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The sequel to the most popular MMORPG in the world

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 16
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bet not many of you guys have heard of a game called Lineage and would probably wondering if it's really the most popular MMORPG in the world.

The answer is yes. A definate yes...

About 5 years ago, Lineage was first released in Korea and it was a major hit. Back then there were many bugs to be fixed and limited places to go, but people liked it anyway because it was just so 'addictive'

I myself played Lineage for many years now and it doesn't get boring no matter how much you play. While there have been numerous numbers of new MMORPGs released after Lineage, with better graphic and sound effect and all that, Lineage is still keeping its place at the top of the Asia MMORPG market.

If you don't realize how popular this Lineage is by now, read the next sentence. It has millions of regular players and no other MMORPGs in the universe have such number of players. Period

As a beta tester of Lineage 2, I got to play it before the rest of the world, and I've certainly enjoyed it.

Graphics are improved, and now you get to customize the look of your character, which wasn't available in the original.

I'd say, when this comes out you should buy it. I am not saying this just to make you waste your money. I am saying it because it is worth it.

Bad Reviews, Negative Feedback...Then Why Do I Love It So???

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: August 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Like anyone, I am very leary to join up with any MMORPG. It's just really tough to justify forking over money every month to play a video game, unless it's really amazing. Unfortunately, my experiences with MMORPG's have been less then stellar. My last disastrous experience was with Horizons. That game was the worst managed, least fun game I have ever played. So, needless to say I was a little jaded when it came to MMORPG's. I've played World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Everquest, etc., etc., so I am very familiar with the world of MMORPG's. Having dilligently read all the gaming reviews, scoured the forums, and porused through the newsgroups, I came to the conclusion that Lineage II was not a very good game. So, I didn't buy it.

2 months later, I'm forced to buy this game(I made my buddy buy a game earlier in the year, so I was on the hook). I thought I would play for a couple of token "I really tried to enjoy it" weeks and then call it quits. I was wrong.

Introduction/Graphics

The first thing you will notice is the AMAZING graphics and scenery. LII is still using the Unreal 2 engine, and they really have it wired. It's hard to believe that this is the same old tired graphics engine that has been around for such a long time. It really shows off when it is night time, and there is a full moon out. NCSoft will display a wild and imaginative skyline that literally takes your breath away.

In the same token, they do have one major flaw in the graphics dept. and it is terribly silly. The Time of Day Transitions from Night to Day and vice versa are awful. I don't know if they do that on purpose for some reason, but it is such a tragedy to ruin what is otherwise a wonderfully rich and beautiful world. You'll be standing somewhere in the middle of a hot and sunny day, then BAM, it's midnight. Literally no transition from dusk to dawn, and so on and so forth.

Besides the knock on daily transitions, their fighting graphics are spectacular. Each spell, sword swing, staff smash, has amazing effects to go with it. You can tell that NCSOFT really spent a lot of time emphasizing good combat graphics, and it shows.

Audio

The sound is great. It has a wide range enviromental noises that change smoothly from each appropriate area. Having great enviromental affects can make a game so much more fun and have a level of realism that just can't be achieved without it. It really immerses a player into that world, and I love it. The character affects associated it with all character actions is good as well. I won't say great, because I can't think of one item that really caught my attention enough to remember.

Gameplay

This is tough to judge with an MMORPG. The nature of the beast requires a certain amount of level grinding that just can't be avoided, which just becomes a second job after a while. That aside I will point out some positives and negatives I found. The fighting in the game is fun, and the character menu is your standard RPG layout. Complete with inventory, hotbars, XP and Magic meters, so on and so on. The macro system is average, and purposely so. If anyone has ever played an MMORPG that can be exploited using the macros, it can really suck.

The questing is a little weak, but it does improve with every new edition that is published with LII, currently on Chronicle 3 for this review.

This game allows for full PvP (Player vs. Player) action, which means that other real world players can go and kill you if they want for no reason at all. This adds a dicey element to the game that you just can't get with a non-PvP game. Have you ever caught yourself playing a online game and thought, "Man, I would love to kill that annoying turd that keeps mouthing off, or keeps getting my squad killed." Now you can. It feels really good to crush someone who has been talking trash for 2 days, way too good. On the flip side, it's really devastating when you get owned by some other character when you know it's probably some 10 year old kid who just schoooled you. This aspect of the game really narrows the focus of who would enjoy this game, as it really appeals to the hard core gamer. I know some people who will not play PvP simply because it is too stressful. I love it. The system is designed with a karma system so it's not a total free for all, as their are penalties for just killing everyone randomly all the time, but you can agree to fight with another person with no penalites at all; or just make a character that is pure killer, that says damn the consequences, and kills all that stand in his path. This part of the game in my opinion is one of it's best highlights.

On the flip side, there is a clan and alliance system that is pretty good. The clan system is pretty robust, and does have some major benefits to be in a high level, powerful clan. Clans have alliances with other clans, which basically makes them even stronger. These alliances can setup castle sieges, where they siege the local castle, to vie for control of that area. If you belong to a clan that holds a castle, you make buko bucks and gain tons of privelages that non-castle holders have.

The other advantage that clans have is they are great to setting up parties to go out and level with. This is the fastest way to level your character, get gear, and overall have a great time. Lineage II does a great job with their clan/alliance system, which only improves with every new Chronicle.

Negatives:

There are some major negatives that are felt pretty deeply in this game. The first issue is the money making problem. It is really difficult to make money in this game, and money is the key to this whole game. Want to level faster? Buy some goodies that will help you kill things quicker. Want to make your guy stronger and kill things quicker? Buy the nicer gear. This formula is not unique, but is absurdly lopsided in this game. You would have to spend 24 hours straight 7 days a week for 1 month to get enough money to buy 1 piece of top of the line gear for a level 20 and lower characert; and guess what? by the time that happens you would be level 40. It is very disproportionate, and very frustrating.

Which dove tails into the other major problem of this game. Ebayers/Money Buying. Since it is so difficult to make money in the game, it has sprung up a multi-million dollar industry where companys' sole reason in life is to sell you the video game money(adena) in exchange for your cold hard cash. Yes, that's right, you can spend your hard earned dough to buy your video game character that armor you've been dying to get,or that sweet sword you know would make your life so much easier. Don't let anyone fool you either, as it happens all the time all day every day, and most people won't admit it.

Ebayers are people who just skip the whole game leveling process and buy a pre-played account, so they can have that uber character with none of the effort. This happens a lot as well, and is very, very annoying(Moms and Dads, please stop giving your kids money to spend off your Credit Card!!!)

Finally one of the worst thing that goes on is botting. This is where people use a 3rd party program to "play" the game for them. It essentially fully automates their characters to kill non-stop without resting or dying. This is very prevalent in Lineage II, despite some lackluster efforts by NCSoft. Their is a petition process you can go through to turn in these botters, but NCSoft's response is mediocore at best, with a very small percentage of botters ever getting banned.

These are all major issues, but they are not unique in LineageII, as they are prevalent in all MMORPG's, so take it for what it's worth. Although, the botting in Lineage II is pretty bad, much worse then some other games then I have played.

Overall

I have been playing for 9 months straight,almost every day and I love this game. It is designed for the hard core gamer in mind, and is not for the weak at heart. The PvP makes it very interesting and keeps you on your toes. While the clan system adds depth and enjoyment on different levels. I recommend this game to anyone who has come from playing any other PvP based MMORPG, or who is interested in a hard core fantasy world. I dont' recommend this game to anyone who is impatient or does not have lots of time to spare, as this game will need a tremendous amount of both. This is a very serious game which requires huge amount of dedication. These games are designed for people who are supposed to be playing it every day for hours at a time, for years at a time. It is not designed to be beaten within a month, or to MAX your character out in 2 months. I have been playing video games before their was any graphics, purely word based games (Zork, Hitchikers Guide..), and I can see why a lot of people do not like this game. It is truly designed for the VERY hard core gamer. If you are an old school gamer with years and years of gaming under your belt, and love the RPG genre, you will love this game. Don't get me wrong, as I really HATE the negatives (botters, ebayers), and the lack of a decent questing system, but unlike Horizons, the game gets much better with each Chronicle; and since we are only in Chronicle 3 out of 12 we can expect some great things to come.....

Lineage 2 - the best MMO game ever for heavy gamers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: September 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I have been playing the game for about 1.5 years, since it went retail. With some breaks due to travel and job and so on, I turn on the game pretty much every day, which makes it roughly 30-35 hours of gaming per week on average. The game became my only hobby and after taking care of my family I spend the evening hours in front of the computer playing Lineage 2.

I read the other reviews, which mostly agree on one thing: this game requires insane amount of time if you would like to be a high level player. Time is everything in this game. If you have time its easy to make money and consequently gear up (contrary to what the others said), to gain levels and also to develop your skills in a Player vs Player (PvP) situations.

You start with your character being at level 1 equipped with very basic skills. To achieve level 5 when you get your first upgrade of skills is a matter of minutes. For every monster you kill you gain a certain amount of experience and for every level you need a certain amount of experience to advance to the next level. With advancement you gain more hitpoints, mana and develop some attributes of your character. The total amount of experience needed to upgrade your level grows exponentially. While you can make from level 1 to level 40 in 1 week of heavy playing (given you can borrow some gear), it will take you a week to progress from 40-48 with heavy playing again. The level cap is currently set to 75, it takes approximately 65-70 hours of gaming to make that level 75 from 74. At every death you loose experience (which can extend the time to level) and you have a chance of dropping gear as well.

The PvP system is unique - you can engage in a fight with others at any time and everywhere except for the peace zones (towns). If the other player does not respond to you when you initiate the fight you can still kill him, but you get a penalty for that (karma) - its called Player Kill (PK). When your character has any karma other players are free to attack you without getting a penalty (karma) themselves. When you die you also loose certain amount of karma, which you can loose as well by killing monster. By having a high PK count you have a higher chance of loosing gear when dying with having karma on your character.

I find the PvP aspect of the game very exciting. You need to have your nerves for this, as PvP can happen any time and if you get attacked by more than 1 person or a powerful mage you die really fast. Also the grinding (gaining experience) is fun, as you can do it with your friends in groups, use a voice chat engine and the time just flies away.

There are a ton of other things to do, there is great social interraction in game, you can trade, make items, enchant items to make them stronger, raise pets, do quests, kill raid bosses, siege castles. Overall the game is balanced in a way that there is no best class and there is a lot to do. The game is very much geared towards co-operation between people and various classes to achieve any objectives.

The Lineage 2 world is huge and is getting expanded by every new Chronicle (free upgrade of the game). Every new Chronicle brings new content, improvements and further rebalancing of the game.

If you are a hardcore gamer you will love it. If you dont have the time dont even start it. I love it.

GREAT GAME!!! VERY FUN!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: March 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

(...) I have spent much time on the NCsoft website researching this game. The graphics are SWEET!! Not able to really customize your character?? NOT TRUE!! There are many hair styles you can choose from. Your character can be a Human, Orc, Elf, Dark Elf, or Dwarf. You can choose your race and then if you want to be a fighter or mystic. At level 20 you can choose to be a more specialized class such as an Elven Fighter can choose to be a knight or a rogue. The special classes keep splitting every group of levels you get to. Each race/class choice has its own playing styles used in battle. The only bad things about the game is the Death and Weapons. When you die you have a chance to drop items. I cant imagine how bad it would be to die and drop a highclass weapon. Also when you die you lose experiance but that comes with every game. There are not really a wide selection of your weapons. There are about 15 diff items in every category.(Armor, Shields, Swords, etc.) Even with those mild set backs the game will be great and i would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Diablo 2, Morrowind(but with more action), or Everquest. (...)

FOOLS!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 11
Date: December 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Little, small people... I have finally come to play this game. I have over 15 MMORPGS at my house. And may I say, I probubly own everyone here at all of them :) But this is off the topic. This is an awsome game! most defenitly better then WoW. Just to let the people who rated this game here badly; this games is the second most popular MMORPG in the world. Guess the first... Thats right Lineage 1 was number one. Here I go with the up points and down points of this game. First of all the seans are beautiful! never ending, perfectly shaped outins in this game give it a great look. But most gamers look for a bloody game with a ton of violence! Id also like to say this has most of it. The violence/fighting seans are great but this game does lack the blood meter, if that is good or bad is your own oppinion. Gameplay is fun with alot of people from the community who are willing to give you help on the game. Even needing to walk from place to place maybe taking up to 30 min. is fun! Passing by users who always say "hellow" and looking at the graphics and wildlife. Also a destinct feature that makes this bost a star is its real life prospective on some/most subjects. If your not understanding that read this... You can buy a pet in the game. Dogs, hog-like creatures, and even dragons, that can help you fight in wars. The real life thing is that the beast costs alot and needs to be treated correctly, like owning a pet in real life. You must pay alot of money to feed your pet and show alot of responsibility. This means to not fly or attack with it to much, which could cause it its death. Much more great game moments i would love to share with you but I think you get the point. I only found one thing wrong with this game. That is its character making. I dislike this because the character look is limeted, meaning you will see alot of people looking the same throughout this game. Also, chosing a name is hard because you can only use letters. I dont like this because my gaming names are like, thejoeman191, thejoeman911, dajoeman33, so on. These are some ups and downs to this game. I hope you found this helpful!

-TJM

The Ultimate MMORPG!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: December 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Hello! This game really impressed me! First off, NCsoft was very generous in whiich they give you every expansion away for free! Lineage 2, unlike Everquest, has assigned quests. Most of them are just going around killing things, but it never gets old! It has great graphics, cool worlds, and a great character selection. Ok, it takes forever to get "leveled up" but it's worth it! A lot of people never wait to get into the cool stuff. There are castle sieges, and there are huge bosses! However, the down side is that there are a lot of "player killers" that hunt down newbies. Usually PKers get killed before they cause any harm, but it's always good to be careful! In overall, this game is pretty satisfying. I'd give it 5 stars. No true gamer can go without playing this!

P.S. Most of these people writing the reviews are just noobs. They aren't far enough in the game to know what the good stuff is!

Great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Great game. Many great things in it. I like the more realistic graphics than in WoW. politics are intense in this game, so it takes some guts to play with it, and join the many clans and alliances in the game. The game has it's own story line and mythology, that goes well with the game. Lvling is slow after 35, but it's awesome to participate in the castle sieges and see the many hundreds of people fighting it out on the battle fields for a huge castle and control of the local economy. Yeah sure they have farmers, but what mmorpg doesn't? it's really a lot of fun, and the PK (player kill) is quite nasty because it becomes a matter of political involvement but it's extremely realistic, much more so than WoW ever could be. WoW is too much of a fantasy that goes great with the Warcraft series that i love, but Lineage2 sets it's own standard.

Addictive.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: April 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have never been much of a gamer. Nothing has seemed to get me interested into a game before.

Until one day my friend begged me to download the beta and play it for a little while. After a while, I finally gave in and downloaded it. I never knew that I would fall in love with it.

I played it, like my friend told me to, and I liked it, then I loved it, and then I just became addicted.

The graphics are great, the quality is great, and the characters are drawn out very nicely.

If you love Fantasy and Adventure, then this game is perfect for you. I deffinately reccomend it!

best game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 12
Date: September 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok first of all if you lag get over it, get cable or something ive been playing forever and I have no lag at all. You suck? well then i suggest you play more. It takes time. Dont cry about pkers its part of the game , just kill them if there higher get help from others as GM's do not help with crap like that there is no point if you have a problem with other people resolve it yourself. Ill admit the lvls 1-36 are boring but EQ1 sucks and so is 2 (going to be) WoW sucks i did the beta , this is deffinentaly the best game . thanks.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: October 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game lets you do everything from killing skeletons to raiding castles to creating high-level clans to be feared by all. An almost infinite number of items to find and sell and create (for dwarves), with even more to come with chronicle 2 coming out. I've been playing now for a while, and my friends know not to mess with me when i'm in L2 mode. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

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