Champions of Norrath is an exciting third-person hack and slash RPG set in the world of Everquest.
Full Review
Champions of Norrath Review
By, Ronald Wartow
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
Champions of Norrath (CoN) places a player smack dab into the middle of familiar hack and slash RPG territory. CoN looks and feels like the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series, but CoN elevates the gameplay to a compelling level in graphically stunning outdoor settings and randomly-generated dungeons. Expect to spend more time to finish this game than normally required for an action RPG, for there are 50 quest oriented levels that need exploring and conquering. The linear plot is typically routine and hackneyed and serves as a pretext for the monster-slaughtering activities that comprise the core of CoN. The fact that this game takes place in the Everquest universe made no difference to me, having not played that wildly popular MMORPG. The game can be played either in single-player or four-player cooperative mode online or offline.
Gameplay
It should come as no surprise that CoN is similar to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, for the developer created that game as well. In fact, despite CoN’s improved graphic quality and a few new wrinkles along the way, the feeling of déjà vu was strong. Not that this is a bad thing, particularly since I enjoyed Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and the sequel, which, incidentally, was not developed by Snowblind. My experience with CoN can be summed up best by saying, even given the enhancements, “Been there, done that”. Two things definitely different are the game completion time and degree of difficulty. The Baldur’s Gate games clocked in at about 10 hours, while CoN will take easily double that for a single playthrough, and provide an inordinately greater challenge along the way.
Character creation is typical. Five disparate classes, each with a male-female option, afford the usual wide range of strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. You must choose between a tank, cleric, wizard, ranger, and so-called shadow knight. The typical ability to tailor the hero to your exact physical tastes is on hand in the form of facial, hair, and body feature options.
The player has the ability to mold the character in any fashion desired. Customization of weapons, armor, and accessories is the norm. This calls for the player to determine strategically throughout CoN whether to upgrade a possessed weapon, armor, or accessory or just wait to purchase a better item.
The skill set, particularly, is wonderfully varied and a no-nonsense dream for combat. Each skill can be raised all the way to level 20. Near the end of the game, the hero can be dealing hundreds of points in melee damage with a single thrust. To demonstrate the skill variety, let’s examine the Shadow Knight. This character learns fairly early the Disease Bolt skill. (Two of your favorite skills are conveniently assignable to the Triangle and Square buttons for instant access during combat. Pressing the L2 and R2 shoulder buttons makes the hero drink a health or mana potion, respectively.) When you score a successful hit with this skill, every few seconds even a charging monster, retches and stops dead in its tracks. Talk about an effective combat move. The Shadow Knight can also learn Engulfing Darkness, covering the monster is a cloud of confusion for a short period. Not only does this let you pound away at a defenseless monster, but the sight of a fearsome monster flailing about in disorder is actually quite engaging. Later on, the Shadow Knight earns the ability to summon a skeletal sidekick for every combat, which gives the feeling of adventuring with a party rather than a single hero. Along with the many active skills are passive ones, usually for protection, which do not require any action by the player during combat.
The game world is vivid, full of atmosphere, and provides an interesting place in which to perform all those quests required of the character. The sounds and music are outstanding. I particularly liked the rippling water effect and the sound of the hero splashing through a pond, and the chanting church-like chorus that always reminded me of “The Omen” movie. At the simple push of a controller stick, the available camera can zoom in on the action or pull back way up high to scope out the surroundings.
Thankfully, transport around the world is made effortless by two features, the portals and gate scrolls. Portals connect various areas of the game by providing instant teleportation over great distances. Many portals are located just before boss battles to give the hero an opportunity to return to town and prepare for the boss battle by buying more healing and mana potions and new equipment. The gate scroll can be used anywhere in the world, and whisks the player back to the beginning town, actually an elevated fort. Using another scroll returns the player to the spot from which the initial gate scroll was used.
Most interestingly, like the Dark Cloud and .hack series, the dungeons are randomly generated. Many might find this instability quite disagreeable, but I found that approaching each dungeon brought a sense of novelty to the gaming table. After each successful dungeon foray, the hero can return to the beginning fort’s safe confines to do the inevitable buying and selling.
The world houses literally thousands of interesting, customizable usable items, including many that affix status enhancements on your weapons and armor. The usual transparent map has been replaced by one that distinctively highlights the areas being visited for easy player orientation. The map can be toggled on or off. When on, two views are available, the large one superimposed directly over your character, which frustratingly hides your character from view, and a smaller, but easily readable, map off in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The map is particularly useful in pinpointing CoN’s many secret areas where the swipe of a sword will collapse a wall and allow access to fresh territory.
Combat is fast and furious, real time all the way. Frantic presses of the attack X button can result in some devastating combos. Unfortunately, without the ability to auto-target, the player must take great care to line up an intended victim precisely or be swiping at nothing while the monster has its way. Often, the hero will be confronted by significant numbers of monsters, and must employ strategies to win the day, like using the natural environment for protection and as a shield against numerous monsters being able to pummel you at any one time.
The monsters are varied, and every area to be conquered has a boss at the end. Early on, these bosses are pieces of cake, patsies in the worst way. As you progress, the bosses are not only powerful, but exhibit uncanny abilities to avoid your blows and attempt to “spell” them into submission. Do not be expecting monsters that simply charge the hero flailing away, and easy targets for spells on bashing. The tactical and avoidance AI on many of the monsters seems effectual, Monsters do not regenerate. This can cause a problem if the next dungeon is a bit too tough, for there’s no way to improve the character through the gaining of experience. In that situation, the best a player can do is try to obtain better weapons, armor, and accessories to the point where that next dungeon can be tackled.
Criticisms
Load times are frequent and can take up to 20 seconds. Every time the player switches locations, which obviously is quite often, the dreaded “Loading” screen appears bringing the action to a standstill. 20 seconds can be an eternity sometimes in these circumstances. Another annoyance was when many monsters were involved in a battle. This slowed the game down appreciably. I enjoy side quests in my RPG’s and there’s none to be found in CoN. Finally, while I was unable to test out online play, reliable web sources report a few problems that anyone interested in this mode should check out.
Final Verdict: 88%
