Lords of EverQuest Review

Well here I am, finally making my first review, bear with me as I ramble on towards a proper description of this game. I am a strategy gamer at heart, but I do have a love for RPG style games. I was excited to hear that I would get a copy of Lords of EverQuest since it sounded like a good cross between gaming platforms. I have never played the original EverQuest, nor did I even know much about it.

The game takes place in EverQuest's world of Norrath. It is the lost age of Norath, on the continent of Antonica. Three multi-race factions are fighting over control of the platinum mines and some other things that are not clearly explained in the storytelling narrative, but no doubt wars are brewing. The game starts with a light pre-game history narrative. The opening animations are quite nice the first time, but lose their appeal quite quickly. Since I was going to review the game rather than just play it for fun I did what I had never done before. I actually played the tutorial. Probably the best part of the game design was a well rounded and voice guided tutorial. The game in many ways reminded me of Warcraft, well let’s say in its design and interface, gameplay, well that was unlike anything I had played in a while.

After the brief tutorial intro to the game I figured it was time to dig into it. The game has 3 scenarios, almost mini campaigns. The odd thing was these could be played in any order; you didn’t have to complete one to get to another. This was a bit confusing as I was hoping for some type of goal or at least a dangling carrot to get me to try harder. The 3 scenario options are, The Shadowrealms which is more a civil war campaign, Dawn Brotherhood which is just a campaign of fighting off attacks by the Elddar Alliance, and Eldarr Alliance which is a series of tasks which lead to a missing leader. Difficulty is based on the hero you chose to lead your troops. Fighters are the easy path, fighter mage medium and true mages the hardest way to play. The game interface is the same no matter what path you choose, only the avatar and voices change. Each group has a standard tree for the construction of units and buildings. You build forces through mining platinum, the world’s only financial resource. The game has 15 lord models and more than 60 warrior types. Lords have special abilities and can extend those on to others in close proximity. Lords also provide various EverQuest style items in treasure chests scattered around in the world. These range from scrolls to character equipment. The units themselves also do not change from scenario to scenario, No matter what type creature a healer has the same attributes throughout the races. This feature really made me scratch my head in confusion.

The single-player missions lack any real meat. Instead, they guide the player around, forcing armies into obvious predetermined paths, offering limited challenges. Although mixed in the hack and slash carnage were a few mild, let’s call them, puzzles. For the most part though there was no strategy involved, just mad rushes at the opponent. An 11 year old with 3 or 4 RTS games under their belt could finish this game in a weekend. Part of that is because the game is so unbalanced. There are a handful of premium units that can make you virtually unstoppable. An army loaded with healers, Defilers, and an experienced lord can clear every obstacle that would stand in their way. The game's best idea is how units level up in experience. Units will get stronger and stronger based on the amount of combat they've survived. Should a unit reach level six, it can be knighted and get new powers. Although in my short experience I never needed many knights since my lords seemed juggernauts on their own.

Combat in general is tedious at best, and with that being the prominent aspect of the game it really made playing a chore. At times my troops seemed so bloodthirsty I had to give a “hold your ground “ command just to keep them from running into traps. Other times troops seemed confused about who to attack and actually stood still while being pounded into oblivion. AI was pretty predictable, although I did get lured into a few traps. I tried a few scenarios over and much to my surprise the AI did the exact same actions against different troops. So much for replay ability, not that most would want to play this game more than once.

The game also has multiplayer, which doesn’t cost a penny. A definite bonus for those used to paying a monthly fee for Everquest. Multiplayer includes deathmatches, and variations including last man standing, body harvest, platinum rush, grim reaper and lord of levels. This would have been seemingly fun, except for the fact that no one is ever online playing. I actually thought I was making mistakes in my setup the first time since I could find no online games available.

I found LOE a very typical RTS game in its play. Just click on a scenario and start the fighting. All paths were pretty much the same, each with its own set of building and unit types, and led by a Lord. Plot is basic, gather up troops, build buildings, make more troops, find platinum, and kill everything in sight. It really is as simple as that and as you might have guessed as monotonous as that also. At first I was exploring and really having fun with my ogre troops who would constantly say simple phrases like” have hammer will travel”, “search the lands”, “break, crush, bleed” etc etc. I found out later that those phrases were annoying after the 100th time. The standard cut scene intro graphics were excellent. I enjoyed seeing fish swimming in the water as we crossed a stream during gameplay, but I began to notice the trees never moved nor did much else as if they were frozen in time. Some of the creatures I encountered were unique animations like a fire-breathing beetle and a swirling dust devil filled with bones. The characters themselves were good animations, and some of the spell casting effects looked awesome. I found the game had no lag or frame rate problems on my ATI 9200 video card. The sound quality was good, with what seemed to be real actors doing the voices, but as with most games I had to turn off the droning background music. The sound effects were decent with some whooshing sounds for some spells being a bit drab.