City of Heroes: Review

[Archangelus]

I'd been asked by a few of my opinion on City of Heroes, now that I've been playing it for a couple weeks, so I thought I'd do a little write-up for it.

First, the game is very easy to pick-up and very straight forward. I had the game installed and was killing baddies fast, except for the 20 mins I spent building my character. This is one of the best character creation interfaces I've seen. There are thousands of combinations and I have yet to seen anyone that looks even vaguely similar to my character.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
I already mentioned that the creation is very robust, but the other characteristics of your character are complex as well. First off, you need to determine what origin and archetype you are. There are five origins that you can have (unfortunately, they don't mean jack really):
Magic (you have control of supernatural forces)
Natural (you are just more gifted - i.e. reflexes, speed, etc)
Technology (gadgets give you your enhancements)
Mutant (an anomoly in your genes gave you your powers)
Science (exposure to chemical or radiation)

In addition, there are five archetypes (classes) you can be:
Tank (High hit points, medium damage - takes the brunt of the battle)
Blaster (Low hit points, very high damage - lethal ranged attack, but a wussy)
Scrapper (Medium hit points, high damage - hand-to-hand fighter, best class for soloing)
Defender (Medium hit points, low damage - healer and protector, thing Paladin)
Controller (Low hit points, medium damage - can control enemies, group-dependent)

Inside each archetype, you have choices to make about your primary and secondary abilities. These are like choosing a skill tree to go up. You can only choose one, and unfortunately, there is no way to change your decision once it is made. As you level up, certain skills will be unlocked for you to choose. Just because they are unlocked doesn't mean you get them by default. You have a set number of spots for powers. You can choose from the unlocked powers which ones you want.

Additionally, as you level up, you get enchancement slots that you can lock to each power. These enhancement slots allow you to place enhancements (which MOBs drop, or you can buy) in them. These enhancements can increase your damage, accuracy, provide better protection, etc... The enhancements come in one of three major types though:
Training (any origin can use)
Dual-Origin (one of two origins can use the enhancement such as Technology-Science)
Single-Origin (only one origin can use the enhancement)

Any dual-origin enhancement (that you can use) is better than any training enhancement. Any single-origin enhancement is better than any dual-origin enhancement. Like I mentioned before, you can purchase these enhancements, or MOBs can drop them. Now here is where your origin kind of plays in. You are most likely to recieve DO or SO enhancements from MOBs with the same origin as you. For me, I'm a Technology Tanker. I try to fight Clockworks (maniacal robots) because I have a better chance of getting DO or SO enhancements from them.

You have spots for 10 enhancements in your inventory. That's it. You can trade them, trash them, or sell them, but you still only have 10 spots in your inventory. There is no house. There is no bank. There is no need for them. One exception to this rule is, if you have a SuperGroup, you can have a group repository for enhancements. Seeing as I am a SuperGroup of one right now, I'm not 100% sure how it works as of yet, but I'll let you know.


FIGHTING
When it comes to eliminating the "villains", you can attack this one of two main ways. Either running around the city and randomly attacking the MOBs, which generally consist of 3-4 minions and one lieutenant / boss, or you can take missions from the contacts you have acquired through your completion of previous missions.

Missions generally consist of either killing a set number of a type of villain, killing or arresting (it's killing either way) a boss in a specific location, or gathering information (usually in a specific location where you have to fight MOBs and a boss). Missions are in no way required to play the game. They do provide extra experience and influence (the currency in CoH), but they are not required to level up.

If you decide to just run around and kill MOBs rather than take missions, well, you're in luck. This game is full of baddies. You are never at a loss to find something to fight. If they are too low level, no problem. Just catch the train and head to one of the harder areas. I can honestly say that when I run around an area, it never takes me longer than 15 secs to find something to fight (outside of safe zones of course....).

GROUPING vs. SOLOING
Now there is the decision of grouping versus soloing. Good news is, you can definitely do both. I do quite often. It generally depends upon what I am trying to accomplish. If I am trying to accomplish a simple task so that I can move along a story arc (usually mission based), I'll go solo. If I am trying to level as fast as I can, I group up.

Groups in CoH can consist of up to eight members. The leader of the group is responsible for choosing the Team's Mission. How that is done is that the leader can choose from all of the missions that the group members hold individually, and then choose one for the team to do as a whole. When the mission is accomplished, the team receives a small bonus, while the individual who held the mission gets the full bonus (I believe) and the added "bonus" that they can grab a new mission. The groups I have been in seem to be very good and quite fun.

PVP?
Nope, not yet. Sorry. This game is 100% PvE right now. They have an expansion pack called City of Villains coming out which will allow players to create villains, start criminal organizations, and even have underground layers. Unfortunately (IMHO) PvP will be consensual, just like it is in SWG, but you can have wars between SuperGroups (think guilds) and Villain Organizations, which allows open-PvP between the two groups. If evenly matched, it could get really fun.

CONCLUSION
I'm having a lot of fun playing it, but I'm not going to pull a Yaz and start begging everyone to pick it up. I am actually fairly confident that there are some playing SWG that would hate the game, and being as I've only been in it for a couple of weeks, I'm waiting for the newness of it to wear off to see how much I really like it. Until then, I am a proud defender of Paragon City (on the Liberty Server) representing our glorious Order of the Phoenix.

If there are any questions, let me know!
-Arch