The good, the bad, and the ugly on City of Heroes for the PC.
The good:
1) Visuals: The graphics in CoH are far from high-end as they are very cartoonish. However that's the point, it's a game about comic book type heroes. The art is very well done and the graphics in this game are dead on. You won't need the latest and greatest in gaming gear to play CoH but you will get a great visual experience.
2) Character creation: This is the bread and butter of CoH and it's really the biggest selling point of the game. You get a WIDE variety of character models to tweak to make your own. This process can take you HOURS and you will love every single moment of it. From making a cool bad ass new guy like my Captain Anarchy to a goofy Mr. Banana haha you will have endless fun making characters. They give you plenty of options from outfits, colors, hair styles, you name it.
3) Class balancing: The class balancing is well done and there are needs for all character types. Each class has the ability to specialize in certain abilities which makes CoH's character diversity fairly strong. You have all of your usual suspects here from the tank types, pure dps class builds, to healers and crowd control.
4) Game size: The game's world is very nicely done. I enjoy the scenery and the wide variety of areas to explore.
5) Superpowers: Of course this rules! It's one of the main reasons why anyone plays this game! You get superpowers and they give you plenty! You get a system of gaining powers that I consider to be fair in it's difficulty and they make it so the more smash mouth type characters won't be having the same abilities as someone who is designed more as a ranged character. They did a very good job with the powers.
The bad:
1) Combat: The combat in CoH is repetitive and easy. The repetitive nature of this game is due to the lack of variety in the combat encounters as well as a piss poor selection of villains to fight. You often just spend hours fighting thugs and occasionally if you're lucky you may see a thug that has a name, ooooo. He hit's +1 harder. At first you are happy with the combat due to the sometimes massive amounts of enemies that can be involved. Then, after your 100 encounter like that in two days you begin to get very bored and just spend the next week making new characters to be bored with.
2) Sound: With the low demand on your system from the graphics CoH could have introduced a higher-end sound experience but instead went with what seems to be the basics. I'm not exactly sure what they could have done that would make me ooo and ahhh but that's what they get paid for not me.
3) Guns: This is by far the biggest reason why I could no longer stomach CoH and for that matter the clone that soon followed called Matrix Online. If you use a gun or fight a character that uses guns you will soon realize the horrible mistake CoH developers made. You can be a yard away from someone and unload a full clip only to miss, put your gun back in it's holster, and then dodge the enemies shotgun blast from that same distance. It is the most ridiculous visual I have ever seen in an MMORPG and one that seriously helped drive me away.
4) Grind: The xp grind is always a negative in an MMORPG. I will admit that it's not as bad in CoH but since they don't offer you a very diverse variety of quests types, combat encounters, and so on the grind takes its toll fast.
The ugly:
1) Just your average MMORPG bugs, broken quests, that sort of thing. I was in beta for CoH and didn't find any kind of show stoppers as we like to call them in the QA world.
Overall:
CoH is more like crack than Everquest in the sense that you will never obtain the high you get from day one. Making your first character and showing him/her off while seeing what they can do is a blast. Then you play the game and you start to realize the game isn't all that great. So, you eventually try some more crack by making a new character but it's never as good. Eventually you wish you never did it and need help to break the habit i.e. Guildwars is a great way to break the habit. I recommend it, or WoW.