EverQuest II: Echoes of Faydwer review (PC)

At one point the unrivalled king of massively multiplayer gaming in the West, Sony Online Entertainment has been playing catch up of late thanks to a certain game that took the fantasy MMORPG genre and made it a whole lot more accessible to the masses. As a result, Sony has made a few changes to its own game plan, with its flagship game, EverQuest II, having had quite a considerable makeover in terms of accessibility and ease of play since its launch in late 2004.

The result of this tinkering is its latest title, Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer, intended not only as an introduction to the franchise for late adopters but also as a crow bar of sorts to try and wrench back the distinction of being the biggest player in the realm of massively multiplayer gaming. A bit of a tall order you might think, but Echoes of Faydwer comes close to pulling it off.

First things first, though. If you're one of those people who've yet to skip gaily through the rolling fields of Norrath while bopping innocent dung beetles on the head, you'll no doubt be stoked to learn that Echoes of Faydwer ships with 'vanilla' EQ2 as well as the previous two expansions, Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky. What this means in real terms is that there's a gargantuan amount of content to become immersed in, but we'll stick mainly to the new stuff for the purposes of this review.

I can see my (tree)house from here

Chief among the new content is the city of Kelethin, a sprawling settlement that's suspended, Ewok-style, above the forest canopy. It really is an impressive sight to behold, but it's also one that comes at a cost, as it's managed to bring my modest machine to its knees almost every time I visit it.

If you want to start off in this new city you need to play a race with a 'good' alignment, such as a dwarf or the all-new Fae. If you choose either of those two races you may begin your adventures in the appropriately titled Nursery, where a benevolent little Fae hand-holds you through your first few quests, introducing you to many of the mechanics of the game, such as killing, exploration, gathering and so forth.

Also, if you decide to start off as a Fae, you’ll no doubt want to take advantage of their racial statistics which make them eminently suited toward high damage dealing classes, while their glide ability also proves very handy as most of the new regions in the expansion have areas with significant vertical displacement.

Little Acorns & Big Oaks

Once you’re finished with the Nursery, you'll move on out to explore Greater Faydark, a lush, verdant area populated by huge trees and oversized toadstools and looking a bit like something out of a Lewis Carroll novel. The designers obviously intended Greater Faydark as a hub for the new content, as Kelethin is situated in its centre, while dotted around the edge of the region are exits to all the new zones for the different level tiers, so you don't need to visit any of the old content unless you really want to.

If you're a quest-fixated type of role player, you'll be glad to hear that there's a huge amount of quests that you can undertake, in fact there's possibly even too many, as you'll no doubt find a fair few 'graying out' in your quest journal before you can finish them, rendering the experience completion bonus to be minimal. A little less encouraging is that unlike the two featured in the original game, there's no newbie-friendly group-oriented dungeon until you hit at least level 20, which is a slight disappointment to those who like to get fast XP and phat loot early on.

No sat-nav required

Still, it doesn’t take long to break through that threshold, after which, you also have more freedom in deciding where you want to adventure. One such place to try is the Butcherblock mountains. This hilly region was formerly home to the dwarves and the gnomes, the latter of who have a penchant for creating wondrous yet ridiculous clockwork inventions, such as a portable smokescreen that grants stealth to its user. In fact there's a bit of a clockwork theme going on in the expansion as a whole, as you can lock horns with clockwork mobs in the form of spiders as well as much larger and more outlandish hostile contraptions.

From a graphical standpoint, EverQuest II is still quite a looker, yet it remains as much of a system hog as it always has been. My own system exceeds the stated minimum and indeed recommended system specs by a reasonable amount, yet there are times when the game is reduced to an infrequent slide show, and that's with the graphics detail slider set to the second lowest out of seven possible settings.

Silence is golden

Aurally, not a lot has changed; there are a few new music tracks that are competent yet unobtrusive, while there's also a fair amount of voice work for the Fae, which accompanies some of the quests you can undertake. It has to be said, though, that the Fae voices can be quite grating and you'll probably be clicking through the quest text just to silence the NPC.

From a personal perspective, I had some reservations about playing EoF, as I had quit EverQuest II some months back having reached the level cap and achieved pretty much all that I wanted to. However, EoF quickly dispelled my doubts about returning, and arguably has enough new content to win over the most stubborn of cynics.

One disappointment is that no new classes have been introduced, and there's no denying that the scales are probably tipped slightly in favour of newcomers and/or those looking to start a fresh alt, but it's also undeniably a well rounded and substantial package that deserves a look from anyone even remotely curious about the game.