Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Bump and Grind

So, the graphical engine behind Age of Conan (or Raarrgh, if you prefer), is obviously quite powerful and nowhere is this highlighted more than in the character customisation section at the start of the game.

Where most MMO games enable the player to customise a little bit in terms of height and hair colour, Conan goes the whole hog. Everything from cheekbones to bust size can be altered – though given the mature rating slapped on the game and the audience that the game will therefore unfortunately but inevitably appeal to, most players won’t venture far beyond the bust size.

This is especially true once those people realise there’s nothing to stop your character running around in the buff. Well, nothing except a low armour rating anyway. The fact that hardcore RPG players can’t stop fretting over their defence ratings is probably the main reason that the game hasn’t descended into a full on naturist sex festival just yet.

Well, that and the fact that the dancing emotes are mostly pretty awful and there’s not much point in a sex festival if you can’t shake your jubblies properly.


At the same time though, one of the things that really limits Age of Conan is that there isn’t a huge amount of choice open to players in regards to character classes. There are only three nationalities for players to choose from – the Conan-a-like Cimmerians, the bland and non-descript Aquilonians and the obligatorily evil Stygians.

Each nationality has a specialty; melee combat for the Cimmerians, magic for the Stygians, but the classes themselves still feel very by-the-numbers, unimaginative and limited. The only one who really stands out as remotely original is the summoner class Demonologist. Everything else is predictable to the extreme and the fact that there’s only really one ranger type class seems a bit of an oversight.

This really isn’t a huge problem however, as the focus on the game is very much on the melee rather than the ranged combat. In our adventures throughout Hyboria, we found that archer and magic wielding characters were actually pretty rare.

Thankfully then there are other parts of Age of Conan which compensate for these relatively minor drawbacks. The interface, for example, is both robust and user-friendly, managing to be both familiar to hardcore MMO fans and massively accessible to those who can’t even define the acronym "MMO. "

What might put off newcomers to the genre though is the sheer amount of grinding to be seen in Hyboria. There’s a sweet spot to be found in Age of Conan in regards to grinding, as although the first few hours of the game are nothing but repetitive and intensely dull combat, the core experience of the game tries as hard as it can to be a bit more than “Gather X amount of Y to earn Z.” True, the game doesn’t always succeed in it’s attempts to go beyond the usual grind-fest, but it does try and should be commended for that at least.

Conclusions

It’s always a painful and futile experience to try reviewing an MMO. For instance, there are problems with credit cards and the inevitable fact that we forget to cancel the subscriptions after the review is done, therefore inadvertently charging a couple of hundred pounds to company credit card.

Most of all though, the review very quickly runs out of date as the game is constantly updating and how much anyone enjoys the game is massively dependent on the calibre of gamers they end up gaming alongside. That means you’re going to have to take any conclusions we offer with a pinch of salt – ok? Just so we’re clear.

That said, Age of Conan is a lot of fun once you get into it – the proviso mainly being that you do have to make an effort to get into and jump over the initial few hours of boredom.

Game designers seem to be labouring under the impression at the moment that MMO games as a genre have only one aim; to topple World of Warcraft as Lord of the Pings. To do this, they seem to think that you need a certain gimmick or hook – PvR gameplay or genre blending MMOFPS action for instance. So far, that tactic doesn’t seem to be doing to well – so it’s refreshing to see that Age of Conan bucks the trend and instead focuses on creating just a solid and persistent world to play in.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures doesn’t bring anything hugely new to the table and the only real gimmicks it has going for it are the franchise behind it all and the fact that you can’t take two steps without faceplanting into the second biggest pair of boobs you’re ever likely to see. It’s a fun and accessible RPG though, and on that front it can’t be faulted.