Guild Wars Factions
by NCsoft
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Video Game Reviews of Guild Wars Factions
Customer Review: Factions the next step
Summary: 4 Stars
Factions is the second guild wars game to come out. It takes place in a stunning area called Cantha. This is a fast paced game meaning that you should be able to get to the max level 20 asap. Unlike the original the tutorial is very weak taking you all the way up to level 14 monsters in the beginning. Two new classes are added,assasin and ritualist. The assasin uses daggers as a main choice. They come from the shadows and strike with attacks that can cause crippling, bleeding and dazed. Ritualist on the other hand controls spirits and can give a variety of buffs. There are approximately 14 missions. Their is alliance battles where you can choose to be a Luxon or a Kurzick. To sum it all up this one is more for experienced players.Customer Review: A Review for those who own the first guild wars.
Summary: 4 Stars
So Factions was the second in the Guild Wars series of games. It's story line and environment bear no connection with the first Guild Wars (aka Guild Wars: Prophecies) save the fact that a player who owns both games may "bridge" a character from Factions over to the original campaign at about the 1/2 mark (the location called Lions Arch in Prophecies) and the reverse is also true, you are able to bring Prophecies characters over to factions. All the Guild Wars games are linked together in this way to add value and perks for players willing to invest in the entire series and in this case those perks are very good, but more on that in a bit.
So with Factions we have an Asian themed world that resembles ancient China. Although personal taste varies, many find factions to be the most beautiful of the Guild Wars series. The environments are vast, colorful and inspiring. Here we have all the original GW character classes plus two new classes. Assassin and Ritualism, both play very differently than previous classes.
Regarding the game experience: Factions moves along faster than the first guild wars, there is no "pre-searing" tutorial that last for days in this game. Instead you'll start on a small island that will quickly challenge solo players to seek assistance. You will level up quickly and you'll find yourself around 16-17 before leaving the "beginners" island. Once you arrive on the mainland you'll find yourself with level 20 henchmen with plenty of 3000 xp quest to get them to level 20 (for those that don't know, level 20 is the highest level a character can ascend to in GW. Playing through the first guild wars game, most players will not reach level 20 until 3/4's of the way through the game.
While the idea of getting to level 20 quickly sounds appealing it should be noted that it doesn't come easy, you will likely need help to get through these missions and if you want to play the game through it's required to get to level 20 quickly to move on. It's just a very different approach to play that ArenaNet has taken with this game. I believe of the three games available, Factions is the most difficult.
Should I buy Factions or Nightfall next?
This is the big question a lot of GW players face. My advice is to pick both of them up and to do so before you finish Prophecies. If you can only afford one of the two I would say get Nightfall, because you can bring your can bring you characters over and get Heros (they replace henchmen, you get to keep them), which provide an entirely new play dynamic to the game and will help you out greatly when other human players aren't available. Also Nightfall has better elite skills.
The main benefit of Factions is the fast leveling, but again you'll have to work for it.
Get them both and you'll have both benefits.
Customer Review: factions
Summary: 5 Stars
I've played Guild Wars Prophecies since it was just Guild Wars, but just recently bought factions and nightfall. Factions has the assassin and the ritualist, both decent professions in their own right. One of the good (and bad) things about factions is that you level incredibly fast. This is good because you can get into the other continents fairly up to speed. However, it means that there are quite a few canthan-born characters who think that they know what's going on simply because they're 20, when almost all the game is designed for level 20 characters. There aren't a ton of new skills in factions for those coming from prophecies, but the fact that there are a lot of duplicates means that you can effectively equip a skill twice, if you have prophecies as well.Customer Review: This is one of the best computer games I have played. I would recomend it to anyone.
Summary: 4 Stars
I love how fast the game got to my house. I would sit here counting the days till it his my doorstep. I had it for only a few minutes and it was already loading onto my computer!!!!Customer Review: Could have been very good, but they messed it up
Summary: 2 Stars
This game has a serious problem with the way they handle the 3D camera movement, more specifically, the z-axis (vertical orientation). The 3D camera *automatically* swings up and down in HUGE angles when you're in cramped spaces, and it really messes up the enjoyment when I can't target the mob I'm trying to fight; and even when I'm not fighting, who wants ordinary exploration to be an exercise of teeter-tottering your mouse just so you can get a good view? This is true for all Guild Wars campaigns (namely, Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall). One would think their developers and quality assurance people would have noticed this and flagged this is a serious flaw, but it somehow went by ignored. I have played various 3D games (both single player and MMORPG like Everquest 2), I have *NEVER* seen the 3D camera angle handled this way. Fortunately, most of the game terrain is not in cramped and enclosed areas, so I'm guessing that's why they let this glaring flaw slide by, but be forewarned that this can cause an inordinate amount of frustration when this issue rears its ugly head at the wrong time.
In Factions (more so than the other two campaigns), they have made diabolical multi-tiered maps that zig-zag like crazy, making it very hard to find certain quest spots. Right at the very first spot I started (Kaineng Center), it was already apparent that the designers wanted to waste your time so you can run all the way to a spot because the starburst on the map is telling you you're getting close to your target, only to find out you are arriving at a dead end and have to traverse all the way back through your original path so you can try an alternate route. I'm sorry, but in my book, this is cheesy; quests should not be an exercise in trickery and wasting the player's time this way. I have played Prophecies and Nightfall, and they weren't like that, but Factions has a place called Arborstone which I consider the "map from hell". I had a quest there to protect some stone singers, and I couldn't get to one area somehow. After more than an hour of running around in circles, I just abandoned the quest. Arborstone was also the place where the vertical angle swinging problem was REALLY BAD because the passageways were enclosed between very high ravine walls, and the 3D camera was just going crazy bobbing up and down by itself!
This is really too bad because the game graphics is excellent, better than Everquest 2, best I've ever seen in MMORPG games, paralleled only by some of the well-known single-player RPG games (e.g. Elder Scrolls, Titan Quest, etc.) But the game design is inferior in many respects to its competitors. For example, the game allows people to group, but they frequently end up in disaster because players don't have a good way to synchronize targets. In Everquest 2, clicking a player in the group automatically makes you share his target; usually, group members must be attacking what the tank is attacking. In Guild Wars, you have to ctrl-click the mob, and the chat window will say "{name} is attacking {monster name}". The problem with this is that it happens a lot where a group of monsters can have two or more of the same kind of monster, so the team members can still end up in confusion as to which mob to target. This cannot be underestimated because there are groups that are very powerful that could wipe out your group fast if you don't whittle them down in number fast.
It is typical among games that quests require you to move around, talking to various NPCs, to complete the quest. But this campaign, Factions, a lot of the quests require you to move a LOT and over extensive distances across a multi-tiered map. Frequently, I'd be on the 3rd level of the map and see my goal (shown as a star) on the map, only to find out it was on the 1st level (*groan*). It wasn't fun.
Guild Wars also took the easy way out on typical aspects of MMORPG games. For instance, vendors pretty much sell the same stuff over and over in the *entire* game, maybe increasing by one or two items as you progress into more advanced zones. I feel no excitement when I see a vendor in a new zone, because I know what to expect. There is also very little variety in terms of weapon and armor stats, although they do have a good variety on the looks of armor. There are no player vendors, no housing, no mounts, and a very poor feel of community (since you only get to see other human players in town because all zones are instanced, meaning you have a copy of the zone for yourself, and you'll be alone in there with your NPC members unless you had invited a friend to explore that zone with you while you were in town). Their Beast Taming is the lamest I have ever seen; you can tame warthogs, flamingos, tigers, lions, cranes, etc., real lousy pets; I'm not sure I'd like to use them to fight demons. You can have only one pet at a time, and I am willing to bet that 90% of the Beast Tamers (which is part of the Ranger class) don't know how to get rid of their pet because it's simply so unintuitive.
I've been going over the negative things, let me say the positives. I've already mentioned their beautiful graphics. They have no monthly fee. The entire game can be downloaded (without the need of a CD); so you can buy the game from their web site if you want, and you'll be given a link to start downloading. Game is very stable; I've never had it crash on me, but I guess this can depend on how stable one's PC is, too. The looks of the characters were excellently done; it may not give you as much berth in customizability as games like Elder Scrolls, but the faces and bodies look attractive and don't look polygonal. The creature artificial intelligence is excellent; I have seen mob behavior in this game that I've never seen in any other game. As mentioned prior, they do have a great variety of attire (which you can mix and match, if you want), along with the ability to dye them so that people really do look different. Each class has it's own dance choreography, and they are very well done, smooth in animation just as all player movements are in the game.
NCSoft is going to start on Guild Wars 2, scheduled to beta on 2008. I guess the flaws on Guild Wars is way too deep-rooted in the framework and very difficult to fix or enhance, so they just decided to rewrite and start from scratch. Well I hope they do much better this time, because if they would just retain their great graphics and add more (un-cheesy) content, I do have to admit it is a good feeling moving around in the game because their zones are very artistic and well done (except for those with multi-tiered, zig-zagging zones that are meant to trick you into taking the wrong way).
The only reason I didn't give this game a 1-star is because the graphics are really beautiful, and the sceneries are very well done. But it just goes to show that great graphics doesn't make a good game.