Monthly Archives: September 2011

RIFT: Good for the Soul

RIFT – Good for the Soul

By Neil Kewn (Murxidon) – OnRPG Journalist

 

 

 

It’s hard to imagine, but RIFT has been on the market for almost six months now. It’s been an incredible half year for the MMO and its developers Trion Worlds, catapulting them and their game from obscurity into an overnight success and virtual world juggernaut. It’s well deserved, as RIFT is arguably one of the most polished and complete MMOs ever released. A game that doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel, instead opting to polish the cogs and grease the gears of everything that makes a modern day MMO great, before slotting them back in. It achieves something remarkable in the process – Luring tired and bored World of Warcraft players by giving them roughly the same game, just in a different world.

 

An unfair accusation to make some might say, but there’s no denying the similarities between the biggest MMO in the world and the fastest rising. RIFT came along at just the right time. A lot of players greeted Warcraft’s latest expansion, Cataclysm, with a decidedly “meh” response, and the thought of a brand new MMO encompassing all the things they know and love from Azeroth was an enticing prospect indeed. Fortunately despite all of their similarities, RIFT isn’t a carbon copy of its gargantuan peer. The sparks of originality that are here make this game feel modern and best of all – fresh.

 

 

Two factions inhabit the lush, detailed world of Telara: The Guardians and the Defiants. Each faction has its own set of three unique races, which can be moulded and shaped in the game’s strong character creation system. The actual interface is your standard MMO collection of action bars and slots, with a quest tracker on the right side of the screen underneath the map. A series of story driven tutorial introduce RIFTs narrative, in which the Dragon Regulos has brought destruction to the land of Telara in the form of rifts from otherworldly planes.

 

These rifts form the basis of the game. They are huge tears in the fabric of the physical world and can appear anywhere and at any time, spewing beasts all over the map and disrupting travelling, questing and the day to day activities of both players and non-player characters. The world of Telara dynamically alters depending on how well these rifts are dealt with. Leave one open for too long and they grow, invading local towns and settlements impeding player progress significantly. Quests can’t be completed if the quest giver is mincemeat.

 

Players are encouraged to group up and take on these invasions, battling their way through the hordes and defeating bosses that appear. A useful Public Group system helps put other willing players together to fend off the attacks. These appear whenever you are in the vicinity of an invasion making for a spontaneous but smooth PvE experience. They are a very fun and exciting addition to the game, making the world feel alive and dangerous.

 

 

Questing naturally makes up a large chunk of RIFT, but there’s not a lot of variety when it comes to the daily grind. Run of the mill kill and collect quests are far too common, made more frustrating by how close enemies are grouped together in this game. They aren’t spread out far enough. You will often find yourself outnumbered after pulling too many mobs and this can make travelling a nightmare. Epic Quests help spruce things up by offering story driven chain adventures, similar to those seen in The Lord of the Rings Online, which help flesh out RIFT’s lore.

 

The class system in RIFT differs than in most games. Picking from one of four “callings” (Warrior, Mage, Cleric and Rogue), players collect Souls which unlock different perks and abilities. Up to three souls can be attuned at any one time with each having their own talent tree. The points you earn from levelling are then spent in any of the three class trees. With this system, there are many more avenues for character development. Souls can be swapped and interspersed to create a very personalized and unique character tailored to your playing style.

 

This is daunting at first and it does take some time to get used to. Free of the limitations imposed on you by more linear class systems, it is entirely possible to create a poorly equipped character in certain situations. I never did feel completely confident with my class setup, often consulting Guild mates and fan websites to help determine the strongest path for my Cleric. Fortunately the more comfortable I became with RIFT, the more risks I took and tangents I went down to shape a character that suited the way I play. There is a certain joy to mixing and matching Souls.

 

 

This freedom gives you many more possibilities in PvP, and there’s a good amount of it in RIFT. Warfronts are battlegrounds that are contested between the Defiants and the Guardians, featuring Capture the Flag variants and battles for control points. PvP servers, or “shards”, are also available for those who enjoy the danger of open-world player-versus-player combat.

 

Trion have created a very beautiful world in RIFT. The landscape is superbly detailed with sharp, clear textures and great lighting effects. An important part of any technically proficient MMO is in how well it scales towards lower end systems, and Trion have done a good job in this regard although large scale battles or rift closures can dampen performance considerably. Arguably the best parts about RIFT’s graphical prowess are the rifts themselves. They are certainly a sight to behold; huge in size and possessing some superb spell effects, they often change the entire skyline in an area. It almost seems a shame to have to close them.

 

After hitting the ground running following its near-perfect release, RIFT has achieved a lot in six months, quickly establishing itself as a triple-A MMO that can hang with the best of them. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in polish, beauty and a few cool well-executed ideas. With excellent PvE content, interesting gameplay dynamics and a lush world, RIFT is a game that outclasses the majority of its peers, and one that will probably outlive them.

 

Graphics – 5

Controls – 4

Features – 5

Customization – 5

Community – 4

Early Access: Langrisser Schwarz

Early Access: Langrisser Schwarz

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-In-Chief

 

 

Langrisser Schwarz was the second stop on our tour of Gamania’s Game Show. Now to be honest, I had never heard of this game until last Thursday when Gamania released their show’s teaser trailer. One week later.. and I can say I am enthusiastically looking forward to reviewing this game at launch in person and might even consider bringing my guild on board to play it long term. This is truly the hit sleeper game of the show and I’m going to explain just why I’m so excited for it.

 

Developers Jacky Chung and Roy Huang explained their game through a series of trailers and a clear cut resounding message. Langrisser Schwarz skimps on customization and crafting and instead focuses its fully development dollars into providing highly difficult content, immense class selection, and an emphasis on raw uninterrupted action at a level I have only seen in console games.

 

 

To truly understand a game you first need to consider the available classes and how they interact. In Langrisser Schwarz this can be a daunting task! The beginning of the game throws you into the Goddess’ test which decides your starting class (out of 6 possible) and your alliance (dark, light, or empire). But you aren’t bound by this class and can freely change between any of the starting 6 classes so long as you have the armor to make it effective. As you level up and acquire TP from completing missions, each of these classes allow you to spend your TP to unlock one of two new classes. Those each lead to 2 more classes and then 2 more classes after that. From wizard to berserker to ninja to infighter to templar… players should never feel bored of their class in this game.

 

 

What’s even more interesting is that when changing classes, you don’t fully lose access to the skills acquired from your previous class. In this way you have even more variety in that you can create hybrid classes with skills from two separate jobs, though it seems the hotkey is currently limited to about 6 skills which should add even more strategic depth to each battle.

 

 

The actual action itself plays out as a sort of real time chess match. The camera is in third person and the game plays out similar to Diablo in that directional aiming is important. You won’t just be able to click on a monster and automatically spam skills at them, each attack requires timing and aim to land successfully. A majority of the skills available also have a charging system in place to add more strategic depth. Against agile foes you might spam your skills rapid fire to ensure you can land hits, while more stationary foes require well placed charge shots to deal noticeable damage to. This system still needs some refinement though as some charge shots (like the archer’s basic attack) are too wonky to use effectively. There’s no reason an archer shouldn’t be able to change the direction they are aiming while charging for an attack and I think this better get changed in the final release.

 

Before entering a mission, players are able to customize their ‘mercenaries’ to accompany them in combat. Mercenaries act as mini soldiers that you can command in battle to offer extra damage and tanking ability to your character. If they die in combat you can easily revive them between fights, encouraging you to use them as expendables to speed up each quest.

 

 

On the alliance versus alliance PvP side of things, mercenaries become more more important. A system is in place in which some mercenary units are more adept as defeating other mercenary units similar to the Fire Emblem series. In fact the example given felt straight out of Fire Emblem with cavalry units gaining the advantage over soldiers, soldiers being more effective against pikemen, and pikemen countering calvary. As you level up, your mercenaries gain strength as well, so don’t expect tedious grinds to collect armor for both your mercenaries as well as yourself.

 

Tedious grinds seem to be pretty optional in general in Langrisser Schwarz. Players will be able to acquire most of what they need in the battle arenas fighting for the honor of their chosen faction. After each match you will receive two types of currency: team points and personal points. Team points are rewarded based on whether you win or lose and how good of a fight your team put up altogether. Personal points exist to reward players that might have carried decently well but faced insurmountable odds due to baddies in their party. Currently the maximum combat consists of 5v5 though with the number of mercenaries added to the mix, this can have the look of a full out war zone.

 

 

Besides armor sets, collectors will rejoice at the detailed card collecting system featured in Langrisser Schwarz. Through grinding or the cash shop players will be able to obtain 100s of cards, featuring buffs, traps, and summons to support you in battle. Players will then be able to take 3 cards into battle (I’m not positive but I believe the 3 cards are randomly selected from a larger deck each time you enter an arena). These cards shouldn’t be mistaken as fluff nonsense that only collectors will be interested in. The effects of these cards are truly devastating, often dwarfing any skills your character has at their disposal, though with the incredibly long cooldown time it is to be expected.

 

 

From our brief playthrough yesterday I can say with full confidence that his is not a pick up and play MMO. The dungeons are well thought out, difficult, and require a full team of competent players to ensure PvE success. Most monsters mobs consist of a central leader and a group of protecting mercenaries, ensuring that the PvE battles don’t just become gang bangs. The AI is adept at controlling their mercenaries as well, as an archer I often found myself receiving major damage for sending my mercenaries to the front line to fight instead of keeping them on the defensive to act as a buffer from getting flanked.

 

 

Langrisser Schwarz also utilizes hazards such as siege towers and monster ambushes to prevent players from slowly crawling through a dungeon one group at a time. In one situation we were forced to fight through 2 very powerful siege towers and, one we were fully committed to the battle, a lich rose up and began summoning hoards of skeletons to protect saidwarham towers. Another boss, a spiked lizard, summoned tons of mini lizards while he continually dug under ground and popped up under our squishy players to deal massive damage. This fight truly forced us to perfect the timing and aim of our skills to deal even a scratch against him.

 

 

Finally we party wiped in less than 10 seconds against Ominous Eyes, the dungeon raid boss. Ominous Eyes shoots out armor shredding hyper beams from any direction his eyes gaze, reducing even fully speced tanks into dust in 5 seconds flat if you are unable to evade it. Our team foolishly ran in like a like of British Red Coats and was incinerated the moment our tank landed his first hit and drew the bosses’ attention. Speed and armor boosting cards were vital to stay alive in this match and my two Canadian journalist teammates died repeatedly for not paying close enough attention to the boss’ wandering eyes. After a long drawn out battle and much ridicule from the Empire booth girl/cheerleader we were finally able to claim victory!

 

 

The overarching faction versus faction versus faction conflict is similar in setup to Warhammer Online. Through PvP and, to a lesser extent, PvE players will be able to acquire faction points to obtain unique buffs for their side while stealing the same benefits from their enemies. As a griefer I was sad to hear that players will be unable to communicate with members of the other alliances.

 

If you are one of those nerdy gamers like me who adore gaming storylines, Langrisser Schwarz is the game that will truly shine out of Gamania’s 5 on display. Each alliance features a unique storyline from start to finish, pulling you in to a world of destruction and chaos and forcing you to understand the motivations behind each alliance.

 

A last item of note in Langrisser Schwarz is the game features controller plug-in capabilities for console gamers who feel a mouse and keyboard are too foreign. This controller set-up plays out extremely well, with the various control pads allowing you to command your character and your mercenaries on the fly. Skills and card activation is also a breeze with the L1 button acting as a scroll navigation bar to quickly flip through your line of skills. The only true downside I found to the system was this scrolling made defensive skills far too unwieldy to access on the fly. By the time you have scrolled to the mage’s teleport skill you will have already been knocked on your ass and 1 shot by a boss. Hopefully they realize this during testing and alter the currently useless R2 and L2 buttons (currently assigned as hotkeys for help menus…) into fast cast assignable skills to allow players a quick draw button for vital dodge skills.

 

 

This game might not have all the refinements of most typical MMOs but it certainly has enough focus on fun to keep me interested. If you want to catch the Schwarz fever yourself I’d suggest heading over to the Langrisser Schwarz website (http://corp.gamania.com/products/langrisserschwarz/en/index.htm) and taking the Goddess’ test to see which starting character and alliance is for you!

 

Early Access: Dream Drops

Early Access: Dream Drops

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-In-Chief

 

 

Yesterday marked the first day of Gamania’s Taiwan Game Show and the beginning of their spectacular line up was Dream Drops. For those familiar with Lucent Heart, you will find yourself right at home as Dream Drops is developed by the same team and takes Gamania’s usual style and pushes it to the next generation.

 

In Dream Drops you take on the role of a ‘sleepwalker’ aka a human who is temporarily transported into the world of dreams to help bring some clarity to the chaos befalling the world of After Dream. Apparently Time Thieves have stolen the Time from children’s classic fairy tales, resulting in bizarre alterations to Fairy Tales. Most notably, the Queen of Hearts has gone from savage and maniacal to focused and goal driven, leading the Elder Board in a hunt to catch the Time Thieves. Meanwhile Snow White has gone Barbie and is attempting to seize control of all of After Dream the only way a Barbie Girl knows how, creating a seductive clothing line called Silver Waltz!

 

 

To be fair, had this Snow White went with Prince Charming instead, it would be illegal in most countries.

 

Although the Queen of Hearts has summoned you to the world of After Dreams, don’t let your guard down. She is still vicious and ready to turn on you as soon as you no longer serve her purposes. The story line and cast of characters in Dream Drops is twisted, full of appearances like Hook, betrayal, and mystery.

 

In terms of gameplay, Dream Drops takes the classic 4 class model and reimagines it with the tank becoming a Nutcracker, the mage becoming a Dream Painter, the cleric becoming a Pasty Chef, and the summoner as an Indian Warrior. While they serve these rolls in a familiar way, their skills are nothing but imaginative. For instance the Pasty Chef (pictured below as Pedo Bear) attacks enemies with giant ice cream cones, heals allies with candy, and spills milk on people for the pure joy of being Pedo Bear. As a side note, it seems each class will have a different starting area, so expect some replayability should you choose to sample the 4 classes.

 

 

Guild Cities also play a very important role in Dream Drops. Guilds will be able to collect materials and rare blueprints in order to construct buildings in their town, offering useful buffs and rare crafting locations. The town construction itself is quite detailed, to the point that you can literally spell out words from an aerial view of your city with trees, fountains, crafting houses, and other buildings. As your guild grows, so too does the amount of land available for you to build upon.

 

Of course it would be sad if this joy was limited to only the Guild Leader (as it is in most games), but the 5 tiered guild member ranking system in Dream Drops can be used to give limited access to the town builder to your closest guildies. This way you can come together and work in unison to build the perfect Guild Town for your group of friends.

 

 

Now one of the major problems in the past with Guild Towns is that smaller guilds often lack the number of members to effectively run quests, gather materials, and build a prosperous guild town. Dream Drops partially alleviates this problem by allowing Guild Leaders to post player generated quests on a billboard in their Guild Town. Non-guildies can accept these quests, and work to fetch materials for the guild like little mercenaries. This does come at the cost of Guild Leaders having to fit the bill on the quest reward but it’s a step in the right direction when players can generate their own quests for any purpose.

 

In true Lucent Heart fashion, Dream Drops offers plenty of ways to customize your character without limiting your viability. Gem stones can be placed in a cross pattern on the character screen (with the horizontal bar focusing on physical and the vertical focusing on magical) to bolster your character’s stats beyond their base level stats. This is entirely different from the fashion sets that can be obtained from the cash shop as well as various quests, offering you incredibly detailed character customization without having any impact on your character stats. Level requirements are also placed on the fashion, reserving the best looking items for players dedicated enough to reach endgame. Approximately 9 slots for fashion exist as well, so it shouldn’t be too difficult if you try to reserve a unique look for yourself.

 

As you level up, you gain access to new class promotions (2nd tier classes not yet announced!) as well as new skills to master, most consisting of 10 levels of upgrading. In fact so many diverse skills are available to you that it will take a good amount of time to eventually master all of the skills, and players will be forced to specialize themselves while leveling to maximize their power. This comes with a nice aesthetic bonus however as skills actually change in animation the closer they are to maximum level. This can range from some added sparkly particles to the Nutcracker charging on a glorious steed instead of wooden rocking horse.

 

 

To keep things interesting, various events and minigames occur daily and change daily in Dream Drops. Players will be given a handy in-game calendar to keep track of these events and can even edit it to ignore certain events or send reminders to themselves and guildies for important calendar events. Speaking of convenient features, you can actually access both your mailbox and auction house from anywhere in the world! These even includes accepting mail attachments while out grinding mobs. The true Time Thieves are MMO companies that have forced players to return to town for these mundane tasks and Dream Drops is out to rectify this injustice.

 

Though the game isn’t even slated for release yet, the developers promise that the feud between Snow White and The Queen of Hearts is only the beginning. Expect an infusion of Asian fairy tales to join the roster of American and European stories in a post launch expansion!

Brawl Busters – Sagoe Impressions

Brawl Busters – Sagoe Impressions

By Michael Sagoe (Mikedot), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

 

Hey you! You’re busting my brawls! Knock it off!

 

Rock Hippo Productions teamed up with Weezor and SkeinGlobe to release a wacky online game like no other. Brawl Busters is a multiplayer online beat ‘em up title that’s focused on class-based teamwork and simple, but chaotic action. You can play as one of five different character classes and wreak havoc with some buddies across colorful urban arenas.

 

Now I know some of you may be thinking: “Isn’t this just another Team Fortress 2 ripoff?” and you can STOP RIGHT THERE because it is in fact NOT a TF2 clone! Granted, it looks similar to TF2 in terms of visual aesthetic, but the gameplay here is pretty original. Anyway, I’ve been pretty excited about this one and I got some hands on time during closed and pre-closed beta. OnRPG has been handing out 2000+ beta keys since closed beta started, but for those that weren’t so fortune to grab one, here’s my overall experience and impressions!

 

Everything starts off in a dark locker room where you pick out one of eight different characters, ranging from bratty-to-manly looking guys and cute-to-sexy looking girls. I went with the teenage boy look and wanted to make my character look like a young Jimmy Hendricks, but the amount of costume options were lacking, so I went with making a funky looking black guy version of Slash from Guns N’ Roses.

 

Sort of…

 

Finding games in the lobby was quick and easy since the game’s design and interfaces were incredibly clean. The main game modes available during closed beta were Team Deathmatch, Glow Rush and Zombie Mode. TDM was pretty basic: Find an enemy player, beat them up for points. First team to reach nine points wins. Pretty simple, but of course, you got to watch out for environmental hazards, use items earned from destructible objects, grab kiosk boosts for your team and whatnot.

 

Zombie mode is very self-explanatory, but I’ll say it anyway: Beat up waves of zombies with up to three other friends and survive. Personally speaking, I’m quite partial to zombie modes in any video game, but here in Brawl Busters, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Maybe it was because waves only go up to five, and the overall difficulty didn’t feel very challenging, but it is a good way to earn EXP and BP (Buster Points), so I expect a lot of people will be grinding that mode for hours.

 

 Now Glow Rush was my favorite and somewhat rage inducing, because it’s sort of a spin on TDM, but players will have to collect 43 glow (such an odd number, by the way…) from enemy players or have more glow than the enemy team before the time runs out to win. I liked this mode because teaming up on a player with a lot of glow is fun, since getting a kill and assist with another player splits up the glow amount among those two players. It’s almost NEVER a good idea to collect a lot of glow for yourself, unless you have backup (and unless you’re playing with friends, you most likely won’t.) It’s a mode where you really have to pay attention to every little thing that’s happening, and whether or not your team is focusing could mean the difference between glow being tossed back and forth or matches ending in less than a minute. Overall, Glow Rush is great… when you’re playing with competent teammates.

 

I tried out all the classes. Basically: Sluggers whack homing baseballs from a distance with no target priority, Firefighters shoot water balls and spam shields from a distance while being slow as snails, Boxers perform hit-&-runs to distract and chase down enemies while having crappy HP and attack range, Blitzers can WOMBO COMBO while tanking and dealing out heavy damage with slow attack speed, and Rockers fight with balanced stats, all while being able to stun and frustrate.

 

Overall, I’d say the classes are pretty balanced. Their strengths and weakness are apparent, and I have yet to get caught in a battle and lose due to imbalance. It’s just another one of those games where you’re only as good as your team, so if your team sucks, you suck! Speaking from experience here, since I’ve played in tons of matches where I managed to get 5+ kills for my team and we still lost because some guy on my team wanted to fight an unwinnable 3-on-1.

 

There were only a couple of maps to play on, but each map requires different strategies. My personal favorite is Loco Square, because it’s the biggest map available and filled with lots of traps to abuse. There’s also an underpass were you can get hit by a speeding car, and let me tell you, I’ve gotten more assist kills from that crazy speeding car than from my teammates in any match.

 

Oh Black Sedan, you never let me down!

 

Just for some general thoughts: The game modes are really fun, but there needs to be a lot more. SkeinGlobe should really take a look at other team based games and consider adding more objective game modes, and a good old fashion CTF mode can’t hurt.

 

The core combat mechanics are very simple, and personally I think the simplicity of the controls is quite appealing, but after playing for a long while, they could use a bit of spicing up. The game is chaotic as it is, but it gets dull when you’re performing/spamming the same three moves over and over again. At the most, the only real advanced combo tactic I could muster was bomb juggling.

 

(I once bomb juggled an enemy into this dinosaur’s mouth. AWESOME.)

 

Adding a few more combo and defensive opportunities to core mechanics would make me happy, but nothing that would change up the mechanics completely, since I want the core gameplay to stay simple.

 

My time spent playing Brawl Busters sure was enjoyable, with the only real issues being lack of content and core mechanics being a bit too simple to enjoy in the long run. As it is, Brawl Busters is a game that you’d want to play during a nice coffee break, but not for hours on end. There’s a lot of untapped potential in this game, so I’ll be keeping my eye on this one, because I sure hope to see it evolve into something great.

 

For more info on Brawl Busters, check out our profile page here at OnRPG, and don’t forget to check out our video impressions by ColbyCheeze!

Heroes of Newerth: F2P ReReview

Heroes of Newerth: F2P ReReview

By Mohammad Abubakr, OnRPG Journalist

 


Heroes of Newerth is a multiplayer online battle arena by S2Games for Windows, Mac and Linux. It aims to provide an improved version of the Warcraft III mod Defence of the Ancients by allowing the game to run on its own engine. Since the game is not just a mod anymore the developers can tweak it to their liking and not have to worry about the restrictions placed upon the modding community.

 

The game does not try to innovate and change how DotA was played. In simplest terms, HoN is DotA with improved graphics and the addition of many needed features. This means that DotA players will not have a hard time getting into the game and will only need to relearn names of items and heroes. S2Games does a good job providing the HoN equivalents on their wiki page.


Although most of the game is exactly like DotA some of the features, heroes and items are unique to HoN. Since DotA was just a mod for Warcraft III, the developers were unable to add in features such as the ability to reconnect and improved graphics. HoN has solved these issues by allowing user reconnection and providing improved graphics. The graphics are not amazing compared to today’s standards but are a big improvement from DotA graphics.

 

It also offers a ranking and matchmaking system that players can use to join matches and compete. Your match making rating either increases or decreases depending on the result of the match. It is not affected by your individual performance and only relies on final team outcome. The rating does not change by a set amount but depends on your opponents. A rookie against a top player will receive more points than if the rookie was against another rookie.

 

Running away from a fed player


All your stats such as kills, deaths and assists are recorded and displayed on your player profile. This allows players to track their progress but also allows S2Games to keep track of leavers. DotA players could easily get away with leaving matches midway but in HoN users are punished for leaving. If your leave percentage gets too high you are only able to play in matches allowing leavers until you lower your percentage. I really love this system because just one disconnected player can ruin the entire game.

 

Free players do have some restrictions placed upon them. A free player cannot play all of the game modes unless they have tokens which may be purchased from the shop. S2Games claims that this token system was put into place to ensure teams, which include free to play players, do not provide disadvantages to the team just because they do not have the counter-pick hero available. Tokens allow the player to choose any hero even if they do not own it. A token is consumed every game unless you are playing the all pick mode. Legacy players, players which previously bought the game, have unlimited tokens.

 

Free to play players may become verified upon hitting level five or purchasing gold coins. The verified system lets players decide if they want to be matched up with newer players or not. It reduces the complaints from veteran players about new F2P noobs. Once you become verified you also receive three free tokens.

 

The concept of HoN is very simple: control your chosen hero to destroy the opposing team’s main building. Each team can be formed of up to five players and no team is allowed to select duplicate heroes. Each hero gains experience by killing creeps or heroes. The creeps of each faction, Hellbourne and Legion, continuously battle to try and take down towers and award gold to the player landing the last hit on them. You may attack your own team to deny experience and gold from the enemy or to control how the lane is pushed. Buildings may only be attacked if they are under 10% health to prevent abuse of the denying system. Some heroes can deny kills by using self damaging spells.

 

While it seems very simple on paper, the game can be quite overwhelming with its large variety of heroes, items and game play mechanics. The community does not help solve this problem as it can be quite hard to find nice and helpful players in the MOBA genre. You will get yelled at for your mistakes to the point where you really do not want to play. Do not give up as this genre is very rewarding once you get past the steep learning curve.

 

As of today there are 88 heroes split between the two factions Hellbourne and Legion. No player is allowed to select duplicate heroes but may pick from either faction in the all pick mode. There are various modes available such as random picks and draft mode which allows hero bans. Each mode has a casual mode available that makes the game easier to play by offering changes such as no loss of gold on death.

 

The large variety of heroes


The selection of free heroes rotates weekly and offers fifteen new choices for players. The in game shop allows players to purchase their favourite heroes with either silver or gold coins. Silver coins can be obtained simply by playing while gold coins can only be obtained with cash. The prices of heroes range between 100-400 silver coins on average and may take a while to get as you receive 4-10 coins per game which usually lasts around 40 minutes. Players that purchased HoN before it went F2P receive all current and upcoming heroes for free but must purchase early access to new heroes unless they want to wait. This early access feature is not liked by the B2P community of HoN because it may give players with money an advantage over other players.

 

The shop also offers other items such as alternate hero skins and announcer packs which are all purchasable with silver or gold coins. Some premium items feature ridiculous prices for silver coins and must be purchased with gold coins unless you save up coins for a long time.

 

The Shop


The standard map is split into three lanes with three towers for each faction. Behind the third tower lies the melee and ranged barracks. Once these have been destroyed the creeps in that lane will grow stronger for the faction that killed the barracks. All of the lanes lead towards the main building which is protected by two more turrets.

 

In between the three lanes there is the jungle. The jungle is split into two areas for both factions which spawn either neutral creeps which are easier to kill or legendary creeps which are harder to kill but provide greater EXP and gold. The normal setup for a team is two champions for top and bottom lane and a solo champion in the middle but a tri-lane or jungling setup is very viable.

 

A river divides the two jungles and spawns a rune after a set time interval at either the top or bottom of the river. These runes offer heroes buffs such as double damage or invisibility. In DotA the runes spawn at the same time as the creeps but it has been changed in HoN to discourage level one rune fights.

 

The bottom of the river is also the location of the boss monster Kongor. Kongor provides teams with gold, experience and an item drop. The item can be looted by any hero and gives the holder the ability to instantly revive upon death. The item does disappear after some time so it is wise to put it to good use.

 

Fighting Kongor


The secret shops have been replaced with observatories which only sell wards. All items can be bought from the main shop from your base. The shop was not very user friendly for new players but the HoN 2.0 patch has fixed this issue. Now the shop is organized into nice categories and even features built in guides. The guides are submitted by the community and provide newer players with suggestions for items, skill builds and tips for their selected hero.

 

Conclusion

HoN has done a good job offering DotA with new features, engine and graphics. Due to the addition of unique heroes the metagame is different from DotA and can provide more viable play styles for players.

 

Although the game can be very overwhelming for newer players, I advise you to continue learning about the game because once you get past the steep learning the game can be a lot of fun.

 

Graphics: 3/5

Controls: 4/5

Features: 3/5

Customization: 5/5

Community: 2/5