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Here was a game that I had been looking forward to for a while. I'm a huge fan of HP Lovecraft's work, and I've enjoyed much of Howard's fiction - both on its own merit and because of his association and collaborations with Lovecraft. I'm a busy person and I normally only play one game at a time. Recently that had been World of Warcraft, and I'd also been looking for a change. I ordered a pre-order of the game through Best Buy. I'm not normally one to do so, but I thought that the game might be popular enough to make it a pain to buy right when it first came out, and they had an early access option that seemed like it would be nice. There was also something about a war rhino. I've never passed up an opportunity to have one of those in real life, and I wasn't planning on doing so in a game, either. The fiasco with the early release of the game is pretty much old news. I wasn't happy that I received my actual game well after it was released (I should have just bought it in the store) and I wasn't very happy with how Funcom handled that situation, and the free trial codes for friends (which were promised in the box but don't exist yet). All that aside, I think the game has a lot of potential. It's a beautiful game, easily one of the prettiest that I've seen. The character customization available is incredible; it reminded me of playing with Poser (a 3d modeling program). In fact, I spent my first few hours of play just making various characters. It really is a shame that they limit you to just 8 total, across all of the servers. You begin the game on a Caribbean-ish jungle-dominated island and it is gorgeous. The water effects are great as well. I spent the next few hours just enjoying the view. The gameplay is rather fun. Combat consists of more than just right clicking on your enemy and occasionally hitting a few things on your hotbar. It's actually involved. Where you hit your enemies and where you position in relation to yourself, your allies, and even their allies matters. More than that, it actually makes sense. Swinging a gigantic two-handed sword or axe has a huge arc, and can hit multiple opponents. People and npcs actually have clipping, which adds another level of strategy to group combats. You can wall off areas with soldier types, but you can also get surrounded by enemies and be unable to flee. There are also fatalities. These happen randomly when you finish off your opponents in certain ways, and they are really fun to watch. They also embolden your character, giving them a short bonus to damage. Movement seems nice too, for the most part. You can jump, which is always a plus (and one of the things that annoy me about Guild Wars). You can also climb, which is pretty rare. Rogue types (assassins, barbarians, and rangers) can sneak around as well. I haven't found this to be very effective yet, most enemies can pick up on me from good distances away even with my stealth skill maxed out. Besides that complaint, stealth is fun. If you actually do manage to sneak up on someone, you really can stick them where it hurts. The classes and races seem interesting and different from each other. All of the "races" are actually cultures. You can play as an Aquilonian (a Roman-esque culture), a Cimmerian (what Conan was), and a Stygian (what James Earl Jones played in the movie). The culture you choose affects what you look like and which classes are available for you to pick. Funcom took advantage of this to include a different type of server: culture pvp, where players from the different cultures can fight each other. All of these things above show to me that the game has potential. It doesn't seem like it's where it should be, though. There are quite a few balance issues. The classes don't seem to be equally powerful between their own areas of specialty, or even outside of them. I made a member of the primary healing class (Priest of Mitra) and was able to do more damage to enemies than many other classes that focus in that, for example. The AI seems like it can use some work. Nearby enemies will assist their "friends" when you attack them, but not if you kill their friend in one hit. Some monsters seem to chase you for a bit if you run and then stop... only later to find you again sometimes minutes later and attack you. I haven't progressed far enough into the game yet to make many judgments on the story. Conan is the King of Aquilonia in the story of the game. All players characters are newly escaped slaves from a Stygian slave-vessel that crashed onto the pirate-ran island of Tortage. This limits some of the roleplay options, but adds a few new pickup lines, I guess. I can easily see someone saying "Oh, you're an escaped slave from a Stygian ship that crashed into an island and lost your memory? Why, me too! Want a drink?" In the starting area, you fight mostly against the savage Picts, which according to game lore displayed across the loading screens, are degenerates that are barely above animals, but are destined to rise up and destroy civilized society. This seems somewhat against what Howard would have wanted - in his stories, he seemed to take a liking to the Picts (which were an actual group of people that lived in Scotland, named by the Romans for their tendency to tattoo themselves). Most of these issues are something that they can fix. It's apparent that Funcom really put some thought an effort into the game. I hope it succeeds. If you're considering picking the game up, I think that it's worth a try. Just be sure to read the requirements on the box before you buy it, they are pretty hefty.
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