Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising
Company: Southpeak Interactive
I've heard some grumbling since the most recent update to World of Warcraft. This may be good for other MMORPGs out there. Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising is geared more to those gamers who like Roman history and mythology. And, for that matter, for fans of Latin. I found it quite appropriate and refreshing that items in stores are named in Latin. Even NPC dialogue is occasionally flavored with the occasional "salve!"... a typical Latin greeting and where the word "salutations" comes from. (Yes, I would be one of those aforementioned Latin fans.) If you're not big on Latin, however, don't worry; the descriptions are in English.
While Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising starts out much like other MMORPGs, with the creation of your unique avatar, Gods & Heroes: Rise of Rome allows you to command additional companion NPCs to assist you on your quests... as you level up, the number of NPCs you can command increases. Further, these servants wear your colors that you originally selected for your avatar, so choose your primary and secondary colors carefully. For one of my characters, I chose black as the primary color and green as the accent color, and my companion characters looked, well, awesome.
Gamers who play a lot of other MMORPGs may get a bit of whiplash when the see the paltry amount of experience you get when you down an enemy or complete a quest. It's all a matter of scale, however, as the amount of experience needed to proceed to the next level is, likewise, quite low. In the end, it seemed to feel about right, but it can be shocking to kill something and get 14 experience points for it. The areas of the world are discreet, rather than connected, and travel between them is by boat (which is implemented via finding a boat to book passage and a loading screen), rather than a continuous world that can be freely traversed, like the world of Telara (Rift). One area is your home, which had been ransacked and is being rebuilt. This is a nice touch, and not only provides a "home" for your character, but there were actually some short quests in this area that helped progress the story a bit. The only problem I had with moving from one land to the next was trying to find the boat that would take me there.
When I played, there were some bugs and glitches here and there, much as you'd expect any game in beta, but the game looked quite interesting and fun. Also, some of the bugs I pointed out were fixed quite rapidly, so it appears that Heatwave Interactive is making good use of the beta test period. Check back for a full review of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising after it hits the shelves.
-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins
Related Links: Official Gods & Heroes Website Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising on Wikipedia Gods & Heroes on Twitter
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