GameGuyPete

While this game certainly won't win any awards for originality, it does what its predecessor (Champions of Norrath) did just as well and serves up a pretty decent action RPG. A few notes:

-- You can import your character from Champions of Norrath for this game... believe me when I say that it might be a good idea to do so. Some of the enemies pretty early on can kill low-level characters in two hits.

-- The audio glitches from Champions of Norrath have sort of been fixed for the sequel. The voice acting isn't quite as strong, though, and the music is too sparse. There are some great music tracks in the game, but they only last for a minute or two and then end. The music still does have a tendency to start and stop rather abruptly.

-- There have been bugs reported for this game. Health and mana bonuses (usually attained via a gem or stone) don't seem to register. It's not a HUGE deal, but Snowblind (the game's dev team) admits that the bug exists. It's a shame.

-- Visually, there are still occasions of draw-in and severe slowdown for no apparent reason. This graphics engine has been around for years now, and there's no excuse for these things to occur anymore.

-- The boss fights are too inconsistent. A little more than halfway through the game, a snow monster boss can eliminate you with one hit-- and that's with over 475HP. Other bosses can be taken out via constant hacking. Huh?

-- I'm about 15 hours in, and the story is decidedly weak. You're basically told what to do and given vague reasons why. There were a couple of anticipated plot twists that would have made sense, but never happened. To me, great RPGs-- action or turn-based-- have solid storylines to support them... but this game just doesn't have one.

-- Does every game these days NEED to have some sort of stealth element? There is a pretty generic stealth sequence in this game, although it's very rudimentary and even stealth novices can get by it with only a few tries. Still... aside from the Metal Gear series... I'm done with stealth. Stealth sucked the fun out of what could have been a great game in Shadow of Rome, and it really has no place in a game like this.

That's it for now... I don't want to give everything away. Look for the full review next week.

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Peter J. Skerritt, Jr.
Senior Editor, PSX Extreme.com

This Week\'s <B>Pete\'s Perspective</B> column: <A href=\"http://www.psxextreme.com/scripts/misc/misc.asp?MiscID=87\"target=blank>Silence Is Deafening</A>