Rating: 
Summary: Stick to AC1 Dark Majesty.
Review: AC2 is miserably inferior. There are no towns worth noting, no shops, no need to carry arrows, no way to make fancy arrows, no need for spell components, no need to buy scrolls, no collectors, no independent quests like The Dark Lair, no opportunities to specialise, no separate sword / mace / ua skills or separate war / life / creature / item schools of magic and no distinction between stamina and mana. Policy also dictates that you can't run a buff-bot and can't sell the game on unless you give away your "passport" account with it. An utter waste of money, to be avoided. My copy's in the bin. I've gone back to AC1.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty graphics, and that's it
Review: Most POSITIVE reviews are from ppl that haven't been playing long. They're technically telling the thruth because it's a fun game for the first 2 continents. But let's face it, the casual player is done with those 2 continents in a few weeks. Then you reach Linvak, the final continent and a few weeks later, you quit the game out of boredom.... Gameplay-wise, this game is overly simple. Creating a character consists of choosing one of 3 races.... that's it. You get to fiddle around with the colors, hair and build of your avata, but nothing else. Character attributes have all been dumped and only HP and Vigor have been kept. To simplify things, EVERY SINGLE character of the same race and level will have the exact same HP and vigor..... There are 10 slots for items, but the varitety is lacking. For example, at this point, there are a grandtotal of 4 types of helmets, 1 for humans and lugians, and 2 for tumeroks. The game follows the Diablo-style skill tree. Up till level 15, you can chose skills in the magic/melee or missile tree then at 15, you choose one of 6 classes available to your race. So you have a grand total of 18 classes, out of which 6 or so cookie-cutter templates are very powerful and the rest is overly weak. It doesn't matter if you use level 5 or level 40 skills, they'll basically do the same damage so it's just a matter of preference. Also, there are still a lot of busted, over powerful, weak and badly described skills so changes to them come on a monthly basis. Bugs you ask? There are TONS of them, and they're not going away. Simple things such as the chat functions stop working on a daily basis, but you won't worry much about that since there's a fairly large chance you won't even be able to log on anyways. There are very few NPCs and they only give quests. There are buildings, but you'll most likely NEVER be able to enter them since they said they will probably never bother giving them interiors. They do add content monthly, but it's usually so easy (example : quests are basically solved for you in the quest description panel, you just have to follow the directions) that the casual player is done with it in a week, which leaves 3 more weeks of killing hundreds of Shreths and Dillos. The "Epic" storyline is far from epic (I haven't seen much of a story yet) and leaves a lot to be desired. Also, most new patches bring a slew of new bugs, either overpowering some skill or class, destroying another,causing random players to lose access to the game for days on ends. Most notable since the last patch is the "rollbacks" that are affecting players. What it means, is that your character is randomly returned to the level he was a few hours or up to a few days ago. You lose all the experience, items and quests you'd done in the time between the rollback and the point your character is returned to. PvP does exist, but it's not very fun and it can be summed up in a few words : Archers and mages slaughter each other, melees get slaughtered by everyone else before they can even reach them. There are skills for the powerful PvP'ers, but I've never seen ANYONE that could use them. you'd nee to kill thousands of other players withouth EVER dying to get the most powerful ones. To sum it up, if you want to play an extremely easy and buggy game where even casual players can get to the max level in a few months (level cap is intended to be raised in September), everyone looks the same, you like killing stuff for weeks on end, you like soloing, dying is just a quick means of traveling, etc. AC2 is for you. Why the 2 stars you ask? Because the graphics are top of the line if you system can handle them (over medium setting, my p4 2.4 with 64 megs of video ram and 512 megs of ram showed signs of the game slowing down in busy areas). To conclude, I eventually quit due to the inability of the devs to fix even the simplest of bugs without introducing new bugs. For over a month, I was forced to reset 2-3 times per hours just to keep playing and I couldn't get any worthwhile help since the official boards is HEAVILY moderated. Getting a new post up is a miracle unless it's one praising the game. As for the other means of help, they were stuck in a loop... Tech support's first suggestion was to un-install then re-install.. after that didn't work, they suggested a few more things, then after a 2 week break, they suggested I un-install and re-install... What I'm saying is, if you have a but that's only affecting a few players, don't expect to get help since they're too busy fixing bugs that affect a lot of players.
Rating:
Summary: Not a whole lot going on in this game.Graphics are about it.
Review: Well, these people weren't lying when they said this game lacks content. Yes, there are quests, which are usually given by a lone NPC in the middle of a vast and huge city...full of absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. No vendors, rarely a PC. Yes, I am aware of the storyline, but to me that's not enough to compensate for utterly boring gameplay. Quests are given to you by potions, statues, and the rare NPC. You hardly see people and when you do they are usually crammed into a dungeon on the same quest as you. Soloing after 15 seems to be a real pain. Yes, the graphics are stunning. The developers should raise their minimum requirements because if anyone tried to play this game with those specs they would have to lower every last thing graphically to turn it down to the equivalent of EQ, the original. Playing well above the minium requirements is nice but be sure to have a fast connection, as dial-up trying to push that is like trying to cram a basketball through a straw. Bash, get loot...if it's something you need, keep it, if not, keep it for crafting or turn it into gold. Do quest. Repeat this...over and over and over and over. It's basically a godly looking Diablo....
Rating: 
Summary: Fun Fun Fun!
Review: Many people are saying that this game is absolutely terrible. This is not the case. The things they say, are that the game has NO content, and the game is unpopulated. Okay, firstly the game IS unpopulated. It's a fact, there may be as many as 500 people on at one time. This is good and bad. Firstly, its good because, no one is there to camp the hunting grounds. This can be difficult for those people who need a group to hunt effectively (archers for example) however, if you are hunting in a relatively good area, there is likely at least one or two other people there. This is bad because it can occasionally leave you feeling lonely, or like your not playing on the internet at all, but all by yourself. Dealing with content, the entire point of the game is to discover why the people of Dereth went into hiding(prologue: Basically worldwide cataclysm occurs, everyone hides.) This leads you all over the world as you go into different dungeons to uncover a piece of the puzzle. No content? Wrongo.
Ok. This game has multiple pros that make the inexistant cons...inexsitant. Firstly you can craft your own items. This is awesome. You create your own armor and weapons out of things you find on monsters. Also this game is a snap to learn, you can be hunting monsters and crafting items and even complete your first vault quest(the places you have to go to learn about the destruciton of dereth)the very first time you log in. Also the first 15 levels are relatively easy, enabling you to get a good handle on the game before you go fight the big bad guys. The graphics are beautiful. The graphics allow you to see your reflection in water, for example, which, I must say, is absolutely amazing.
Now the few problems I could discern. Note: the real problems,not the problems everyone who playedbeta, and gave this game one star. Honestly, they expected a game reasy for retail when they rated it, when it purrely still had a few months to go. For the first few months, none of the races had any kind of headgear, this was kind of weird, I also found it dissapointing. This is resolved now.
In AC1 you had a stamina and mana bar for managing your strength while fighting and your magic casting capabilities, in AC2 both these things are controlled by Vigor now, which while simpler, makes me sad, because I liked having stamina and mana more, because it allowed you to protect yourself up with magic, then jump right into combat, instead of having to wait to regenerate like in Ac2.
AC2 uses a skill tree for advancement in fighting. This is different than Ac1 where you chose most of your skills in character creation and you used experience to progressively advance your skills, you were absolutely unique from everyone else. In AC2 you are very likely playing a very similar character to the mage across the road. Don't get me wrong though, there is great potential for originality, but most people are hesitant to treck the new paths and leave old standards in the dust.
Having said that YAY YAY Play Away!
Rating: 
Summary: AC2 is a big disgrace to Turbine's AC franchise
Review: I'd been playing AC1 for 2 years, then moved to AC2 from its very first days of beta, and all seemed to go well until the game went live. First of all, AC2 has undoubtedly the best graphic I've ever seen, but other than that, expect it to hold your interest in no more than 2 months or so. Most of the early generation of players had already quit the game by now, the ones who are still enjoying it are the newer players, and some hard core old timers. AC2's downfall is that it has NO high level content, whatsoever, absolutely nothing. People reached level cap (currently 50) within first month of release, and Turbine is NOT raising the level cap any time soon, and it's been well into the 3rd month of release. It is EASY to gain xp and level up, you can repeat quests every couple of days or so, and they have two or three quests that gives a substantial amount of xp, so even if you are a very casual player, and you don't powerlevel AT ALL, you just gotta re-do these quests over and over and you still gain xp at a decent rate. Getting to 50 is inevitable in this game, but after that, what else is there to do? Nothing. They have NO high level/boss monster, there are only TWO kinds of high level monsters that are worth killing for xp and loot, the "shreth" and the "armoredillo". You will start killing these around level 30 or so, and you will be killing the exact SAME shreths and dillos by the time you hit 50, there is NOTHING else challenging to entertain you after 50. Go read Turbine's site if you don't trust me, they are literally telling you once you hit 50, go reroll another toon and go through the same things all over again, or go raise your crafting skill up. Crafting, as it turns out, is another failure of AC2. They recently "nerfed" the crafted items once again, and NOBODY even bothered to craft weapons and armor any more, since it would cost too much money to craft a weapon, and they don't have high-end crafted items, so once you got to around level 30 or so, all crafted items would become obsolete compared to the loot-generated ones. If you don't feel like rerolling over and over till you have all five characters on your account to 50, and since the crafting system is a total joke, what else is there to do once you hit cap? Some people turned to pk'ing, and they have a pk "zone" right in the middle of a route to the highest level hunting ground, forcing everyone who wants to hunt for the most xp possible to have to risk their lives for it. Pk'ing, therefore, is NOT optional in AC2, whether you like it or not. Which led to hordes of utterly bored level 50's converging in that zone to gank hapless players hoping to hunt for some xp. Portal camping is rampant, when you will get nuked and killed right before you get out of portal space, when you have absolutely NO WAY to defend yourself, there is NO pvp grace period like in Anarchy Online when you have a couple seconds of immunity after zoning. AC2 is no fun, AC2 has no content, although they recently added the mounts, but look around, which game out there that still doesn't have mount now? It's not that big of a change, content wise. AC1 was a big success, and is pretty popular still. Except for the outdated graphics, AC1 is vastly superior compared to AC2, content wise. If you want some eye candies for the first month or two, and you have 50 dollars to waste, go for it; otherwise, hang on to it and wait till SWG is out next month, seriously.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Graphics, Empty World
Review: This game has the best graphics of any game to date....but it needs help. The server populations during the day are about 100 people and at peak about 450-500. This means that there are very few people to make groups with etc. There is a great quest system from lvls. 1-25 but after that boredom sets in quickly. Pvp and Kvk are fun but the system is kinda broken and the devs have said they are not going to fix it in the next 3 months. The worst part is there is absolutely no interaction with the world (as promise on the box). It is a fun game but (for now) it could only hold my interest for about a month.
Rating:
Summary: Slow Starter
Review: Ok, first off, realize this... AC2 is ever-evolving. Even today (March, 2003) they are planning to release a massive patch that will change many of the game's fundamentals. But really... veterans of MMORPG... remember EQ when it first came out? And the Original AC? Oh boy... haven't they come a long way? I'll admit to AC2's faults first:
- It feels very lonely at times. Yes, its true. There are no NPC Vendors. There are no citizens to interact with... but if you read the storyline of AC2... the reason becomes quite apparent. The world of AC2 was ravaged by a catastrophic clash of epic proportions leaving the residents and inhabitants caught in the crossfire. One of the participants of the war, a great wizard named Asheron, took responsibility over the people and created safe locations for them. For years, the people stayed in hiding while the war raged on. Then, they began sending scouts out from their magically protected havens to find out if it was safe to leave... - Next issue with the game... steep requirements. You need a pretty hefty PC to fully enjoy the graphical capabilities of the game. - Low Player Population... I put this here and I'll put it in Pluses as well. But while low player pop is a blessing it is also a curse. You will sometimes feel lonely in the world of AC2. Because of the sheer size of the game, you can venture away from the popular locations and not see a soul for hours. Now that the negatives are out of the way... here's what you'll like about AC2. -First off, yes it is beautiful... absolutely beautiful.
-It has an in-depth storyline. It is not entirely apparent at first but it is there... furthermore, the live team for AC2 add new storyline and content each month.
-It is seemingly endless. There are so many paths you can take. Ther are TONS of skills to get, each with its special strengths and weaknesses.
-I for one think the game is difficult. Sure, the first 15 or so levels are easy... but you also have to realize that the first 15 levels are 'noobie' levels and are really training you for the later levels. I thought the game would bore me to tears until I did the Old Cragstone Excavation site. I was playing a melee at the time and had very little difficulty taking mobs down... but when I entered this dungeon, I quickly learned the meaning of death and vitae... and I learned it often. I was over-powered and outgunned and I needed help badly. It was also my first Grouping experience (called Fellowship). I would say this is the first taste you get of the potential difficulty of AC2.
-AC2 is Not Overcrowded. Mentioned above as a negative but mentioned here as a positive. Imagine not having to camp a particular spawn for hours or fighting everyone else for rights to kill a certain mob. Imagine not having to walk into a city and lag out so bad that you have to look at the ground to move... Yes, it is good...
-You can raid a dungeon... by yourself if you'd like!!! I've done it. I've done it in simple dungeons, I've done it in vaults, I've done it alone and in groups... It is great to be able to run through a dungeon slaughtering your enemies without making a 'camp' and pulling to that camp. Trust me!
-Quests are throughout the fellowship. When I was in the Cragstone quest mentioned above, the other members of my fellowship were completing the same quest. Only one of us needed to finish it for the entire group to get the experience. Finally a real cause for grouping other than getting experience for the next level.
-In other MMORPG's, when you die, you are penalized by losing experience or losing items on your corpse. Losing stuff that you spent hours to get really [stinks.] In AC2, when you die, you get a vitae. This vitae penalty subtracts from 100%. The result is how well your character still fights. (5 points from 100 is 95%, so I fight at 95% of my total strength). You work off the vitae penalty by gaining more experience. The experience you gain adds to your total experience for your next level while working off your vitae penalty... :)
-Loot is random. Random mobs drop random loot in most cases. You may be doing a dungeon raid and come upon a key that will open the treasure chest at the end of the dungeon... or you might not.
-There are Vaults and Dungeons. Vaults are like dungeons except they can only be done once (getting the reward) and they are typically harder. Furthermore, they progress the overall storyline.
-Finally, Untraining skills. So you worked on your character and you find out you [erred] by putting points into skills that you don't need, use or like. AC2 gives you the ability to untrain a skill. Overall, I love this game. The live AC2 team are constantly coming out with updates and patches for the game as well as the monthly storyline update. Its fun, its easy to get into, and its immersive.
Rating:
Summary: A great single-player game
Review: GHOST TOWN IS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. An MMORPG without the people. Ok, I payed my 50 bucks and created a character on the Deadeye(pvp) server. Granted, it was the wee hours of the night/morning, but still, I saw 3 whole people in 5 hours of playing! I swear! I was in the middle of one of the starting towns(could not enter buildings, only npcs), and asked someone I ran into, "where are the player run cities?" She said, "this IS a player run city". After the second day, I finally grouped for the first time (me and one other person)--wohooo. After the 2nd day of playing and talking to all the people I came across(8 i think), I came to the following conclusion: the only people playing the server were those who started at release date and "had already moved on to another continent" as I was told. And my hope for getting a group until I could solo myself to their level was dismal. Here are the pros:
1. Great graphics for an MMORPG
2. Huge area.
3. Quests that can hold your attention and have story and purpose. Here is THE con:
1. Not enough people playing...its a shame nobody will give anything besides EQ a try. Conclusion: After playing for a couple days, I felt as if I was playing an offline single player game...the only thing that reminded me I was online was the occasional lag spike.
Rating:
Summary: Not what you think.
Review: If you were a fan of AC1 you are going to be sorely dissapointed. Your character will not be unique as they will have no attributes and the 2 stats that you get are the same for everyone at your level. You pick skills, but a much more limited number of skills, and every character cannot pick every skill. The only two types of quest are "kill all of the monsters on this list" or "touch all of these bases". The dungeons are not complex and all quests can be easily completed in a day without any form of organization or planning. It is visually stunning, but they have turned a classic rpg title into a glorified arcade game and if you were expecting better it flat out sucks.
Rating:
Summary: A massively multiplayer ghost town.
Review: -1 For 2 hours I walked around in the AC2 world. How many people did I come across? 12... 12 people in 2 hours and at a peak time in the big cities.
-1 As far as content goes, AC2 is a massive world with alot of cities and towns and maybe 1 or 2 inhabitants of each city. Lets not go into the towns.. they're at a whopping 0 population.
-1 In town you can: Talk to the sole inhabitant and get a quest, or try to make gear at the smithy... THATS IT. Oh, and chat.
+ 1 Graphics and sound are great, and potential is huge. The games new, I thnk that's why all the problems are present. A few months from now, it may be worth the money you could've spent on something else.
+ 1 The quests, while relatively straightforward, "get this to use on that" taskings, do tend to pull you in enough to make you want to complete them. I really hope they can make the questing more complex in the future.
All in all AC2 could be a good game, and with a few patches here and there, may make the grade. But with so many games with more content.. (even being able to walk into a building would be nice), the 40-50 bucks could be spent on something better.
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