
1 Reviews

Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne

Review: Drawing the line

Wandering in the lands of massively-multiplayer online worlds as often as I have, I always knew this day would come eventually. Nevertheless, Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne takes the prize for making me actually do it. Today, in the course of playing, I actually sat down and worked out exactly how many of a certain opponent I needed to kill to get to the next level.

Why? Because I knew that would be all I would be doing until I reached that level. And when I managed it, I worked out the figure for the next.



Other additions include occasional instanced dungeons and an auction system for the really rare items, instead of just relying on player-run shops. It's all trying to move Lineage into the post-World of Warcraft world. Which is all well and good, but it does nothing to alter the fact that at its heart, this is a pure, grind-based Korean-model MMO of stupefying tedium.




The high-level clan-based warfare system and player-vs-player is where Lineage II's fame lies, with clans duking it out for the control of castles. Now this is expanded from the castles to many smaller fortresses, enabling more opportunities to own terrain and whatever... but you're never going to get there unless you're willing to perform a one-man act of genocide against fields of orcs.

As beautiful as the game can be, even with a relatively old engine, it simply doesn't feel like a world.



For the score, I'm forcing myself to be a little objective. There are worse MMOs than this, and hammering it with a sub-20% mark would be unfair.

But in a world with everything from WoW to City of Heroes to Tabula Rasa, that a game like this can still be considered acceptable entertainment sickens and saddens me. To play this as long as it demands is simply a waste of your life. Please, don't do it.

The verdict

Still grinding away, getting nowhere