Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest
Snowblind's second hack and slash effort is their best yet, but it hasn't arrived without more than a few problems.
Published: February 22, 2004
I can still think back fondly on my first experience with a Snowblind Studios product. Tucked into a cozy corner of a Moebius-themed arcade in San Francisco's Metreon mall, Interplay first showed off Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance to an intimate group of the gaming press. While most probably went to grab a drink or twelve, nobody left the event with anything running through the myriad of excited conversations other than the game. Even in its unfinished state, Snowblind's jaw-droppingly gorgeous PS2 effort was nothing short of amazing. Most, including myself, had a hard time believing the game was running on PS2 hardware, and even more impressive was that the game was downright fun, injecting the kind of hack and slash crawl that had eluded me for years, even trouncing the click-click-click-click-click gameplay of the Diablo games for some of us.
When the game finally debuted, it lived up to the tease we got at that first demo in every way, and most would agree it surpassed them with a great story and a never-ending parade of lavish particle effects and incredibly detailed environments that kept changing and never seemed to let and ooh or aah slip by with out getting a vocal acknowledgement. Many gamers that had spent time with the first game eagerly awaited Snowblind's second effort, and after three-plus years of waiting, we finally have it, and oddly enough, it's not a BGDA sequel. (That was handled instead by the now-kaput Black Isle Studios and didn't turn out nearly as well as most hoped.)
If it seems a little odd that I'd be spending so much attention on BGDA in an interview for an EverQuest game, it's only because they're essentially the same game. The engine is largely the same, and the overall gameplay is nearly identical. The difference, of course, is in the universes the two games occupied, and the execution that has done nothing but improve in the time Snowblind spent working on their second game. CoN is as graphically polished and diverse a hack and slash as you can get and is easily one of the most visually impressive games on the PS2.
Story-wise, things are pretty slim, with the occasional cutscene helping to move the overall storyline of an Orc captain uniting the previously warring races of orc and goblin in an effort to overtake all of Norrath ahead, and interspersed conversations with locals in each of the game's five acts providing filler in the way of missions, which range from fetch quests to monster felling excursions to rescue operations leading up to that act's equivalent of a boss. They're all more or less the same thing in actual gameplay, but unlike BGDA 2, there's an intangible level of fun that Black Isle somehow failed to capture. Even in single player, the game is more entertaining than BGDA2's multiplayer, but those that do manage to hook up with friends, either via a couple controllers and multitap as needed or online with up to four people in a party, will find Norrath quite the entertaining experience, though they are a few problems that I'll touch on in a second.
Regardless of whether you decide to liberate Norrath from her enemies alone or with friends, you'll still have a choice of a Barbarian Warrior, Dark Elf Shadow Night, High Elf Cleric, Erudite Wizard, or Wood Elf Ranger in male or female flavors. Each of them offers options for customizing skin color, hairstyle and color, and clothing tint to keep things mixed up a bit. It should be noted that Snowblind's penchant for girls of a more generous cup size has carried over from the first BGDA, something that makes boob guys like me oh so happy. Some of the characters in the game (particularly a mermaid and character near the end of the game) are quite busty, so regardless of which sex you pick for your romp through Norrath's past (CoN takes place hundreds of years before the first PC EverQuest game), you're bound to catch a glimpse of some women whose cups runneth over.
When the game finally debuted, it lived up to the tease we got at that first demo in every way, and most would agree it surpassed them with a great story and a never-ending parade of lavish particle effects and incredibly detailed environments that kept changing and never seemed to let and ooh or aah slip by with out getting a vocal acknowledgement. Many gamers that had spent time with the first game eagerly awaited Snowblind's second effort, and after three-plus years of waiting, we finally have it, and oddly enough, it's not a BGDA sequel. (That was handled instead by the now-kaput Black Isle Studios and didn't turn out nearly as well as most hoped.)
If it seems a little odd that I'd be spending so much attention on BGDA in an interview for an EverQuest game, it's only because they're essentially the same game. The engine is largely the same, and the overall gameplay is nearly identical. The difference, of course, is in the universes the two games occupied, and the execution that has done nothing but improve in the time Snowblind spent working on their second game. CoN is as graphically polished and diverse a hack and slash as you can get and is easily one of the most visually impressive games on the PS2.
Story-wise, things are pretty slim, with the occasional cutscene helping to move the overall storyline of an Orc captain uniting the previously warring races of orc and goblin in an effort to overtake all of Norrath ahead, and interspersed conversations with locals in each of the game's five acts providing filler in the way of missions, which range from fetch quests to monster felling excursions to rescue operations leading up to that act's equivalent of a boss. They're all more or less the same thing in actual gameplay, but unlike BGDA 2, there's an intangible level of fun that Black Isle somehow failed to capture. Even in single player, the game is more entertaining than BGDA2's multiplayer, but those that do manage to hook up with friends, either via a couple controllers and multitap as needed or online with up to four people in a party, will find Norrath quite the entertaining experience, though they are a few problems that I'll touch on in a second.
Regardless of whether you decide to liberate Norrath from her enemies alone or with friends, you'll still have a choice of a Barbarian Warrior, Dark Elf Shadow Night, High Elf Cleric, Erudite Wizard, or Wood Elf Ranger in male or female flavors. Each of them offers options for customizing skin color, hairstyle and color, and clothing tint to keep things mixed up a bit. It should be noted that Snowblind's penchant for girls of a more generous cup size has carried over from the first BGDA, something that makes boob guys like me oh so happy. Some of the characters in the game (particularly a mermaid and character near the end of the game) are quite busty, so regardless of which sex you pick for your romp through Norrath's past (CoN takes place hundreds of years before the first PC EverQuest game), you're bound to catch a glimpse of some women whose cups runneth over.
