omgRPG reviews Champions Online - OMG RPG - You've won initiative, now roll for damage

While this certainly isn’t the first MMO for Cryptic Studios, it is the first title to break out of the “City of” genre that left to join forces with NCSoft some time ago. Champions Online is set in an already rich universe, that of the tabletop RPG of the same name. Even if you haven’t had the opportunity to experience the pen-and-paper game for yourself, stepping into the world of Champions Online definitely feels as if you are walking around in a world that already has a history, and it’s not always a happy one. The crowning jewel that is Millennium City looks shiny and new, and that’s because it is; its citizens raised the city on the bones of Detroit after it was completely leveled by the maniacal Dr. Destroyer. What can a superhero hope to accomplish in a world built on the remains of mass murder? Whatever they can.

Customize to Your Heart’s Content

Champions Online was built with one philosophy in mind: be who you want to be. They provide you with the building blocks, but have chosen not to superimpose a look or a class or even a role onto the player. Instead, you create the hero that you have always wanted to be, you build your hero from the ground up. To date this is one of the most ingenious character creation systems in online gaming, and it makes sense: these are the guys that gave us the character generator in City of Heroes – a system so robust many people didn’t even get past the character select screen. Champions Online takes the character customization a couple steps further. Not only can you build a costume for your hero from the hundreds of options available to you, you can also customize their power sets to create a completely unique character. In playing this game I have yet to see two characters that were alike, even remotely so. With Champions Online, you are only limited by your own imagination. It might sound like a catch phrase, but it’s really true.

Champions Online also boasts an interesting costume system, where players can choose which items they’ve equipped will be visible to others in the game. If you pick up a medieval broadsword, for instance, but your hero is a katana-wielding cyber ninja, you can use the item while not showing it in your costume. This might seem a small thing, but the desire to collect equipment is a fundamental driving force for all full-fledged MMOs, and it’s great to see that Champions Online satisfies that need.

Rich, Story-Based Missions in a World worth Exploring

I consider Champions Online to be set in an alternate universe, one where heroes live among us, and both magic and mystery are everyday occurrences. The locations in the game include Canada and The Moon, things we know from our own world, but they are changed, fictionalized, brought to life just as if they were written in a comic book. So much about this game reminds one of comics – from the art style to the travel powers, to even the concept of super teams – and even those not familiar with MMOs will be able to instantly identify with this game because of that. Because the Champions universe is built around the idea of comic book heroes, and provides players with a massive world in which to make their name and fight evil. When playing the game I never ran out of interesting sub-plots, and I found myself finishing missions simply because I wanted to know what happened next. If I had to describe the writing in this game in one phrase, I would call it a page-turner.

But really it’s the sense of humor in Champions Online that instantly endeared it to me. Any game that can make fun of itself, that can make pop culture references while simultaneously giving me a great storyline to follow always wins in my book. I love it when a game can make me smile, and more than one quest line in this game gave me the giggles.

Class Balancing be Damned

I wish I could say Champions Online was a flawless MMO, but I can’t. Its greatest asset, its watchword, also turned out to be its greatest flaw. In creating a game that was completely customizable, Cryptic opted for a classless character system, which ends up leaving players used to traditional roles out in the cold. There is no straight up healer in this game; instead healing is based on your damage. Everyone gets to bring the pain, allowing players to all feel like the hero in the story. When was the last time you saw an X-Man that sat back and rejuvenated Storm and Cyclops? It’s a great concept, but in practice it gives the experienced MMO player substantial pause.

The trouble is your self-heal is based on your damage, and not every power set does the same amount of damage. I started playing Champions Online with my favorite hero, a little cat girl who rips things to shreds with her claws. Unfortunately, I found that the claws power set I had chosen did squat for damage. Consequently, I died during missions other players were able to take down easily on their own. Perhaps I was playing the character incorrectly. After all, the missions can’t be skewed for certain power sets, that would be imbalanced. To test the theory, I built myself a ranged magic user, and easily blasted my way through the same quest lines without dying a single time. Ultimately, I have to say that I was disappointed that an up-close Wolverine-esque hero couldn’t do what my little weakling mage could. That’s just plain not fun.

The other thing that’s less than ideal is the button-mashing combat. I found little in the way of combo skills in either character. At first I tried to set up my skills so that I might maximize any sort of debuffs they added to my foes, but in the end I found the most effective way to deal with enemies was to simply faceroll the keys until my energy ran out and then to pummel them with my melee attack until I could use my highest power ability. Rinse and repeat. It all makes for a less than satisfying combat experience in a game where combat is king.

The Bottom Line

In the end, I enjoyed my time in Champions Online once I created the right kind of high damage character and learned not to pay attention to the buttons I was mashing. The world is fascinating, and it’s large enough to lose yourself in, which is really the point of an MMO. I was able to beat evil into submission with some cool moves and look awesome while doing it, and ultimately that’s all we ever want from a super hero game. Will I continue to play the game? Definitely. It’s a solid game, and an enjoyable one. Cryptic Studios has done what they do best, give us a chance to be the hero in our own story – and that is definitely fun.