Age of Conan: Rise Of the Godslayer – PC REVIEW

Has Conan deserved it’s place as an ‘God Slaying ‘ MMO or has it ‘aged’ to much… Find out in this review.

If you don’t know about Age of Conan then its pretty simple to understand that Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer is the expansion pack for the original “Age of Conan”.
We have been able to have early access when processing and writing this review so at the time we were playing this the full servers are not up until release day. We have been able to have access to beta/private servers to get this review done.

Story
This time round the story takes place of you the “slave” who has become an liberator. You probably get the gist of the the story that revolves around killing the Godslayer. You start of in the Northern Grasslands where you will probably come across high ranked players if this is your first time playing. This is the first area you encounter before entering the realm of the expansion content.  The story is what you would expect from an MMO its quest to quest based. You head off out of the first area after entering to Khitai where you will come across soldiers training. The usual every day stuff in the world of Conan.  This is where you will be able to be granted your first access to the quests and start of exploring the expansion.

Gameplay
There has been many new changes to how players will be able to interact with the feats menu. There is now an added button known as “general” which is basically a used for Alternate Advancement . As you would of guess it that its basically just an extra window where you can go through the new character trees. In a sense its much more of user friendly tab… Guess that’s good.

When coming to the point of choosing my class i went with the class of a Demonologist which is the mage class. Each class has about 52 different perks to take advantage of which also come in a ranking system. Every perk can be trained in 2 different ways giving you a different way to complete each perks experience bar.  The Perks are located in there own Perk bar which is easy to understand. The Perk bar has a panel of “Combos, Spells and Special Abilities” which are also placed in sub categories of General, Archetype and Class.

The Experience has changed into a function known as the AA points which once have been earned you can spend them on perks and upgrade them over time with the use of using Alternative Advancement abilities. So far I’m still on the basic perks but Hey!
There are five play field regions and within each region are ten primary factions and two hidden ones. The factions as you would of guessed it don’t get on so you will have to choose wisely on which faction you want to join. You can either work with a faction or betray your faction in basically an ever changing political climate. Just like England’s election votes! Each faction provides quests for you and also new elements to the way you play the game.  Each faction will reward you with bonuses such as armour and weapons depending on how you react with the faction.

You can also change the way you attack your enemy by being in mounted combat. You can go into mounted combat via using a Horse, Mammoth or Rhino.  Mounts are sold by various NPC vendors so if your into battling whilst mounting you can.

If the new experience or perks haven’t made you smile then think about that there is now two new mounts! My favourite of the two is the Tiger but for some who wish to have the Wolf as there mount can do so. To achieve and have the Wolf mount you will have to maintain completing numerous quests until you “prove” to your faction that you can command the Wolf. The Wolf has two special abilities which are able to pick up scents of nearby enemies and be able to dig for buried treasures in the landscapes of Khitai.

The Tiger which is my favourite follows a similar quest based pattern to the Wolf. Players who want to have the tiger as their mount you will have to be eligible of the Tamrins Tigers. You will also have to complete numerous  quests to show your companion ship. Once you complete you will be given the ability to have the tiger as your mount. The tiger is different to the Wolf as special abilities go. The tiger can be used as a damage pet or a full mount.  If you choose to mount the tiger you will be able to use the tigers stealth around playfields without being seen. The tiger is also fastest mount in the game.

Design
Its hard to say AOC:ROTGS doesn’t look beautiful. The use of the new DirectX 10 technology really does stand out making the visuals look superb. The details are much more well noticeable as you travel to many different locations on your quests. You’ll notice this  if you have a PC that can handle Conan to its full potential. You will easily pick up on the underwater effects, textures on the mountains, the sunlight and even scratches and dents on the armour. FunCom have really put their time and effort making sure this expansion show of all the details the previous slightly missed, making it a much more better visual experience.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is obviously key to the game. Players will be able to play together online by the use of different realm servers.  Players can search the list of players who match your criteria of who you want to find.  You can create player groups where you can get a group of players together to share rewards, Instances and well just generally keeping in track and having communication which is key to AOC:ROTGS. There’s also player guilds and guilds which both differ. Player guilds have no limit of players who are allowed to join the player guild. The other Guilds are used for Communication, Organization, extra privileges and Settlements.

The online feels much more improved since the previous but due to the time we were playing the Multiplayer element of the game on private servers with little amount of other players we didn’t get to experience some of the quests to their full potential. Talking about quests there is an area which is specifically made for groups of players. The dungeon is situated in Kang Pagoda. I found this quest to be extremely frustratingly difficult since I was alone but didn’t annoy me to much to the point I didn’t want to play it but made it clear to me that you need a group of you to do this or you will be made a mockery of by Pagoda.

Overall this expansion scores… 5/5 A Push-Start Highly Recommended Game!

The expansion has everything you will want from Age Of Conan, Even though there are no more levels after 80 there are hundreds of quests that need exploring which will come to higher levels with benefits of new amour and perks. The expansion definitely gets a score that it deserves and FunCom and DeepSilver have given players an expansion pack that players will want to play and encounter the new quests. Heck new mounts drove me crazy and I’m currently looking forward to exploring the mountains of Khitai and each some lunch on a rock. Maybe not eat my lunch on a rock but you get the idea that this expansion is worth picking up. The expansion (if brought from retail) comes included with the original Age of Conan and the expansion along with 30 days of game time and a pet Puma!. You can pre-order your copy via Amazon for £22.45