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Summary: Beware before you purchase!
Review: Recently purchased this game as a gift for my teenager. Make sure your system has the proper requirements before buying. I thought we had a good sound/video card and have been told that it needs to be upgraded. That and the $14.95 monthly subscription should be prominently labeled on the package and on this site!
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Summary: The new hottness
Review: I just bought this game on 2 Apr 04 and this is the best MMO that I've played. I don't play MMOs all of the time and I haven't played all of them but this one is definately worth your money. This game is very user friendly. Unlike FFXI or Everquest, this game tells you where to go and shows you how to get there. There are very unique costumes and a huge selection of items to choose from. You can create your own supergroup and select unique powers to make your superhero stand out. Bottom line if you wanna get into a MMO this is a great start.
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Summary: Great game balance leads to great MMORPG.
Review: City of Heroes is probably the best pure combat MMORPG to come along in a couple of years. The freshness of playing a superhero as well as not being completely pigeonholed into skills determined by some predefined class are the base for a good game. The fact that no single build can dominate the game (or advance without working with others) makes it great.Gameplay is simple. Basically, your job is to go out and kill villains through quests or simply walking around the streets of Paragon City. Lots of villains. That's it. There's no crafting or economy to speak of; the only two commodities are the equivalent of heal/buff potions and enhancements to your basic attacks/defenses/regens/moves that require replenishment as you advance . The world is beautifully constructed as a big city - think a less dark Gotham - with the graphics and sound good enough so you'll need something running at least 2GHz and 64MB of video ram to play. Where this really shines, though, is in the game balance and character development. The first key is that its very difficult to advance without teaming up given the sheer number of villains during encounters. While soloing is definitely doable for any of the classes depending on which powers you pick, it just is simply slow going after a while. Forcing people to team makes the second key - great balance within groups - brilliant. While there are some well-tested classes here - the tank, the healer, the ranged attacker, the enchanter - the implementation makes no one class strong enough to dominate combat (tanks take a ton of damage but have weak attacks, for instance) and ideally you need a good mix to succeed. Finally, the last key is that within the classes themselves there are hundreds of different attacks/defenses/moves that vary effectiveness based on the critter; once you throw in buffs to those skills you're talking hundreds of thousands of variations for your character. Your style of play is set when you pick your class, but you're definitely not pigeonholed. The only caveat to COH is the current lack of PvP, which will be a bigger issue in several months once characters hit high levels and run out of things to kill. However, sometime soon we'll have City of Villains released - and the combination of the two games should lead to some naturally great PvP battles. Until then, one of the best games in years.
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Summary: Graphics Card Warning
Review: The game is fun, as far as I have played it, but I want to give everyone a warning. When they say that you have to have a GeForce 2 or ATI Radeon 8500 better, they mean ONLY these chipset video cards! If you have integrated graphics with an Intel chipset, you will not be able to run this game!
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Summary: Smoothest Launch Ever!
Review: All I can say is the pre-order "3 day head start" and real launch have been near perfect. I have never seen any other online game launch with the success that City of Heroes has managed to pull off. The reviews below tell you how great the game is, but at the end of the day the quality of service is equally important. Ncsoft has really outdone themselves and shown from day one that they care and understand what it takes to offer a fantastic online gaming experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, if you can get in
Review: This game is wonderful. Compared to the other MMORPGs on the market, it is smoother and offers more variety, both in character creation and in quests within the game. The additonal content they already have slated looks great too. Unfortunately, I spend approxmately 50 minutes trying to log in each time I play. During the Beta test, this was understandable, but now the pre-order head-start has begun and I am still experiencing the same difficulty. NCsoft has a quick tech response (usually a matter of 30 minutes or so, even later in the day), but the technical response is simply that the servers are too busy. The servers will be getting more busy when they open the game to the general public. Before buying the game, you may wish to check the bulletin boards on their website, which should have threads about the status of this problem (which does not effect all players). I hope they solve it soon, becuase the game is great, once you get in.
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Summary: Not perfect, but a lot of fun
Review: Having participated in the beta, I can safely say that this game, to date, has been quite a bit of fun. Unlike EQ, you can often pick up some missions and do part of them, then come back and do the rest even days later. And, there are some that you need to complete in a certain amount of time. The grouping dynamics are pretty good, though it will take more, non-beta grouping for me to know for sure. The graphics are excellent, with the only lag I suffered (with a P4 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM, and GeForce 3 64MB card) was in large group situations when I was in the heart of it all (playing a scrapper type.) You can play alone quite a bit, or play with others, and still have quite a bit of fun. No PvP (thankfully), but they may introduce it in an expansion. I will certainly be playing from the get-go, and it makes a nice alternative to EQ when I am burnt out on camping mobs.
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Summary: I'm Addicted
Review: I was so mad at my husband for playing this game until 5 am in the morning. I was wondering what all the excitement was about. So, I checked it out. Creating the character was so much fun and certainly no one will have the same! The game itself was really exciting and fun. It is great to meet other heros to go out and fight the "baddies". You can play on your own or with a team -- or even just help other heros on the way to your mission. To my astonishment, I also was up very late (don't tell the hubbie) playing the game. I'm addicted! I love it.
Rating: 
Summary: dont buy
Review: dont buy this game it costs $50 upfront and $15 a month. That turns out to be $180 a year!!!!!!!!! You could buy almost 4 new games, 9 greatest hits or platinum hits, and there are plenty of old $10 games. Plus the websight has no phone support so if you have a problem you have to wait a frikin week for them to get back to you. So spend your money wisely.
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Summary: ***THIS REVIEW REFERS TO THE BETA RELEASE***
Review: Right now, I am more excited about the potential of this game, especially as a MMORPG, than any other game I have tried but after playing the beta for a couple of days now, there are 2 things to remember that may change before the public version is released that I don't think will be changed unless there are major complaints as these 2 things seem to be inherent in the game structure:
1) You HAVE to play thru a tutorial before you actually begin the game, but that's OK, as you get a level up out of this--just remember you START WITH A TUTORIAL so DON'T start heading to the hot zone and start plugging away as there are NO respawns--the enemies are only there to help you pass the tutorial and once you kill them, THAT'S IT--I can't stress the importance of this enough as I spent a whole afternoon/evening milling around the hot zone after killing about 10 enemies with all the other heroes and none of them knew what was going on and they either thought it was a bug or there was an area we hadn't figured out how to access with more enemies;
2) Once you pass the tutorial, you will be offered a choice of two areas to be sent to to start your life as a new hero and you will be given tasks by your "supervisor"--once you get your task, BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU GO as this MMORPG is not like others where you walk out in the open and there are all sorts of different enemies to choose from, some below your level, some on your level, etc.--in this game, you will have to travel to a SPECIFIC area to complete your task--if you just wander around, 9 chances out of 10 you will soon run into a street robbery and get instantly killed as they are LEVELS above you;
That's the most important things--the only other thing I have is a bug where when you have to enter a building in your travels (and you will) either entering or leaving the building or both will get you stuck in a black screen where you can hear your hero doing things in conjunction with your keystrokes but you can't see him/her--in that case, just toggle to your desktop and CTRL+ALT+DELETE and end COH as a task and re-enter the game and you will find you will be at that same place and the game is saved!
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