Silicon Fusion >> Reviews >> Shadowbane Gold

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Review:

8th February 2004:
Shadowbane Gold
Go massive in the world of Aerynth and plan your rise to a throne and become a power to be known.
Posted by Chris Snook - PC - UK and Europe

2004 looks to be the year for Massive Multi-Player Online Games (MMPOG's) and Shadowbane Gold is the first out of the stalls. Set in the land of Aerynth, a land being torn apart by those who reside within, guilds and factions, warbands and armies all vie for power. It is a land where powerful player characters can raise their own thrones and defy all others, it is also a land where chaos has been unleashed and new perils await the unwary.

Shadowbane Gold contains the original Shadowbane as released in the US and the follow-up expansion, The Rise of Chaos, which introduced a number of new classes and races into the mix. Character creation is fairly straightforward; pick your name, race, base class, gender, appearance, character statistics and runestone traits. Except that it only becomes so when you ignore the suggested order of steps and follow a more intuitive way of doing things, I also noticed that the interface was upgraded at least once which has made characters easier to create. Which was welcome as to begin with you have 30 points to spread around the various elements of your character and some forethought is required, as race, stats and runestone gifts all come out of this pool. It can be a struggle not to nerf your character before you even start

There are eleven character races to choose from, two of which are not selectable until at least a month of playing has elapsed or you pony up a full twelve months worth of payment in one go, I would presume as an incentive to do so. Initially the choice of class is simple, Fighter, Healer, Rogue or Mage. Each lead onto more specialised and advanced classes, such as the Barbarian, Assassin or Fury - Amazon warrior women who can control lightning are some of those that you can promote into. Character stats are of the familiar, such as strength, dexterity and constitution and intelligence, with a further stat called spirit, which governs your magic pool or mana. Strength covers damage and encumbrance, Dexterity how quickly you hit and constitution how much stamina you have to fly, swim and run with. Intelligence provides both extra training points and is useful for spell casters. Fairly standard stuff. Runestones however provide your character with that touch of uniqueness, they give gifts, such as magic resistance, increased facility with a weapon or a bonus to a stat, it is here that those 30 points can be swallowed very quickly and is a very nice way of allowing each character to be as different as you want, a few runestones however are class or race specific. Once a world and a name and gender have been picked playtime begins.

Graphics are simple, which works in this context, no need to try and push for a higher framerate, ping times are decent and lag is rare and where needed the spot effects are effective and the animation is smooth. The interface for actions and keeping track of things however can become very irksome as the initial layout swallows a decent amount of screen area, even at larger resolutions. Thankfully these can all be customisable as required but it niggles having to do so. Initial controls also take time to get used to with controls for movement, camera, actions and abilities (Some keys have three different functions depending on if shift or Ctrl is pressed) with movement and camera being the most finicky. To look about you push your mouse to the screen edge and the camera angle changes, except that initially the direction is reversed, for no really explained reason. Again an option allows this to be 'corrected', the sensitivity however is also high and can be triggered by nothing more than closing a window too close to the edge of the screen. Annoying.. Movement is controlled solely by the mouse to show where you wish to go, either on the ground in view or on the local map/radar that can be displayed. This is possibly the worst part of the game, the point and click approach does not allow a quick exit from loosing situations, even with a sprinting buff active as unless you click on the local map to exit you just do not move far enough, quickly enough and death is often the result. Path finding is also a problem, the AI rarely takes into account obstacles such as trees and a flurry of clicking can arise to navigate around a forest, this slows the advance rate up considerably, as does the sheer size of the world. Whilst there are wandering mobs of monsters, more likely the monsters are in specific areas.

Combat whilst fluid and again well shown is slow, almost turn based. You go, they go. You go, they go. This can get very repetitive, certainly at lower levels as dexterity and weapon type seem to have only a minimal effect on speed of strikes, again leading to what feels as a slow advancement rate. The only way to rapidly advance seems to be to get into a group and go kick those monsters you just cannot solo, this provides another oddity. There appears to be no split of experience in a group, the awards are the same if you solo or group, penalising those who prefer to solo. I presume that it is so to encourage RP via grouping, a valid point but one which may irritate a number of players. Combat AI also seems variable, with no indication of whether a target is aggressive to you, your character can suddenly find themselves being attacked by something which has charged a far distance away to do so. Whilst others barely react until you are in front of where they stand.

Advancement when achieved is simple, find a trainer when you reach level ten, meet the required prerequisites (Class, level and gender) and it is done. This opens more abilities to train and new skills to learn. When you are level twenty you are turfed out of the village where you were safe into the big wide Player Killing Universe. This is where the guild system starts to be come useful as a guild will try and remove someone who is proving a pain to it's members, or put pressure on that characters guild. Still for many Player Killing is a big negative factor.

Sound wise Shadowbane has some nice touches, spot sounds are appropriate and the voice, which states that you are low on mana, is more than useful. Background music works well and is not intrusive and adds to the grand scale of the feel of the game, elements sound like they would not be out of place in one of the recent Lord of the Rings films. I most like the music during character creation/selection. Other sound effects are again annoying, your character sighs when you do not do anything for a minute or so and every minute after that a group can become depressing after a short while. There are no background effects that I could hear, silence seems to reign, I would presume this reduces processor power but it leads to a sterile environment.

Shadowbane comes with a free months worth of play but you need to register with your card details in order to activate it, a sensible precaution but one which could lead to some frustration, as does the lack of any facility to take Switch or any other debit cards. Access and Visa only.

Over all Shadowbane has potential, despite being over a year old there are still rough edges that will grate on some players but others will ignore them. There appears to be a regular patching service, which can take some time to complete each patch. There are touches of greatness here (the soundtrack for one) but they might be buried just too deep to hold most as the game world just does not seem immersive enough or immediate enough to do so.

Chris Snook

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Review Summary:

Too slow to keep the average gamer enthralled with seemingly simplistic graphics and an awkward control system many will become frustrated by the nature of the world itself. The background music is worth releasing and there is room for potential to be realised. One for the avid MMPOG player or Online Roleplayer.

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