Review: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

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

The Early Game

As soon as you choose to enter the game, the slave ship you were on gets rocked with a giant crashing sound, and everything goes black. You wake up on the beach of an island, where an old man finds you. I really don’t want to spoil anything here, as what becomes your “Destiny” quest line is one of the most interesting single-player RPGs I’ve come across in a long time. The interactive dialogues between yourself and the many NPCs recalls Mass Effect’s conversation system, and the voice acting is excellent. After reaching the first city at around level five, and continuing hrough the first 20 levels of the game, you can choose to stay in single-player “night” mode, or move into multiplayer “day” mode based in the pirate city of Tortage.

Tortage and its surrounding jungle areas are beautiful, if you have the machine to handle it. Day and night each have a unique feel, adding to the atmosphere of the game. If you’re playing with friends, you’ll spend your time with them in the Day scenario, which has a good number of crossing stories and quest lines of its own. If your friends aren’t online, or you prefer to play alone, you can stick to the Night scenario, which is full of intrigue, movement in the shadows and unique quests for each of the 4 player archetypes. To really get the most from Age of Conan, do both the day and night scenarios to their end – you may find yourself with a level or two advantage once you hit the rest of the game world.

While leveling up, you’ll learn new spells or combos to put on your hotbars, and you’ll also earn skill points to place into different types of recovery (Health, Stamina, and Mana) or skills such as hiding, climbing, and perception. Climbing is especially useful – this is a 3d world, and sometimes you’ll find yourself needing to scurry up a ladder or scaling a rock face.

After level 10, you’ll receive a feat point for each level. Each class gets 3 trees for feats – 2 unique to that class, and 1 shared with other classes of your achetype. Feats really can change how your character performs in the world, so I’d definitely recommend joining the forum community to find recommendations from other players and get feedback on your choices.

After trying a few different classes through the early stages of the game, it doesn’t get any less enjoyable. In fact, I’d recommend trying one of each archetype just to experience the differences in the Destiny quest story. FunCom has done an exceptional job of drawing players into the world of Conan for the first 20 levels, but what’s next?