Guild Wars Factions review

Following on from the massive success of the first online-role-player without any monthly fees and more importantly without being flooded with ads, NCsoft has released the first (and hopefully not the last) expansion pack, if I can call it that. Guild Wars: Factions is billed as an expansion but really it is its own stand-alone game that can be played with or without the original Guild Wars.

The objective of the game is simple. Create a character, play with the character to make it stronger and eventually try and become the best and show your battle prowess in the PvP Arena.

Polished

This game is looks fantastic and what’s more it will look stunning on pretty much any spec PC. The lavish landscapes are lushly textured and mountains rise up to the sky triumphantly. The water reflects your character's curious gaze and shimmers in the afternoon sun. The amazing visuals help to immerse the gamer within Guild Wars: Factions' beautifully created world.

While staring at the screen gamers will most likely notice the various bars and symbols that pertain to a characters skills, group information, mini-map etc. Skills are located along the bottom of the screen and the bar can contain up to 8 skills and 8 skills only. This lends a very tactical element to the game as there are virtually hundreds of skills available to any given character. There is also an intuitive mini-map in the top right hand corner of the screen.

New Classes

This mini-map shows the player their ‘Agro Zone’, a zone which once any monster enters will attack, and also the location of any nearby monsters. There is also one other feature of the mini-map. Players can click on it to send a shimmer across the map which all players in their group can see. It is also possible, if you’re quick enough, to draw things or highlight a certain area. This feature is great during missions where you need to go to a certain area and a party member knows the way. Sadly though, the feature can be abused and players will be subject to people’s drawings of rude things. (I’ll let your mind wander)

What good are graphics without solid gameplay though? Luckily though GW: Factions delivers in this department as well. Players must create a character and go through the process of customisation. Here you must choose a name for your character, their sex, their physical appearance and, most important of all, their class. Along with the expansion come two new classes, the Assassin and the Ritualist. The Assassin, as the name implies is all about quick kills. In and out action. The Ritualist wields a variety of shamanic spells and can summon forth minions to fight and aid their master. As would be expected from NCsoft it has made these characters integrate seamlessly with the other six classes already on offer.

New Lands to Explore

The storyline is set in the new continent of Cantha, an apparent fusion of Chinese, Japanese and other various Asian countries. This new land is to the south of the original Prophecies campaigns land of Tyria. Players are introduced into the game and given the choice of receiving a brief tutorial on the basic mechanics of the game or else they can choose to leap straight into the well crafted storyline. Players whose Guild Wars account contains both the Prophecies and the new Factions campaigns can travel between both these continents.

Despite finding the storyline it enjoyable, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was only there to prepare me for PvP action. It concerns a plague sweeping across the land of Cantha and your character will be central to events. Quest locations are shown on your mini-map which cleverly gets rid of the aimless wandering and pleading on the general chat channels that is so predominant in most other online role-players. The quests themselves do not contain much variety but they never really get boring. Most involve you travelling to a place and talking to someone, or else travelling to some place and killing some monster etc.

Skills

Travelling has never been easier in an online role-player however. As in the first Guild Wars game all players have to do to travel from one main town to another they have visited is open up the main map and click on that destination. This means that the time used up while travelling is lessened, allowing players to focus more on levelling their character.

A player may only bring a total of eight skills into a mission. This means a lot of consideration must be given to what will be required of them throughout the coming tasks. Again, every mission is instanced which means the player and only their party will be present in this world. This does have its advantages as there is no waiting around for bosses to respawn or for an important quest item to be regenerated after another group has taken it.

Final Word

Cut scenes throughout the storyline can be less than perfect dodgy. Some of the voice acting is weak and still the characters do not move their mouths while they speak. It's admittedly, is a slight flaw but still something that irked me while I saw watching them. Especially considering how the rest of the graphics and effects in the game are so well done.

Overall, I feel this so-called expansion has added a lot to its predecessor and will do well. It was very enjoyable to play and I can see that my opinion is shared by many, judging from the number of people that I saw in general areas.