City of Villains
by NCsoft
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Video Game Reviews of City of Villains
Customer Review: City of Villians
Summary: 1 Stars
NC Soft the company that runs the game is a bunch of idiots.I bought the game and used the free trial peroid to check it out .
I decided I liked it so I paid for three months of game time.
After that I never could log on , after several weeks of e-mails with the company I gave up , there idiots asking me questions like are my cap locks off. I'll never buy antoher NC soft product again.
Customer Review: im not sure to get this game
Summary: 5 Stars
is this fun at all i hear its fun but is it worth $15 a month???? i want to knowCustomer Review: hmm
Summary: 3 Stars
This is one of those games wear you cant decide if its good or bad.
One of the things that makes it bad is its not the easiest mmorpg to just pick up and play. I wouldnt say just stay away form it if your new to mmorpgs but it will just take you longer to get a hang of things.
One of the big problems ive noticed is the nice set of lag that comes with this game. Im running cable here and play other mmorpgs fine but this one is choppy and slow but usually not bad enough to kill you just a bit choppy.
I made one character then one right after it and when i went to my previous character it was gone. Then a day later It started showing up with my newest created characters gone. I dont exactly understand this but whatever it is it is horrible.
Not a super addicting game at all. I dont think you will find yourself lost for hours if you have other games like WoW and instead will be turning it off to play WoW. I can see how it might get a bit better as you progress and 20 bucks is cheap for a game but to charge you 15 a month it isnt worth it. I would pay 5 tops for this considering they need to fix alot.
The combat system is a bit weird sence you can only attack with powers and have no default attack. Some of the powers usually recharge pretty quickly though.
Its really not a game that makes you feel like you want to be in a group. I cant explain this really but I havnt been in a group once but this could be because of the lack of players. Yes not many seem to play this game and I can tell because you can usually get the name you want the first time and I would like to see you try that with a game like WoW.
There are a lot of choices in costume so you can spend awile doing it to fit your likings. Its easy and simple to use.
All in all I think its just plain okay. I wouldnt call it anything else and if you are bored of all the mmorpgs out now then get this but its hard to put a game with super powers up against a game like guild wars and other things like that sence their 2 complete different things.
Dont expect to be crazily addicted to this game but it has just enough juice to keep you playing the game in general.
Customer Review: Everything I Can Think Of
Summary: 3 Stars
PlayNC (or NCSoft) says that City of Villains is a stand-alone title. And although you don't need City of Heroes to play it, it seems to be too similar. The difference is... this time, you're the bad guy. And just how the bad guy never wins, in the end, neither do you in my humble opinion. Here's the points that I can think of, the good ones, the bad ones, and the good-or-bad-depending-on-how-you-look-at-it ones (in no particular order).
1. It's really just an upgraded version of City of Heroes and can be compared to it in (almost) every aspect. In City of Heroes, you might rescue someone from kidnap. In City of Villains, you go ahead and kidnap them.
2. As in City of Heroes, the missions are unnaturally repetitive. For people who think I'm just another person complaining about 'FedEx' quests (kill that, get an item, bring it back) like in World of Warcraft, let me explain. In World of Warcraft, there's a dungeon area called an instance (when entered, you've created an area for your party where you won't be able to see others outside your party until you exit). Many of them. They're interesting and take a while to get through. On top of that, there are quests (some of which take place in the instance as well). In City of Heroes/Villains, each quest is an instance. An instance that takes place in one of five (or so) identical places. An office building, a labritory, a depot, etc.
Although the missions are repetitive, the gameplay is amazing. You really feel as though you have the selected powers and you're learning to control them. No matter if you sit down for half an hour or three hours, blowing everything to hell and leaping/teleporting/flying over/running past buildings doesn't get all that boring.
3. You can customize your character to such an extent that it's probably a quarter of the fun. There are at least 10,000 costume choices, allowing you to sit there for an hour staring at the awesomeness of your creation. Not only this, but unlike other games, people around you can actually see your costume, giving you a real sense of satisfaction when spending two hours making your costume and then having people comment on it.
There's also five very different archetypes (like classes) to choose from and around a thousand powers altogether. Each class gets a primary power set (you can usually choose from around ten sets) and a secondary (you can choose from 5+ sets). You get a new power choice every two levels and each set has 9 powers altogether (so by level 36, you could get all the powers from both sets).
There are also power tool sets each containing four powers available to everyone. At level 6, you have access to the first two in every set. At level 14, if you have the first or second one in the set, you now have access to the third one. At level 20, if you have any of the previous two in the set, you have access to the final one. Power Sets include the four travel power sets. Super Speed, Flight, Teleportation, and Super Jump are the third power in their respected sets. There are also another eight or so power sets that come in handy.
The different classes are:
Brute - The tank in a battle. The tank takes nearly all the damage, takes the attention away from his or her allies in battle and does good damage. It's by far the easiest archetype to play. Brutes do melee damage.
Stalker - Like the Rogue in World of Warcraft, the Stalker turns invisible and can sneak around the map without anyone noticing. They do high amounts of damage (REALLY HIGH) in one blow but can't attack more than one or two foes at a time. In a large battle, some consider them useless but they can usually take out the boss in two hits. Awesome in PvP.
Mastermind - Like a Hunter or Warlock in World of Warcraft, you can control some minions of your choice. Punks, Robots, Ninjas or Zombies. With increasing level, you control more. Hardest to play because you have to learn to take the attention away from yourself and towards your minions in battle. Utterly useless in PvP.
Corruptor - Like a mage, they control an elemental power set of your choice plus a buff/heal power set of your choice. They deal high amounts of damage from a distance and can generally aid allies in different ways.
Dominator - A dominator is probably a little harder to play and cannot be compared to other games. It's most like the corruptor but a dominator takes power types from all classes to deal various amounts of damage, heal, buff and do other cool things. It's a bit hard to explain though.
4. Like any game, when you reach the top level, it gets a little boring. But then... you can start a new character. Being the experienced player you are after getting a character to the cap, you can make the game harder for your likings.
And then, instead of becoming a Brute, Corruptor or Stalker, you can become a Dominator or a Mastermind. Both archetypes are harder to play but a Mastermind is the hardest in my opinion. As a Dominator, you dominate the environment around you and as I said before, it's kind of hard to explain. As a Mastermind, you control minions and have to get the attention of a fight away from yourself. Even in somewhat lower levels like the 30s (compared to the cap level at least), you can control 6 minions. A full party of Masterminds in the 30s has an entire army marching in back of them.
5. Instead of parties or groups, you call them teams and instead of clans or guilds, you call them Super Groups. Teams are one of the most essential things and have some pretty awesome features. Lackeying for example (for people over level 10, if someone is three levels lower than you, you can bring them to your level as long as you're both on) and Malefactoring is the opposite (bringing someone down). Up to eight people can be on a team and you can easily find more. If you enter a mission with more people, the mission will be harder. The Teleportation power set has a power that you can get at level 6 called Recall Friend to teleport someone on your team to you. You can set team missions and waypoints and things like this.
Super Groups are fun and raids are fun (Super Group vs. Super Group) but they're really only good for higher levels. Lower levelled raids tend to be drawn out or the exact opposite. To have a raid, you have to have a base. You could consider this the Player Owned Houses of City of Villains. You can customize the base as well. Very much so.
6. PvP besides raids is... good and bad depending on how good you are and how much you like PvP. If you don't have protection from certain things like hold powers, sleeping powers, stun powers etc, you'll be wiped out within the minute. PvP is something that you'd have to play yourself to decide.
7. There's no economy either. I don't think this is good or bad at all, I think it's just different. Instead of spending days farming mobs or getting resources for money to save up on armor and weapons and stuff or spending an hour sending the message, "Selling/buying X for X. Message me if you're interested!" there's only inspirations (temporary buffs) and enhancements (like augmentations to your powers) that you can buy for infamy (the currency). This also eliminates twinks for people who know what I'm talking about.
And on that note, Inspirations and Enhancements do actually help you. Inspirations might give you 25%-50% damage, defense, accuracy etc. for a few minutes and Enhancements can greatly increase your powers. Before an Enhancement, a healing power might heal 50 damage, afterwards, it'll heal 70.
8. There are also Mayhem missions where you can go to Paragon City, where the good guys hang out. Get a team and go there to rob a bank under a time limit. It's hard as hell but you can destroy all objects around you and 'resist arrest' to buy more time. (Getting fun for people who can lift objects by staring at them :D). This is also where you'll get the most amount of debt. That's the penalty for dying in this game. You'll have to pay off the debt by killing things before gaining normal xp again. If you die whilst on a hard Mayhem mission, it's best to not revive and go to the hostpital but to just wait for the mission to end. Otherwise, you'll be drowning in debt for all the times you'll die.
If you die outside of a Mayhem mission and don't get revived by another player, going to the hospital is your only choice but that's okay because since you're not in Paragon City, the hospital is friendly to you without guards who will kill you as soon as you revive.
9. The setting of City of Villains is, of course, the opposite of City of Heroes. Dark, dreary, and the streets are filled with gangs and more gangs. You'll see cops fighting thugs and even if you try and be nice to the thug and kill the cop for him, he'll still have a place in his heart to kill you too. It's not like City of Heroes where civilians notice you and thank you for saving you from thugs, they usually pass you and say odd comments instead of fearing you. Walking through the streets of the Rogue Isles doesn't give the satisfaction that Paragon City does.
10. Before I finish this off, here's a few small ones.
- City of Heroes and City of Villains cost 15 USD a month to play. If you have both, you only pay one 15 dollar fee.
- You may need a graphic card (unlike World of Warcraft, where, though they say you need it, you don't really need it that much) and some memory to play unless you want to deal with lag and graphical issues.
- No matter your graphic card and memory, the interface and frame rate and borders and such is never going to be as easy or as smooth as World of Warcraft.
- Updates are occasional and may annoy you to hell and back. The people running the game don't seem to be able to keep the game the way it is. They have to make things useless because at some point it was too good. Things like that.
- There seems to be frequent disconnects for everyone. Just randomly at some points and at other points for simply entering a mission. There are many bugs that they haven't fixed and that you may have to use the command '/stuck' (rightly named) to get out of.
- Although people have complained about their customer service, it's just as bad/good as any other game. They have thousands of messages coming in all the time and can't answer every single one. They probably get a lot of the same messages to fix things etc. This is a problem in a lot of games, including World of Warcraft. You may not get a GM response in World of Warcraft for several hours, time that you may not be able to stay on for.
Well, that was like half an hour of writing. I hope it finds some use to someone. I'll say one more thing though. This game is a great game and although I compared it to World of Warcraft, it's very different, and in a lot of ways better. It has many problems but these certain things make up for it. I think that if you can afford it and want to play it, you can get this game cheaply and play it for one month or two months or even keep playing it if you like it and aren't getting bored. But I think that the 14 day free trial (try FilePlanet if you can't find it) may be your best bet. You're going to want to go out and buy the game after that (it's flashy and that's what it's designed for) and you should really decide then if you can see yourself getting bored of it. For a lot of people, buying a game with a monthly fee and then cancelling the account is a waste of money.
Hope that helped some new gamers and just other gamers out there who are picky like me, trying to find just the right game. =D
Customer Review: The other side of the coin
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been playing City of Heroes almost since it came out, and have enjoyed it immensely. I was intrigued by CoV when it came out, but resisted, until I received it as a gift. Although I still think CoH is the better of the two, sometimes it is fun to be the bad guy! The character creation in City of Villains is fun - lots of great evil faces and so on to choose from, and although the power types are not that different than CoH, the way they are combined and played gives a very different feel. All in all, quite a bit of fun and since the monthly cost is included with my CoH subscription, well worth $20 to get the software!