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| From: Eidos
Category: Video Games
List Price: $79.99
Buy New: $19.99
You Save: $60.00 (75%)
New (25) Used (5) from $19.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 6893
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
ESRB: Mature
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Collector's
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: SAGECPUS01
Model: SAGECPUS01
UPC: 788687100748
EAN: 0788687100748
ASIN: B000V1OUTU
Release Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great, for the first day of play... August 24, 2008
Yes, the opening area of Tortage is a great game - great story, great way to learn the ropes with multiple quest types which ideally suit the class you choose - full of replayability, in this first area.
After leaving Tortage, the game degenerates into a clone of every other boring MMO on the market.
 Bugs, lack of content, and missing key features bring this game down August 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great graphics and atmosphere along with some interesting game play don't make up for the bugs, lack of content, and missing features.
 This would have been a vastly different review, a few months ago August 8, 2008
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
Below is my review of the game; however, I did purchase the Collector's Edition and I have to say that the CE reminds me a lot of the game. Flashy, beautiful on the surface but ultimately lacking. You're basically spending $90 on 5 buddy passes (which requires your friends to use your discs for installation or they have to pay $3 to download the game), an ingame item that only works up until level 40 and didn't really provide a big boost, a really nice artbook, the soundtrack, the artbook and a map. Sounds like a lot, but I had buyers remorse; and it's $10 more expensive than the Warhammer Online CE which included a lot more items...if you're set on purchasing AoC, I would just go with the standard edition.
On to the review:
The funny thing about expectations is just how much it can ruin or promote a game. As an example, I was one of those annoying people who ended up not liking Fable as much as I'd hope to (and complained about it to deaf ears) because I had followed it from its first announcement to its eventual birth. In the same way, I have followed Age of Conan far longer than I should have. Four years. Longer than most engagements.
Well, after finally "marrying" Age of Conan (and buying it a "fancy" ring by not only purchasing it, but dropping $90 on its shinier Collector's Edition), I can understand why the divorce rate in America is so high. It all falls back to expectations. For me, things started out wonderfully. We had our honeymoon in Tortage and for the first weekend or so, I was in complete heaven. The first twenty levels of the game are perfectly plotted and staged, with wonderment occuring around every bend. The story that plays out is small and self-contained but feels epic and truly feels like the start of something great.
Then the honeymoon ends.
Leaving Tortage, things start to sour. The story takes a complete backseat, with story-centered quests popping up every 10-20 levels or so, and instead you're treated to relatively empty environments that are stocked with creatures, sometimes with incredibly long respawn counters. So, you think..."wow, this is a huge change from the first twenty levels" but you keep on keeping on because new shiny skills keep popping up.
Undoubtedly, you'll start to run into problems. Instances won't work as they should and some won't even let you in (half of my guild couldn't access the 40-80 level resource instances like Frost Swamp where some of the epic gear starts to drop). The ones that do let you in, you realize, oftentimes have quests that only one person per instance can complete. There you go, having to repeat a not-too-inspired zone five or six times just to complete a quest. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem, if the zones were interesting. But they're not; some of them are simply windy small passages resembling mazes that open into larger, empty rooms. Very boring.
At about the level 60 mark, you start to realize that maybe you rushed into this relationship a bit quick. Maybe your friends were right and this person you find yourself waking up next to is a complete mystery. From here until the end, you start to wonder if the developers (Funcom, a group I have/had the upmost respect for--look at my reviews for Dreamfall and The Longest Journey) spent their four+ years of development on creating Tortage.
I divorced Age of Conan last night. It wasn't as messy as I was expecting. There are some good ideas here. Tortage is amazing (the first few times you go through it, at least) and a lot of kudos should be given to the team as they crafted a story that could be told from four different perspectives. The combat system is an interesting take on a stagnant genre and I've discovered that it makes other MMOs feel slow by comparison. And the graphics are unmistakeably beautiful. But like that dumb model, once you strip away the beautiful exterior and the assets, you start to realize that there's not much depth underneath.
I loved Age of Conan in the beginning. Now, I just feel annoyed. There's a lot more I could have discussed (the lack of customer support, petitioning for issues that took days to be resolved, the horrible online community, the horrible lack of community outreach, the boring zones, the broken content, the content that was originally promised then silently scrapped, etc.), but the point is that Age of Conan isn't what I was expecting. Some people might enjoy it, but there's not enough content here to keep me coming back.
In the meantime, I'm getting back in the saddle. There's another one I have my eye on. I've seen Warhammer Online slyly making eyes at me from across the room. I've been thinking that maybe I'll saunter over and say hi. But this time, I'm going to take it slowly and get to know the game beforehand. This time, hopefully, I won't be burned.
Coulda been excellent August 4, 2008
The game started out great, some bugs but that's to be expected, I'm not going into the trial program cause someones already explained that. Here I am, couple level 80 characters now, the only place for an 80 is Kashetta, it's more croweded by the day, Ok I can deal with that, then they start messing with the balenceing of characters, they toughen the bosses to where it's near impossible for a group to kill. They nerf the characters cause ones stronger than another in pvp so we cant have that. Lets not listen to the non pvpers, lets not fix the quests that are broken, lets not fix the tons of places to get stuck in the landscape that /stuck wont get you out of..... now the last patch they did, NERF all the gems toughen the bosses yet again! ect ect, lets just say out of the 300+ person guild I'm "in" theres maybe 10 on right now and non of them are me. I can survive the bugs, you know the tons of bugs when a game launches, just like EQ2 and all but their going nuts with the nerf bat and the "lets toughen up the bosses".
SO while the game is cool I love the fatalites and all, the rest is just messed up.
Oh I forgot the part where the people that preordered got a cape, only for them to give the special cape to everyone, and the totem home code you got from a game magazine they decided to screw those people too by giving them out to everyone.
I wish they'd would work on it cause the game is going down fast, people leaving left and right.
 Age of Conan August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
1. Make sure you have verified your PC can handel the game.
2. Get your updates for your hardware; most recent the better.
3. Character creation is fantastic. Tons of choices.
4. levels 1-5 are pretty close to identical for all characters.
5. levels 6-20 allows the characters to choose some different paths but all lead to a battle with a boss.
6. Read the forums about your specific character. I have found it so much easy to follow in the footsteps of those that have proceeded before me. Look for guides for skill points and feat points as this makes your game play a lot better.
7. 1 tip 1 part is to pick up as many quest you can in the early levels, 2 part try to complete those quest in the different areas of the island at once. Saves tons of time running back and forth from the different areas. Try different characters you can have up to 8. Find a couple you really like and continue on past level 20 and the island of Tortage!
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