Some of the dungeons you'll encounter in Champions of Norrath are randomly generated, as are the names of the weapons and armor you'll acquire, which uses a sort of Mad Libs-style naming formula to determine the attributes of the gear. When you can't carry any more stuff, you can teleport back to town, sell off all the gear that you don't need to the local shop, pick up some new stuff, and head back to the dungeons. However, the game puts a greater emphasis on statistics rather than on hand-eye coordination. There's some light strategy to the combat, so it's important to know when to block and when to retreat. Additionally, the ability to stun and even knock down characters has been added. The formula that Snowblind established in Dark Alliance gets tweaked a little with ranged attacks, like spears and bows, as they receive the assistance of a little autotargeting. The combat basically requires you to hammer on the X button to attack, hammer on the square button to pick up any gear your felled enemies leave behind, and hammer on the R2 and L2 buttons to use potions to replenish your health and mana, respectively. Once you've gotten your character set up, you'll work your way through dungeons by slaughtering bad guys, pillaging treasure chests, and snapping up the occasional quest item. It's all pretty predictable stuff, so the barbarian is a pure melee fighter, the wizard's a pure magic user, and the other three classes put varying emphases on magic, melee, and ranged attacks. The class you choose, however, has a very real impact on what you'll be able to do in the game. The game features five different character classes, including the barbarian, ranger, cleric, wizard, and shadow knight, and there are male and female counterparts for each class, though the gender choice is purely aesthetic. Once finished, you can play again on two higher difficulty settings, which gives the game a good amount of replay value.Ĭhampions of Norrath's pattern should seem immediately familiar to anyone who's played a hack-and-slash RPG.

Your MO remains largely unchanged, though, so you'll spend almost all of the 20 or so hours it takes to finish the game exploring dungeons, fighting swarms of bad guys, and shopping. Soon your quest becomes less about hunting down some nasty orc chieftain and more about keeping the very planes of existence from being shattered. Of course, as you get waist-deep into your quest, you start to learn more about the cloak-and-dagger maneuvering that's occurring behind the scenes. They desperately need a hero-a champion, if you will-to turn the tides of war.

The good guys of Norrath, namely the humans and the elves, are fighting a losing battle against the bad guys of Norrath, namely the orcs and goblins. In the opening scenes of Champions of Norrath, you're given basically all of the character motivation you'll need for the remainder of the game. Now Playing: Champions of Norrath Video Review

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