Reviews
Guild Wars Prophecies
Guild Wars Prophecies is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG. It was first released by ArenaNet in April 2005 and is the first game, with three expansion packs being released since - Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye Of the North.
ArenaNet had to make a big impression with this game as they had big rivals with Blizzard and their World of Warcraft, but with Guild Wars' easy to use controls and great graphics it was an instant hit around the world.
The graphics are amazing in bringing the fantasy world to life in front of your eyes and even after three years, it still looks beautiful compared with similar games. Each area of the game looks just how you expect it to, from beautiful waterfalls and rolling green hills to bleak deserts and towering sand dunes. You can even personalise your character as each character type has a dozen different faces, hairstyles, hair colours, and skin colours, and even a choice of character height. Even the fine details in things like tattoos, scars on characters and stitching on cloth brings a life-like appearance to the characters and monsters.
The storyline starts as usual with the good guys losing a war against a much more powerful force, the Charr in Ascalion. You play heroes, fighting against overwhelming odds, under the command of the Prince of Ascalion - Prince Rurick. I find the storyline exciting with twists and turns as the heroes and their Prince are banished from Ascalion and journey across two kingdoms in a wars of their own, to find a settling place for the refugees of Ascalion. But with the death of the prince the heroes find themselves under the command of the White Mantel, who lead the kingdom of Kyrta, who take their "chosen" citizens and execute them on bloodstones where their soul is destroyed.
The story gets even more intense and thrilling as the heroes gain more power though ascension in the desert and find that the gods of the White Mantel are nothing more then a powerful race of spell casters, the Mursaat, whose aim is to kill the heroes before they fulfil the flameseeker prophecies. An exhilarating twist in the plot suddenly occurs when, unknown to the heroes who presume fulfilling these prophecies will bring good to the world, the Evil Lich (who is disguised as a vizier helping them against the Mursaat) is plotting to use the heroes triumph over the Mursaat to release the Titans which will destroy all life in the world.
This is one of my favourite storylines for a game as it has everything in: war, betrayal, friendship, sacrifice and most important lots of unexpected twists and turns. When you are in a town you can see loads of other characters like yourself running around - these are other players from around the world all connected up through the internet; enabling you to talk to people, trade items with them and join guilds. However, when you go outside you are in your own version of the world (which will be the same every time you leave the town through the same portal) and where the people you have partied with in town can come with you to your world and you can fight together each town has its own maximum party size from 2-8 players per party.
There are also different types of quests in the game: There are side quests which you get at a town or outpost and give you experience and sometimes spells when you complete them but you don't have to do them to complete the main storyline. Then there are missions, which are outposts which you can make a team at the outpost and enter the mission, the missions are different parts of the storyline. For the side quests most of them can be completed with henchmen who are non-player characters controlled by the computer that will fight for you. For most of the missions it is better to do it with a party of players as players are generally better then henchmen and it usually makes it more fun and you get to meet new people.
My favourite thing about guild wars is the different character types and the different builds you can have, there are 6 different professions, 10 if you play with expansions, ranger, warrior, necromancer, monk, elementalist and mesmer. You start in a place two years before the story in a kind of tutorial where you learn how to play and get a second profession which can be any of the remaining 5 (cart be the same as your main profession) you can have any 8 spells available to use, and the key to success in the game is having good build, which means a good set of spells to get the best effect against the environment you are playing in e.g. elementalists would be best with water damage spells in the ring of fire. There is no good or bad builds as long as you have set your attribute points on skills that will make your spells better e.g. elementalist spends attribute points on water magic and their ice spear will do more damage.
There is a another mode of guild wars which is called player vs. player where teams of people get together and fight battles against each other, there are different objective games such as capture the flag. But it is mainly just teams of people trying to eliminate the other team. The other game type is guild vs. guild where people of the same guild can fight each other in the halls of heroes and gain the gods favour for their country. To succeed in this game you have to work as a team and have a good mix of professions and builds' these gives the game loads of tactics and relays a lot on teamwork.
Overall I like Guild Wars I think it has everything a good game needs a good story line, great game play and little repetition in objectives. I also like the fact that you can play the storyline or play player vs. player this attracts lots of different types of people to play Guild War. I also love that since it is online they can update it and add new things to do and new quests to complete especially in the holiday seasons they change the appearance of some of the major towns and cities to suit the season, and add quests to get e.g. Easter eggs with presents inside such as a mini pet that will follow you around.
Guild Wars is a great game and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in getting a RPG of some sort. And I also think that it is a lot better then any of its rivals especial World of Warcraft.
Andrew Munck
6:02pm Tuesday 5th February 2008
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CommentPosted by: Munckey, Darlington on 6:09pm Tue 5 Feb 08
it is just the best reveiw of the best game ever!!!![bold]bold[/bold]
it is just the best reveiw of the best game ever!!!!
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