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“It's notoriously difficult to review an MMORPG.” “Online Role Playing games are always changing.” “The comparison to a certain Blizzard game is unavoidable.” It's time to throw these cliches out the window and focus on Age of Conan. Funcom have spent five years adapting Robert E. Howard's novels to video game form. Not to be mistaken with the hack-and-slash God of War clone by the name of Conan, Funcom's RPG aims for a larger scope. Gone are the Orcs and Elves of  fantasy realms and in are big-breasted women, fierce gory combat and a Mature rating. This is Online Role Playing for the adult. Age of Conan is out on PC, with an Xbox 360 version arriving in due course. It sold a million units in a week, making it one of the most successful PC games of all time. We're judging Age of Conan; at this point in time, in its current state and making ourselves deliberately oblivious to the competition. Is Age of Conan worth its subscription fee or does the mighty man find himself falling on his sword?

Being a RPG, you fight monsters and gain experience points in the process. Once you have enough to level up; your stats increase, you receive new talents (from level 10 onwards) and learn fresh combat skills. There's a variety of monsters, humans and creatures to slay on the way to the level cap of 80. The world map is huge, the instances aplenty and the quests the usual 'go-here-kill-that' affair. The interface is clean, customizable and functional. Age of Conan has every modern comfort you’d expect. It’s a working MMORPG. The key question is what it does that we haven’t ever seen before.

Let’s begin with the most striking revelation. There’s no ‘old-school’ graphics or cartoon art style in Age of Conan’s case. We’re treated to a high fidelity visual package with large draw distances, plenty of post processing and considerable amounts of anti-aliasing. On our test rig we maxed out the settings and had a stable 40FPS throughout. DirectX10 mode is not available yet, but even without it’s by far one of the most stunning online RPG’s we’ve played. It’s set a new benchmark, showing the gaming populace that decent graphics can be used in a MMORPG, without lag. There’s the odd texture glitch, lag spike and on occasion rare crash, but they don’t discount what Funcom have achieved. The soundtrack is

Control boils down to the standard keyboard and mouse. You manage camera movement with the mouse, targeting and menu-navigation (which is easy as pie) with clicks and finally fighting with either. While you have the option of clicking the relevant keys on the corresponding hot bars, the easier method to dish out damage is with the keyboard number keys. This is down to the intricacy of the battle system.

Age of Conan attempts to mix things up. It’s ditched the static method. The days of standing in one spot with auto-attack on, sporadically making use of your skills has long gone. Age of Conan brings in dodging, combos and multi-angled attacks. You still select a target and engage as you would in any MMORPG. It differs in the options available. You’ve got a mixture of directional attacks which must be used to counter the enemy’s shield choice. If you focus too much on upper-left hits, your enemy will counter that, receiving less damage.

If that wasn’t enough, manually choosing your swings is complimented by combat combinations. If you’re a melee class (or ranged / magic, but that’s less involved), then you can pick from a variety of combos to inflict heavy amounts of damage. Finishing moves replenish your stamina, subsequently letting you kill in quick succession. It’s easy to get into a rhythm, chopping your way through hordes of monsters. Player animations are well done, with heavy swings mimicking their bone crunching strength and light jabs akin to boxing. The more complex the combo, the more difficult the button timings. It isn’t Virtual Fighter but it’ll definitely get you more involved than some of its cousins.

The loot system is standard; gradually upgrade as you fight tougher enemies. There are auction houses, NPC merchants, and special drops to help you equip your character to its full potential. Customization is better than most with easy to use sliders which allow fine-tuning of your avatar’s looks.

There are special story quests, but they’ll usually involve going from A to B and killing whatever is in your path. It isn’t brain science and neither is it really involving. The dialogue is voice acted, but it tends to be a bit melodramatic. It’s corny, but does the game no harm. It’s better than reading screens of text, but we eventually just skipped what was going on, focusing on what our quest journal told us.

PVP isn’t finished yet. It’s simple as. Funcom have brought the game out with its main drawing point unfinished. The pulling power of Age of Conan is its siege sized battles with the top guilds owning player created towns. At the moment, the options are pretty empty. End game usually boils down to grinding raids for gear. In the future there’s no doubt that it’ll be epic, but in its state now it’s missing its killer spark.

Age on Conan is on track to offer a welcome alternative to its competition. We recommend you hold off for a couple months. By then, the game will be balanced, content added and problems fixed. Even in its current state, the Age of Conan still offers an enjoyable grind. It doesn’t whisk you away to places unseen, but instead provides an engrossing MMO to gradually play through. Check it out, you’ll have a blast. Better than World of Warcraft? (Ed – I couldn’t resist) No, but it has the possibility to be on par with it very soon.

Score: 7/10

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