Reviewed: March 13, 2007
Reviewed by: Roger Cox

Publisher
Sony Online Entertainment

Developer
Sigil Games (SOE)

Released: January 30, 2007
Genre: MMORPG
Players: Unlimited

7
8
7
8
7.8

System Requirements:

Your adventure begins in a vast and ancient world of magic. You’ll face the challenges of a war torn world and the diverse people who struggle to rebuild their once great civilizations. A fragile alliance has been struck, with the lands set upon by invading forces, the races must band together to survive. In the north, the sprawling green hills of Thestra are plagued by an unstoppable undead menace. To the south, the deserts of Qalia have been besieged by an elemental threat spawned from the depths of the earth and to the east; inhabitants of the tumultuous jungles of Kojan fiercely battle encroaching otherworldly fiends.

After starting up the game and creating your character, choosing from the 19 races, and 15 classes, you’ll be set on one of three continents in a world called Telon. It’s here that you’ll quickly discover how massive this game is and how difficult the quests are. If you’re like me, and enjoy a lot of solo gaming, Vanguard will frustrate you beyond belief, even if you make your character a “tank.” Most of the questing is obviously designed to be done in groups of 2 to 6 once you hit level 10 or so. After that you’ll pretty much have to have made a nice list of friends online who you can play with.

Sure, there are a few solo quests, but even those can prove deadly because of the high level creatures roaming the land. I found myself running away from a variety of enemies to save my life after they locked onto me. Luckily it isn’t terribly difficult to run away from most creatures and there are a lot of nice people willing to help you out if you’re in trouble. Unfortunately some dungeons are another story. I died in one and was unable to retrieve my body by myself. I tried over and over, but I kept dying. I ended up having to form a group of people to help me get my body back. It ended up costing me almost half of my characters experience, but I learned a valuable lesion, “get help in dungeons!”

Sure, I could have resurrected my body from an altar, but doing so demands more experience loss. It’s nice to know that your items can be recovered even if your body can’t, but comes at a high price. The nice thing to note for fans of PvP (player versus player) servers is that if another player kills you there is no experience loss. Instead, the winning player is allowed to steal 15% of the dead player’s gold. It’s a nice trade off if you ask me, because you can easily keep the majority of your money in the bank.

Fighting is the heart of any great MMORPG and it’s what makes or breaks a game in my opinion. The good news is that Vanguard sports a really fun combat system that you can really get into. Much like EverQuest II, this game features a reaction system where you can chain your attacks and spells together to cause more damage. It’s all a matter of choosing an attack and combining it with other attacks when they light up on your spell/attack bar. Pulling off a big combo is really satisfying and it can trigger some cool effects. Chaining your attacks together is an essential part of this game and over time you will gain many new special abilities and attacks that can be combined. This managed to keep the combat fresh over the course of 95 hours in Vanguard. Hopefully the same will be true after hundreds of hours.

There’s always something that a good game has that differentiates itself from the rest of the group. In Vanguard, that happens to be diplomacy. It’s difficult to describe how this works, but essentially it involves you talking to NPCs to gain area-wide buffs, and favor with different factions. Essentially diplomacy is a game within the game that has you playing cards to respond to NPCs during your conversations with them. Cards have different meanings that’ll determine how the character you’re talking to reacts.

The influence marker keeps track of how you’re doing and as long as you’re in the positive you’ll win what they call the “parley.” The more you do this, the better you become and you will gain new cards. Overall, diplomacy is a major component to your experience playing Vanguard. It may sound difficult, but it is actually pretty simple after you do it the first time and it is really enjoyable. It’s like those dating games in Japan where the way a girl determines if she likes you is by how you respond during your conversation.

NPC interactions are very enjoyable and it’s mainly due to the great writing. Each character has a unique personality and it really draws you into the game. It’s also a big reason why the diplomacy system works. Having conversations with NPCs is rewarding and fun.

Like almost every MMORPG since the beginning of time Vanguard includes a crafting and harvesting system. Unfortunately doing it on Vanguard is probably as hard as it gets. If you want to create a unique item it will take a recipe, tools, a workbench, patients, and lots of time. Sounds easy enough right? It should be, but getting the right tools and items to execute your recipe is harder than it seems. I found it to be an unnecessarily difficult process and only enjoyed the harvesting part of it.

Harvesting is just a matter of having the correct tool (such as an axe or harvesting knife) and having the item in front of you to harvest. Double click on the tree or animal and you’ll begin to harvest it. You’ll even gain experience for harvesting which allows you to become better at it. Eventually can upgrade your harvesting tools and which gives you a better success rate for harvesting.

During my time playing Vanguard I experienced at least a dozen moments where I either fell through the level or my character got stuck. Luckily if that happens all you have to do it report the issue and you’ll be placed at a nearby location within minutes. There were also the occasional lag spikes which ended up killing me on a few occasion. Here’s hoping they work out the bugs fast because lag, falling through levels and getting stuck is extremely frustrating for the paying customer.

This game will challenge even the best of systems. In any case, you’ll have to do some tweaking to get the frame rate consistent. Hopefully you have $5,000 PC because that’s probably what it takes to experience Vanguard with the settings maxed out. I also want to mention that if you’re running Microsoft Vista 64bit edition, this game probably won’t play. I tried installing it on 2 different computers running this operating system and neither one would let me play the game.

The game has a few minor visual problems in regards to its lack of full screen ant aliasing, but for the most part it’s no big deal.

Unlike EverQuest II, this game lacks (for the most part) voice acting. You’ll get a generic greeting and such, but this game is almost completely text driven. If you’re a player who doesn’t like to read a lot, this will most likely frustrate you. When it comes to a nice variety of sound effects, Vanguard comes up short. You’ll hear basic sounds for each enemy you encounter and rarely is it something more than a growl from a bear or hiss from a snake. What this game lacks in terms of sound effects, it makes up for in quality writing (if that makes any difference).

This game has just about what every other MMORPG has. The difference is the diplomacy feature and its unique charm. It even allows player housing (like Dark Age of Camelot) and boats for those hardcore players willing to put in the hours. Overall, it’s Vanguards unique world that’ll more than likely keep you playing.