An all round good game
You begin the campaign on a small island at the bottom left of the map. You are a student in the Shing Jea Monastery and you are a budding student.
If you played Prophecies prepare for a few changes, for instance levelling is a lot quicker, you will probably be level 20 by the time you leave the island to go to the main land or almost there. (About 12 hours of playing)
The environments are stunning for the best part, the slum area around the imperial city is a bit of an eyesore to be honest, but thankfully you don’t spend to long there.
Graphically the game is impressive, effects from skills look as good as ever, the characters look the part, and everything visually looks brilliant.
The sound is basically the same as Prophecies, not many changes, probably only thing I noticed that was odd…set in Asia…no Asian accents.
Factions brought a few new things to the table; it brings 12vs12 pvp (Alliance Battles), two new classes, and a truckload of new skills, weapons, armour and missions.
Basically in Factions about 2/3rds of the way through you will be asked to pick a faction either Kurzicks or Luxons. Depending on which you pick depends on what main missions you will get for the last part of the game. The Kurzicks are gothic looking guys who live in the forests on the south side of the main island and the Luxons live on the west side of the main island on the Jade Sea. They are not on friendly terms to say the least. This is where 12vs12 comes into play. You can access through your guildhall a special PvP area where you will get to join up with players from your faction and fight against the other. Alliance Battles consist of capture points, the more capture points you have the more points your team gets for killing people, the first to 500 points wins…simple.
The two new classes in factions are the Assassin and the Ritulist.
Assassin: -
The assassin is a quick and deadly character who can deal out damage quick and effectively, they are extremely deadly against any class if used properly. They use small daggers to fight with. Assassins skills work differently from any other, you have to chain attacks together. A lead attack followed by an off-hand and finally a duel attack. It means you have to put thought into your build and not just bash off skills. They also have the ability to port from place to place using certain skills, which means being able to jump in kill the enemy monk then jump back out.
Ritulist: -
The Ritulist has the ability to summon spirits onto the battle field to aid you and your team mates in battle, either by shielding them from damage or blinding the enemy it is attacking, they can also power your team mates up so there weapons deal more damage or there weapon actually heal them. They can dish out a fair amount of damage with a few skills, and are able to assist monks in healing.
Weapons/Armour: - A bunch of new skins for weapons have been added into the game, along with new boss items that are unique. All classes have new armour available to them as well now, and depending on which faction you pick depends on what your armour will look. For instance the Kurzick armour looks quite knight like where as the Luxon warrior armour actually looks quite alien to an extent.
Skills: - If you played Prophecies you may notice that a few skills you actually have are in factions just under different names, I guess this happened just to balance the game out so that people with only factions weren’t underpowered. But there are a lot of new skills that will keep you content in finding new builds for your characters. There are also new elite skills for every class.
Overall: -
Factions campaign shouldn’t take you too long to complete but with the amount of areas to explore and new class to master it will keep you content for a long time to come. Factions may take you a while to get used to if you have played Prophecies due to how fast the campaign and levelling system is but after you have completed it once you will be able to fully settle into the amazing campaign.