Champions of Norrath

THE BAD:
nothing!!!! everything is wonderful about this game if you play it youll be hooked until you finish it on all 3 difficulties and more.

SUMMARY:
hack n slash, customization, armor, stats, spells, different and enchanted weapons, enchanted armors, multiple bosses, many areas, realistic design,KICK ASS GRAPHICS!!! different classes of warriors. this is a true and one of the best rpgs ever made

THE BAD:
1) Glitches a lot, usually only for online play.

2) Bosses do a LOT of damage and can usually kill you in 2-3 hits.

3) Disconnection from online mode a lot.

4) Lots of walking.

SUMMARY:
The graphics are very sweet, the sounds are awesome, umm... The Items are endless and awesome. I love all of the characters you can be, great spells. I just love to kill Skeletons and Goblins. The Last boss is fun to fight. Yeah basically I give this game a 4.2 for it being superior to almost every other ps2 game out there.

THE BAD:
the story

SUMMARY:
if you like baulders gate buy this. its the best rpg slasher ever for gameplay and it is totaly additive but the stoyline is boringggggg! but ignore that and buy me (and ply as the dark elf shadow knight he is by far the best charactor in a rpg game ever!)

THE BAD:
absolutely nothing

SUMMARY:
champs is a perfect rpg, ranking in with the ff series, no turn based fighting completely hack n slash, realistic environment from forests to dungeons to arctic,lava and desert regions,a must play for everyone esp. rpg fans. this is one of the best rpg's ever made, play with up to 3 other ppl via multitap or play online, multiple bosses and missions to accomplish, 5/5, 2 thumbs up!

THE BAD:
Not enough monsters in the manual

SUMMARY:
All of us should take out pointy wizards' hats off to the excellent Baldur's Gateark Alliance for bringing Gauntlet-style hack-n-slash thrills back to consoles, and now, Alliance's original developers return with a fantastic action-RPG set in Sony's EverQuest universe. (The big difference? Um..well, thhe orcs look a little different, i guess.)
Champions mimicks everything that i loved about Alliance but actually takes it all a step further, with extensive item customization, enchanced graphics, more variety to its straightforward all-monsters-must-die missions, a ton of levels, and up to four-player simulatenous play, both online and off.
The best part, though is that the heart of the game--Champions' tight fight-or-flight gameplay--remains utterly engaging either alone or with friends helping you out. And luckily, Champions visuals are up to par with the gameplay. Cavernous dungeons and web-filled tombs have an almost photo-realistic look to them, and visual effects (like the light cast from a flaming sword) will have you geeking out, looking for new weapons to ogle.
Great as it is, Champions still isn't perfect. Through it's much less pronounced than in Alliance, the constant sword swinging and spellcasting does still get repetitive over time--something that more monster variety and additional subquests could have alleviated. So although Champions clearly reigns as current king of the action-RPG hill, there's still room before it reaches its peak

THE BAD:
Occaisonal crashes, hard as hell early bosses, and no auto aim for your bow.

SUMMARY:
Champions is a very well done game and was worth the 2 month push back. It has virtually the same combat system as the BG: Dark Allaince games, only its done better. In Champions you can dodge! Granted you can only dodge backwards, but how many times could you use this in other hack fests? For those of us who are old school rpg fans, Champions has enough of a DIECENT storyline woven into the bloody carnage to keep us from getting board. And as the sweet little side bonus, it has the guy who does Raziel's vioce doing the dark elf male's voice and Leafkorias' voice.
(For those of you who don't know, the guy who does Raziel's voice is funny as hell, watch the outtakes from soul reaver 2 and lok: defiance.)

THE BAD:
many bosses require coward tactics unless you import a high-level characters. more on that later. no auto-aim for ranged weapons, you cant aim in the general direction and it hit, you have to aim to the inch.
not long enough.....only 8 hours through the first time.

SUMMARY:
as other reviews have mentioned, CoN plays the same as BG:DA and its sequal DA2. although some might see this as a problem, i am a fan of nearly any D&D spin-off, so naturally, i love DA and DA2. there are differences, however, and one of them is non-static levels. towns are all static (same every game) however outside of town, the maps change every time you start a new game, so dont waist time memorizing maps. on to the combat: depending on your perticular brand of butt-kicking, you can get everything you want. i take pride in leveling the battlefield with any style, but i particularly like the "me have big weapon, me kill fast" approach that the barbarians delivery. most monsters die easily no matter what approach you take, but sometimes you live longest by standing back and firing. another plus, that i mentioned is monster variety. if you played Diablo 2, its much like that. with each general monster type there will be 3 or 4 main variations plus 5 possible enchantments that cause them to do special damage types. aside from the lack of time it takes to beat, and the manual aim with ranged weapons, the only problem i have found with the game is the boss fights. many of the bosses are overpowered, and so you must rely on cowardice tactics such as standing behind a break in the wall that is just big enough for you, and too small for them, and then unleashing arrows or spears.

THE BAD:
I paid fifty bucks. I'm not saying it isn't worth fifty bucks. I'm just saying, that's what I Paid.

SUMMARY:
This is Baulder's gate with more characters. It has a bunch of cool things like: Character customization (outward appearance), weapon's AND armor customization (really cool), random dungeon and shop items generator making for tons and tons of different items and a new gaming experience every time! I really don't have anything negative to say. I LOVE the Baulder's Gate games and thanks to "SnowBlind," they didn't change a thing. Champion's of Norrath is a must game for the serious RPG player. And it's still a lot of fun, if your not.

THE BAD:
The only nuisance I've seen so far concerns the inventory screen. Or rather, the pop-ups that constantly cloud your view of said inventory screen. With the way they have inventory set up, it'd make way more sense to display the detailed item information on the right side of the screen (the part containing nothing more than a picture of your character, where nothing would be clouded). However, they have those pop-ups on the left side, where it constantly displays directly overtop of the information you're trying to work with. With the amount of time you spend going through inventory, it can become a nuisance after awhile of constantly having to move your left analog around to move the popups out of your way (just so you can SEE what you're working with).

SUMMARY:
Quick note: I haven't seen the full version of the game yet. Though I have played the demo (from Official Playstation Magazine), which is what I'm rating here. Not sure what will be changed upon release of final version. So I'll let this review stand until I pick up the full version after release....

Champions of Norrath.. released by Snowblind (the same company that brought us the first Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance game). From everything I've seen so far, they haven't changed the formula that much as far as the engine is concerned.

The race/character formula hasn't really been changed that much either. In choosing a race, you're still locked into a certain character class as well (for example, if you wanna play a Shadowknight, you must be a Dark Elf to play that class). Of course, the formula's been that way since the original Dark Alliance (and probably won't see too much change in the future either). Though I will say it is rather refreshing to at least be able to choose the gender of your character for a change (at least with this game, you're no longer locked into a mold in that regard). Though with only 5 classes total (with corresponding races) to choose from, Snowblind still has a long way to go if they really want to add true RPG class variation into their games.

On the whole, the game has about the same feel as Dark Alliance II, except for using different characters and taking place in a different world (with a different storyline). However, the formula works.. so I can see why they haven't changed it much. Reminds me of a phrase I heard before: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

In any case, the formula does still work.. which makes Champions of Norrath worth a look at....