City of Villains - Part 2

In part one of this review we talked about the larger issues surrounding City of Villains as it relates to City of Heroes and possible ethical concerns parents may have with its content. Today we get to talk about the interesting stuff: Gameplay.

Characters:

No question about it, your character is a villain. Your options for visual customization are incredible, with combinations likely numbering well into the tens of millions. Even more so than City of Heroes, you will run into other characters and think "wow, how did he get himself to look like that." The options are also a little more extreme than in CoH, with devil tails, skull heads and satyr hooves among the more pedestrian options. There is also a random selector that comes up with interesting, if monochromatic options for the less fiddly among us.

Once you've gotten over the playing dress-up portion of character creation you have to make a few initial power and archetype choices. Do not make these lightly, as they will have a greater effect on how you character plays than anything else you do over the course of the game. It's not uncommon, in fact, to restart several times until you find a power set that fits your playing style.

Your primary choice is that of Archetype. The five Archetypes are notable both in how they differ from one another and in how they compare to their City of Heroes counterparts.

Brutes: Brutes are straightforward damage dealers. Their secondary powers come in the form of damage abating armor. They also have a third bar below health and stamina that measures the amount of built up rage in the Brute's system at the moment. This rage acts as a direct multiplier to damage. It builds as you fight and degrades over time, motivating the Brute to rush into combat, possibly before he and his party members are ready. This also pushes forward the primacy of any and all methods to conserve stamina so that you can fight longer. Brutes make fascinating solo characters, forcing you to balance health and stamina, sometimes turning off your armor powers mid fight so that you can have enough fuel for one more group of enemies while you're still angry.

Stalkers: Stalkers hide. All the time. While this doesn't sound that exciting, what it means in a practical sense is that a stalker will start every fight with a free double damage hit on the enemy of choice. Once the Stalker has blown his ambush, he is a lot like a brute with different weapon/armor options and no rage bar. Stalkers, particularly when solo, have a number of interesting options for hit and run tactics which really come into their own with level 14 and the acquisition of one of the travel powers (super speed being the most exciting for this application, though leaping is never far behind.)

Corrupters: Corrupters are the Blaster of City of Villains. Their primary focus is on ranged damage dealing and they have an ability called Scourge that boosts their damage against weakened enemies. Unlike City of Heroes Blasters, Corrupters actually have useful secondary powers, with an array of heals, self and party buffs and enemy debuffs making your choice of a secondary power set potentially more defining than your primary which will, at the end of the day, be all about lobbing damage in the direction of the (other) bad guys.

Masterminds: Masterminds lead minions. Each of the four types of mastermind (Zombie, Mercenary, Ninja and Robot) can summon an array of minions and then empower those minions to go out and fight the Mastermind's battles. This makes them a very complicated, but very powerful class. The distinctions between the four different minion types exist, though they are often more thematic than practical. You should certainly choose the one that most appeals to your character concept rather than sucking it up to go with a more powerful choice. The Mastermind is a great choice for players who always want things to do. At the higher levels, you will have the ability to individually command six minions in battle as well as managing your own powers.

Dominators: Dominators excel at making certain a situation stays under control. Each of the different Dominator power sets has a variety of holds, slows, immobilizes, etc. to make sure that your enemies can't effectively take action against your party. In response to the common criticism that City of Heroes Controllers took forever to kill anything after they'd used their control powers, Dominators have secondary powers that do ranged damage rather than buffing the party. This makes for a more interactive experience, though it means that you really can't make a pure support character within the archetypes.

The five archetypes, each one having four to six primary power sets and a similar number of secondary options make for plenty of variety in play styles and team composition. New players should experiment until they find something that suits.

Once you've settled on a character, you traipse about the Rouge Isles either engaging in mindless violence (which is fun, but only for a while) or doing missions for various contacts, starting with a few Arachnos operatives on Mercy Island and branching out a bit after that. New to City of Villains is the newspaper/broker system which serves as a method of new contact acquisition as well as giving characters that have exhausted their contacts a source of steady, if unexciting, missions. While this does alleviate the common problem in City of Heroes where a character would run out of missions a full level before getting new contacts, it also destroys some of the cohesion in moving through a grid of contacts and the feeling of knowing people who know people. It also creates some very frustrating moments when you do a series of newspaper missions and return to a broker expecting to be introduced to a new contact only to be sent on your way after doing the broker's heist or worse, just told that the broker (who left you a message in the paper) simply has nothing for you. The game is in desperate need of some additional guidance to tell players what they generally should be doing at any given time.

The only other significant complaint we have about the game is that there is a fair bit of lag. The amount varies quite a lot from system to system and zone to zone, but everyone who has a travel power that carries them above the roofline has learned to use it carefully, lest the view cause potentially dangerous slowdowns. This problem has also kept us from exploring the game's PvP areas in much depth, as mobility and response time are crucial in that environment. We are, however, looking forward to putting together a large enough super group to participate in the game's base raiding system, which promises to get rid of a lot of the large area lag problems we have in the open PvP areas.

Speaking of Supergroups, the base editor is a building level version of everything that is right about character creation. You can have whatever type of base you want, though there could stand to be a little bit better explanation of the function of each base component. Bases serve both a recreational function and as your defensive area for the raiding function, making design an interesting exercise in balancing form vs. function.

All in all, City of Villains is a good time. It lacks the breadth that a World of Warcraft (to which all mmorpgs will be compared for some time) has, but the core play is enjoyable enough to merit a purchase and at least a few months of subscription. CoV is also a much easier game to play for short periods of time, making it an excellent choice for groups with busy schedules.