Review: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

By Paul Sherrard | June 5, 2008 | | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: Age of Conan, Conan, review

Installation

Installation for Age of Conan is fairly straight forward, though very time consuming. Installation from 2 DVDs took an average of about 4 hours and the final game installation requires almost 30 GB of hard drive space. You have plenty of time while the game is installing to register your key online, create a forum login, and read the included game manual. Once the game is installed, you’re recommended to install SP1 on Vista if you haven’t already, and then you can run the game to start downloading patches. If you experience problems at this stage, check the forums for solutions.

Character Creation

Character creation is a fairly simple affair, and similar to the experience you’d find in other MMORPGs. The setting of being on a slave ship is interesting, if not a bit distracting, as your character sways about or gets bounced a bit as the boat rocks. It’s immersive, but distracting if you’re trying to fine-tune facial features.

You select your gender, and then one of the three player nationalities in AoC; Aquilonian, Cimmerian, or Stygian. As I wasn’t much aware of the lore of Conan apart from a pair of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies I’d watched as a kid, I didn’t really have a good idea of the background of the 3 nationalities. From first glance, and reading the descriptions in the game manual, I quickly thought of the Aquilonians as ancient Greeks or Romans, the Cimmerians as pseudo-Vikings or Braveheart Scottish, and the Stygians as Egyptians from the time of the Pharaohs. Gameplay so far hasn’t really done much to change my initial impression.

Different nationalities allow for different choices of the 12 character classes. Each of the 4 archetypes – Soldier, Priest, Rogue, and Mage – has 3 subclasses, providing a lot of choice when it comes to the type of character you want to be.

Soldiers are broken down into Guardians, Conquerors, and Dark Templars. Guardians are the plate-wearing, sword-and-board wielding tank. Conquerors are damage machines who also buff their allies through shouts and auras. Dark Templars are life-sucking unholy battlewagons.

Priests arrive as Bear Shamans, Tempests of Set, or Priests of Mitra, depending on your nationality. Each has a slightly different way of buffing and healing, and all three are capable of pushing out damage and soloing effectively. I don’t think anyone who’s used to playing a healer in other MMO’s will be disappointed with the selection here.

Rogues are either Barbarians, Assassins, or Rangers. Barbarians are mighty loin-cloth-wearing, two-hander-wielding wildmen. Assassins dual wield daggers, leaping from the shadows to deal devasting combos, and Rangers stalk their prey from a distance, raining death from their bows.

Mages unleash their magic as a Demonologist, Necromancer, or Herald of Xotli. The demonologist and necromancer are pretty close to their brethren in other MMOs, but the Herald of Xotli is something unique. The HoX is a caster who wield a big 2-handed sword, and turns into a demon to do massive melee damage. Yes, you will want to try one.

Once you’ve picked your gender, race, and class, you can then customize the look of your character by choosing a body type, height, skin color, and body marking. For the face you get to choose one of several standard faces, hair styles, eye colours, and facial markings. You then get the opportunity to go into an advanced customization mode, where you can use numerous sliders to morph the body and face. The overall level of customization is pretty good, but you still end up with variations on a theme. With only 3 different nationalities of human to choose from, it’s not going to be easy to identify your friends just by their appearances.