Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Hard to beat: Can Vanguard top WoW?

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The term 'MMORPG' can strike fear into even the most hardcore of gamers. A reason many people can sometimes shy away from games of this genre is because of the literally never-ending man hours it can take to progress to a good level, gain 'l33t' gear and be able to face off against bosses in higher dungeons. Another hard task with games of this type is in trying to find a good bunch of people to meet up with in the game, however once this has been achieved it can add greatly to the game experience.

In Vanguard: Saga of Heroes this is no exception, in fact it is very much just what you might expect from any MMO. You start the game after having selected from a choice of 19 races and 15 classes. Most of the choices on offer will be very familiar to any player of other MMO titles, in fact the main difference with Vanguard's character creation is the changes you can make to the physical appearance of you character - it feels very similar to the options that were given to you in Oblivion and thus can really make you feel like you have created something unique. Once you have started up the game for the first time with your new Avatar, you are presented with a series of very useful pop-up boxes that help you to get into your first quest, of course these are nothing very challenging and serve as an intro to what is to come in the massive world of Telon.

It's easy to get on in the game on a solo basis (although I found myself dying quite a lot on early quests due to fast re-spawns) but as soon as you hit around the level 7 mark the game really does become about grouping, and solo play gets thrown out the window. For some people the idea of grouping is what an MMO is all about, but for some (including myself) questing solo can be a bit of a relief versus grouping with people all after their own agendas. Of course you can still go it alone but the difficulty is much greater and quite a lot of the quests really feel like they have been made for plurality.

One of the noticeable things about the game is a lack of instances, this can sometimes require your group to camp out for a long time waiting for that illusive boss to re-spawn, not entirely enjoyable to say the least. Having spent a couple of hours fighting through waves of enemies you arrive at the section where the boss resides, only to find that it hasn't re-spawned yet due to the efforts of the last group can be quite disheartening, especially as it took so long to get there in the first place. Even if you have found a great bunch of players to fight alongside a simple mistake can result in disaster which results in quite a significant penalty. In a lot of other games in this genre the act of dying isn't really that big a deal, but in Vanguard it can be more than just an annoyance. In the normal servers this can mean loosing a chunk of experience, and due to the time it takes to gain said xp at higher levels the death penalty is pretty harsh. In order to regain some xp you have to find your corpse, but sometimes dying in the middle of enemies can make this task impossible and thus you lose those precious gains for good. At higher levels you have the ability to summon your tombstone at an altar, but you still lose some of the precious experience. On PvP servers you don't have to regain your corpse after an encounter with another player, however the killer can loot your corpse for 15% of your valuable cash, but you don't have to go to find your corpse as you won't lose xp if you die by the hand of another human player.

Something that struck me with Vanguard is the way that battles themselves can progress. Gone is the need to stand still with nearly every spell you cast as you can run around the enemy, draw them away from the group or just move to get a better vantage point if a big tree is in the way. The game also offers a way of stringing together combos of sorts; this is helped along by the nifty reaction system making the combat feel much more dynamic. Such examples of this are moves or spells that you can cast after meeting certain criteria, or chaining-off a successful parry against your enemy. The graphical effects of spells and attacks are very nice to watch too, but then this game does require quite a hefty set-up in order to get the most out of the visuals on offer.

Crafting in Vanguard is something to be marvelled at, partly because the developers have really tried to make it interesting and different from the crafting that other games offers. Instead of simply making sure you have all the correct items and clicking a button to craft the item, Vanguard actually makes you work hard for what you are trying to create. To craft you will need to have various tools and items at your disposal and you will also need to find the correct bench to work at. When you start your item you have a number of points that you can use in the process. These points go down faster if you use a good technique but can bring about inconsistencies that you must try to 'iron out' if you are going to create something of quality. It's not a one stage process either, it occurs in a few stages that help toward the final rating of your crafted item making the outcome that much more rewarding, especially if you end up with a 'A' grade product at the end of the session.

One of the features of the game that I found confusing at first but very fun later on was the parleying card game that you can encounter across the world. You have to choose from a series of cards to use against another NPC that you are conversing with in order to either unlock more of the conversation or gain respect (thus giving you buffs and other bonuses). You choose five of these cards for the game and have to try to stay on your side of the counter to win the parley. Once you have the hang of the game it can be a very enjoyable and welcome change to simply reading lots of text.

In effect Vanguard has strived to change some of the more common aspects off MMO games, and to a certain extent it has succeeded. There is a high learning curve that can put a lot of players off the game and it really does demand a lot out of your system. If you are running anything below a GeForce 7 Series graphics card then you won't be able to activate some of the more beautifying effects of the game, in fact the manual adds that "the intended experience can be more fully realised on NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series graphics hardware." If you have a system with such a card and a good amount of RAM then you will be in for a treat, lower end systems may encounter glitches in the graphics and stability issues, but judging by the amount of patches I have endured the downloading of it's evident that these issues are being worked on all the time.

Overall, I have enjoyed the time I have spent so far in the world of Telon and intend to see how Vanguard progresses. Even though the game has its annoyances (like the steep death penalty you have to endure) it's a very accomplished title with a lot of rewards for a dedicated player. Yes, it takes time to get to a good level and to find a good group of players to meet up with, but with the prospect of flying mounts and houses later on in the game as well as content updates in the future ensures there are many reasons to own this game. It's hard however to recommend it to casual players as they will be put off by it's difficulty early on, however if you were a fan of Everquest and find World of Warcraft to be on the easy side then Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is certainly a game you should consider trying.

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By Thomas Ryan