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Reviews Champions: Return To Arms Reviews for Playstation 2
User ReviewsChampions: Return to Arms is nowhere near as good as its predecessor, but it is still a passable game. After beating the original Champions game, I was eager to play more games of its ilk. Imagine my surprise to learn they had released a sequel to this wonderful game. I ran out to pick that bad boy up as soon as I learned this and this serves as a lesson to all those out there. There is such a thing as an impulse buy, don't fall for it boys and girls. Sometimes you get something that is so far from what you expected that it be, that you realize you wasted a bunch of money. This is a harsh revelation. Champions: RTA continues the storyline from the last game, letting you import any of your characters from Champions of Norrath. After stopping the bad guy from the last game, you must continue to fight to stop evil from engulfing the realms from a new threat. However, there is a nice twist to be had in this game: you can abandon your virtuous quest and join the side of evil instead. This adds a nice element of replay value to a game series already overflowing with it. In addition, there are a number of optional challenges you can play through, gathering the Bloodstones from these allows you to unlock a secret weapon. Add it up and it seems as if this game has everything you could want in a sequel. But this is not the case. Before getting to the problems with this game, lets touch on what it does right. There are two new classes joining the roster in this game: the Shaman, a spell caster who uses nature magics and a variety of weapons to defeat his foes, and the Berserker, a feral warrior who uses violent abilities to decimate his foes both close up and with thrown weapons. Each class has also been given a variety of class unique items that will grant them nice bonuses. Lastly, new abilities have been given to all of the classes as well as older abilities being tweaked to make them more useful. Overall, this makes some of the less useful abilities much more useable and greatly helps with balance between the classes. This helps classes, like the wizard and shadowknight become much more useful. However, there are a number of very serious problems that stop this game in its tracks. Firstly, and a minor complaint, is that each of the two new classes only come as males. Seeing as how all other classes allow male and female characters, this is something of an annoyance. But more importantly than that are the numerous glitches that mar this game. Anyone who plays this game, even for a short time, will notice a number of odd graphical glitches, such as the game scrolling poorly in the shops and inventory screens, but playing it a bit more and problems will start cropping up with the audio too. Sounds will sometimes cut out and then pop back in without much rhyme or reason. But these are incredibly small beans compared to the other major glitches. Firstly, the bloodstone stat boost items don't work at all. You can add them to your items, but the stamina boost they are supposed to give, and did give in the original, flat out don't work. As a matter of fact, none of the items that grant you stamina increases actually work. Id love to know how this was missed in the quality-testing phase. Secondly, many of the abilities have odd little quirks that seriously affect how useful they are. The Critical Hit ability automatically lets your entire party get the boost it provides, even if they are nowhere near it. There are a number of these to be found. Last and most horribly, there are a number of cases where the game data flat out gets corrupted at random. This can happen at any time, whether you are playing it single player or multi-player. It seems more prevalent with the online play though, which is quite harsh seeing as how online play is one of the biggest draws to this series. To see it marred by something that is so game breaking is a real shame. Barring the above glitches, there is very little to complain about or praise about the graphics and audio. It is very much the exact same as it was in the last game with very little change. The graphics look the same, the music sounds the same and with the exception of a few tweaks here and there that are barely noticeable, it very much feels like the same game. Honestly, only the graphical and audio glitches will keep you all that cognizant of it being a new game. To those keeping track, that isn't a good thing. I wish I had more nice things to say about this game, but overall I don't. I still like to play this game, but there is so much to complain about. From the absurd difficulty of many of the challenges in this game to the numerous glitches, its almost as if you have to force yourself to have fun at times with this game. To anyone who has played the original, it is worth playing through this, just to use your characters again and see the story through to its end. For everyone else, I suggest you get the first game and if that really appeals to you, then pick this up. Overall, it's more of an expansion pack than a new game and it feels somewhat broken. What a shame. While it plays the same as the last one the difficulty is erratic with some enemies being very easy and others killing you in one shot. This, and the glitches, hurt the game. This is more of the same from the last game. No real graphical improvements have been made in the game. Once again this is more of the same. Nothing much has been added to really make this game stand out from its predecessor. While there is a new good and evil divergence to encourage replay the erratic difficulty and frustrating side quests leave this inferior to its predeccesor. If you are looking for the finale to the Champions of Norrath story pick this up. As a stand alone it isn't that great. Reviewed by: misfit119 | Views: 34  Champions: Return To Arms Playstation 2 Items
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