMO’s, Age of Conan makes the newbie experience feel very satisfying through the use of multiple zones with varying environments like sewers, beaches, and active volcanoes to name a few. Through the guidance of destiny quests, the experience on Tortage helps you learn about your selected class’ abilities and will bring you up to level 20. After that point, you are given an option to travel to your race’s homeland where you can begin your quest to higher levels and more advanced content. There is no option, currently, to skip the newbie island, since it is such an extensive part of the game. But, Funcom has made it so that each character archetype (soldiers, rogues, mages, and priests) has a unique destiny quest experience so the path off of Tortage is unique each time around.

If I can reach you, I can hurt you

Instead of the standard ‘click-and-forget’ combat found in most every other MMO like WOW, Everquest, or even EVE online, Age of Conan demands a player’s attention with the inclusion of real-time combat, reactive shielding, and dodging systems. In the world of Hyboria, if you can reach it with your weapon, you can hit it. Every time you swing your weapon, any enemy caught up in the path of your blade, club, dagger, or pike gets hit and takes damage. During combat, you are given the option of attacking in a variety of directions – all in real time. Each attack that your character makes is completely controlled via the combat interface: there are NO auto attack options. Furthermore, to do more powerful combat moves, called combos, you must hit the correct combination of basic attacks to perform the actions.

Funcom has also done a good job giving the casting classes a more interactive experience. Instead of just clicking away at a healing spell or a direct damage spell, Age of Conan requires that casters select an area where your spells will effect. For example, instead of just targeting a single player in your group to heal, the spells heal everyone in a cone in front of you. Tactical healers can move into advantageous places during combat to effectively heal their whole group to conserve manna for other spells. Similarly, many of the damage spells require that you select a target area actively shown via a large shaded circle on the ground – similar to systems used for spells in final fantasy tactics, but in real time.

One other addition to the combat system is the inclusion of an active and reactive shield system. Age of Conan allows for players to adjust a set of three shields – depicted as three yellow arcs around your character and white arcs around enemies - to protect against incoming blows in one of three attackable directions (left, up, or right). Similarly, the enemies you encounter will react against your attacks on them by reinforcing their shields in the direction you attacked. If you are quick on your keys, you can attack in the direction where there are the least shielding – allowing you to ^destroy your enemy in a shorter amount of time. This system is vital for attacking multiple enemies at once. By focusing on the weak directions and using the appropriate combos, one character can easily take down three or four enemies of comparable level.

All though this is a very innovative and effective system for enemies to make combat dynamic and interesting, it is a bit difficult for players to use and implement during standard combat. At least to the level 25 point, there are not many cases where you would need to adjust your personal shields. It seems possible that this can be a vital part of PVP combat, where two soldiers might fight back to back, and adjust their shields to protect their front side facing the enemies. But, as currently constrained in the scope of this review, they seem unnecessary to adjust in standard game play.

There is no such thing as a free harvest

One great thing that Funcom has achieved with Age of Conan is a feeling of constant immersion – even in the usually mundane tasks of harvesting materials. After leaving Tortage and reaching level 20, you have the option to go to ‘Resource Gathering’ areas where you can learn to cut stone, pick cotton, cut wood, mine rocks, prospect gold, and skin leather. There are few things that make harvesting less of a grind and more of an immersive experience. Firstly, the resource locations do not change places in each area. Instead, once you find a resource ‘node’, you can mark it on your mini-map and easily return later. Once you find a node, you can harvest it until it runs out of materials. At that point, the resource slowly fills back up for later harvests. Secondly, there is no limit into how many harvesting professions you can have. This makes the search for the harvest much more interesting since you can gather anything you can find and collect at your skill level.

The most interesting part to the harvest system in Age of Conan is the inclusion of random encounters. Sometimes, while chopping away at a tree or mining away at a silver vein, a jealous prospector or pack of angry wolves will spawn to try and keep you from your harvest. Usually these battles are not too hard, but it makes the grind to get materials much more entertaining since you actually have to pay attention to what you are gathering instead of blindly clicking.

Adults Only

One large difference between Age of Conan and other MMO’s currently on the market is the commitment the game has made to create a mature gaming experience for adults. During combat, your character will perform fatality moves that can slice throats, impale bodies, or even chop off heads. Beyond that, the character design is intentionally realistic – even to the point where nipples are included on some character models like the demonologists’ succubus. Many of the conversations you have with NPC’s will have adult language and themes, but that just adds to the experience of making Hyboria come to life – making it much more authentic.

Graphics

There are, however, a couple of downsides to the game. Since the game is very graphically intensive there might be some issues running it on older machines. Luckily though, even at the minimal display settings, the game is still engaging and fun. For those of you with high-end machines, you will be treated to fantastic graphics that further help to draw you into the game.

PlasmaFactor

Age of Conan is a must for any avid MMO player. For anyone who is an avid RPG player and likes games like God of War, Ninja Gaiden, or Dynasty Warriors and have been looking to enter the MMO market, I would highly recommend trying Age of Conan. With its dynamic combat system, it will be an easy transition into the genre. With its amazing graphics that are only topped by the innovative combat system, Funcom’s Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures offers a unique game play experience tailored to adults that want a new MMO experience.

Conclusion

Overall, Funcom has done a variety of things with Age of Conan that raise it above the old crop of MMO’s. If the previous standard of MMO’s wowed us with point-click-and-forget action, Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures is destined to start a new generation of online role playing action.