Is there anything more nostalgic than a good old isometric action RPG? For me, the answer is ‘not many things’; I love me some classic dungeon crawler button mashers. Slinging some abilities around, spamming the health potion button like my, well, life depended on it; taking every possible chance to get enemies stuck on something so I could safely bombard them. That's the real stuff, right there. It’s a genre I really cut my teeth on way back when, and one that really guided me on my gaming journey going forward. I played so much Diablo 2 that I started dreaming in an isometric view, man. There was something about the simple mechanical nature of them combined with the sometimes surprisingly deep RPG aspects that immediately appealed to me. Diablo, Titan Quest, Dungeon Siege; I ate that **** up, and still continue to eat that **** up. Grim Dawn I think is the best and truest modern Diablo 2 successor currently, but I also enjoyed the first Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing game for what it was, as well as the Warhammer 40k game Inquisitor: Martyr, and Torchlight 2.
Another game that I sunk numerous Dr. Pepper and poutine fueled hours into was the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series. So much so that I even wrote an article on both games, an early one in my time here on RGT but honestly one of my favourites; I had an excuse to play the games again, and I think that's when my review style fully formed.
Did I mention that I got to play the games again?
Both the games are absolute console action-RPG classics, and were powered by some impressive tech at the time being the Snowblind Engine created by, fittingly, Snowblind Studios. After making the first Dark Alliance, Snowblind took their engine and crawled out from underneath Interplay's crushing heel to make something else, but something still similar to the previous masterpiece. Enter; Champions of Norrath.
Snowblind moved on to the green pastures of making a game directly under Sony, who would publish the game in America through their Sony Online Entertainment studio. Oddly enough, UbiSoft published Champions in Europe; remember when they published more games than they made and they didn't pump out cookie cutter open world games year after year? I remember, UbiSoft. You can’t fool me anymore.
I remember, UbiSoft. Remember what they took from you.
Snowblind decided to look to another previous IP again for this, choosing to make a spin-off entry for the once esteemed EverQuest franchise. At this point in the early 2000s it was the most well received and played MMO on the market, and surprisingly is still going today; you can still play the original release of EverQuest, and it's still getting content which is absolutely wild. But around this time, there was a looming shadow stretching over the largely unsuspecting MMO populace, and as info about it was starting to make the rounds it was getting people talking. This game, of course, being Blizzard's earth-shattering behemoth, World of Warcraft. So, the higher ups at Sony Online Entertainment (who owned the EverQuest IP at the time) decided that maybe some different takes on the series could help resist this ‘new blood’ entering the scene.
Champions of Norrath is a game that I didn't play as much as Dark Alliance, mainly due to the fact that I never owned it and could only play it at a friend of mine's house. Everytime I had a chance to obtain a fresh new PS2 game, it was never at the store or I just saw something else first instead. This makes it seem like I didn't like Champions or something, as I really did; I'd routinely try and steer us to play it whenever I was at said friend's house, and I would never stop trying to borrow it off of him to a probably incredibly annoying degree. It's just the poor attention span of youth to blame for me never getting it myself, and the fact that the PS2 had kind of a famously stacked lineup of games obviously.
It was only until a few good years ago that I finally said to myself, “oh yeah, that game I played a few times and really liked and everyone keeps saying is a cult classic masterpiece, maybe I should finally play it all the way through.” So I did, and it was pretty damn good (spoilers).
Champions of Norrath is a very similar game to Dark Alliance, being made with the same engine and by the same developers and in the same genre. There are small differences that stop it from being just Dark Alliance 3, but it's similar enough where you could mistake it for an expansion if you squint at it.
You have five character choices this time around, and this is the first way that Champions sets itself apart; you can freely choose to play either a male or female version of every class, and you can even customize your little guy or girl’s appearance with a few options. It’s nothing entirely groundbreaking outside of its genre , but this was the first game of its ilk to have this little touch which deserves a little bit of credit.
You have the human barbarian, being the standard fighter type; they don’t passively regenerate mana but instead get some when they kill something. The elven archer; combining a focus on archery of course with a little bit of melee competence. The other elven cleric; a strong melee fighter mixed with some divine style magic, mainly healing and buffing themselves or allies in co-op and is probably the most balanced and even class. The hilariously big headed human mage; they command vast magical powers and suck in the early game of course until you get AoE spells, as it must always be. And lastly, the other other elven dark knight; someone who can summon creatures and also use acid for some reason, and is a decent fighter. For this playthrough, I decided to go with the character I haven’t played much of in this game or its equivalent in Dark Alliance, the basic fighter, going against my usual playthrough of the archer or the big headed mage. So it was that the human barbarian warrior tore through the hordes of this playthrough.
The evil army broke before its vanquisher, the one who single handedly shifted the tide of the goblin war or whatever the hell’s going on in the story. Their name was as fearsome as their wicked blades; Hair, the female barbarian with a comically bad Irish (?) accent. Why’s she called Hair? No one knows, but it’s likely because whoever created her has issues coming up with names.
The story is a typical fantasy thing, and I’m honestly not even going to talk about it more than this incredibly brief mention. I have no idea what goes on in EverQuest or how this game ties into it, and the story in this game is barely there to begin with, full of a whole lot of ridiculous sounding fantasy name dropping and exposition for things I have no knowledge of, and I’m not even sure are part of this game. I don’t mean this as a bad thing, as it’s an action-RPG first and foremost; but others’ opinions may differ of course. The story does bring you across some nice locales at least, starting in a well modelled forest before transporting you into some lava caves, a vampire's castle, a giant anthill, a sandy beach island, and a quite a few more distinct areas and surprises. It never gets the same ‘oomph’ as the frankly hilarious opening of Dark Alliance and a few specific moments in it, but I think overall has more varied environments than the previous game which is a big plus.
It’s the gameplay that really matters with Champions of Norrath, so let’s start talking about that instead.
As I said earlier, the game is very similar to Dark Alliance so if you’ve played or seen either of those games, then you know what to expect here. You have a basic weapon attack, you unlock powers and new abilities as you level up, and you collect a lot of loot that explodes out of enemies’ pockets when they die for whatever reason. You can swap between melee and ranged weapons, and you can block attacks with melee weapons or shields which is something you’re going to come to rely on frequently. You can drink a mana pot with L2, and a healing pot with R2. One thing that Champions improves on from Dark Alliance is you can now use Triangle and Circle as hotkeys for two different abilities, which is a great improvement over the more primitive system of the previous game where you had to scroll through your ability list with the d-pad and could only use one at a time. This system of course would be further improved in Dark Alliance 2 where you had four abilities that could be hotkeyed, but Snowblind had no part of Dark Alliance 2 of course.
The Snowblind Engine still has some impressive water physics this time around.
Still has impressive character models, too. This was in 2004 on a PS2, keep in mind.
They've also added in systems reminiscent of Diablo 2 into the game as well in the form of socketing gems and the like into weapons and armour for different magical effects. Overall I think the game has a little more going on under the hood for character building, as the special attacks and abilities you can learn have a little more crunch to them generally and factoring in the socketing system. There's also something else added in this time around compared to Dark Alliance, and another definite Diablo 2 influence; there are unique items that drop from bosses occasionally, and you can farm them. Sort of.
Sometimes you just have to mash through the blood in your eyes as you cleave flesh in twain, funneled through a convenient doorway. Never stop mashing.
I say sort of as it makes you have to utilize some clever (read: likely unintended) tactics with the ‘import character’ feature and by using two different save files. Using these things, you can farm the bosses over and over again on the same character until you get those sweet fancy font coloured uniques.
I bet you never expected you’d be driving a gnomish steam engine through a lava lake.
There's a few more features that Champions has over Dark Alliance, such as some character’s being able to dual wield weapons with an ability, some more exciting spells on the wizard class such as a continuous beam ability but by and large it’s the same idea. It's really the small differences that set it apart rather than big system changes. The jump in differences between Dark Alliance 1 and Dark Alliance 2 is a much bigger gap by comparison, and one that Champions follows with its sequ- oops, more on that soon.
My only weakness, an inordinate amount of large ants biting me at once!
Graphically the game is quite impressive for it's time, having some great character models and particle effects, two big features of the Snowblind engine. The lighting, the other standout strength of the engine, is also great but I don’t think it has as many spots to really shine (heh) here in comparison to DA.
Come on; can’t you tell I’m the player character? I’m going to slay like 2185 more orcs before this level’s even done.
Something else this game really expands on is the difficulty; the game can be ****ing hard sometimes, bordering on unfair with some of the randomized enemy spawns. I think it’s even a notch above Dark Alliance which also was a hard game. Enemies routinely swarm you and often have the numbers to entirely surround you. Their attacks frequently make your character ‘flinch’ where you get momentarily stunned for a good second or so after getting hit, and I met many a lethal fate due to getting flinched over and over again by certain enemies, mainly the big dudes.
The goddamn lava golem dudes. Enough said. Their go-to move is always to punch you into instant death lava.
The bosses this time around are also particularly more stacked against you I feel, really bullying you around the arena with knockbacks and uninterruptible attack chains. This all adds up to you having to really play it more cautiously in the early game then you maybe would in other games of this type, and I cannot stress enough the importance of the classic ‘funnel enemies through doorways’ maneuver or the classic ‘get them stuck on things’ technique. My advice on bosses? Block constantly, then mash for a few seconds, and pray. Mash like you’ve never done before. Luckily you can still teleport back to town from anywhere if you have a handy recall scroll, even in the middle of a fight.
Seriously, just look at the amount of enemies you sometimes encounter. This is like an hour into the game.
There are of course some negatives about the game, with the biggest one that plagues almost every game of its design stock; repetition. The usual action-RPG formula is either something that you’re into, or you’re not. You either enjoy mashing singular attack buttons and maybe using abilities here and there and chasing largely identical feeling loot, or you don’t. This leads into another complaint of the game is that it is maybe just a little too long. The number of locales you get to see are nice and varied but they could maybe have cut one or two. As it is, the game can maybe take about 13ish hours (going off of my captured video lengths, which had some idle time spent on the pause menu here and there) to go through which I think is a little too much to ask, and by the end even my love for mashing the attack button on anything that moves was wearing down. Dark Alliance was a solid, lean 9ish hours which I think is the perfect ballpark for an isometric action-RPG like this. Part of this could be that the locales themselves are pretty big maps this time around, and you move very slowly making stretches of the game feel just as slow. There are also some pretty bad framerate dips at certain points, but that one is definitely from PCSX2; switching to software renderer doesn’t entirely remove them, but lessens them pretty significantly.
Shambling horde of the bony variety of undead? Check. Hell yeah. What’s a better fantasy enemy other than the skeleton?
Underwater pirate skeletons. Hell yeah.
Something else is a feeling of sluggish controls occasionally. Every once in a while, the game feels like it’s really trying to chug along and may drop some inputs here and there. Some of this could be from the PCSX2 emulation, as it’s been actually two decades since I last played this on an actual PS2 and can’t remember how it ran natively. It’s most noticeable when you’re trying to attack after blocking; I frequently would stop blocking to get some hits in before the next enemy attack flurries only to instead awkwardly stand in front of them for a good second or two in a misguided attempt at intimidation before I’d finally start whacking away. It wouldn’t happen all the time, but enough that I definitely noticed it.
Octopus Boss Strategy Tip #1; always be mashing.
The positives I think outweigh those two fair complaints of course, and there’s a lot to love in Champions of Norrath. It continues the already strong gameplay of the first Dark Alliance, adding in just enough small touches to feel like largely its own game without changing the formula too severely. The different classes all feel satisfying in their respective niches to play, and have enough distinct abilities to feel unique enough. There’s some added character building aspects that add some spice, and you can even play as a absurdly long pigtailed elf if that’s your particular breakpoint. I think I personally prefer Dark Alliance over Champions, but that’s just due to my particular nostalgia over any actual objective quality difference; the game is objectively on the same level quality wise I’d say.
Vampires are ****ing weird, dude. Just give me the loot already, Nosferatu.
Much like Dark Alliance before it, Champions sold, and was received, very well upon release, so much so that it once again warranted an almost immediate development of a sequel. And so it came to pass that Champions: Return to Arms came out almost literally a year to the date that the first game was released. Much like Dark Alliance 2 previously, it added in many new additions to an already strong base formula, only this time it was actually developed by Snowblind themselves, using money they likely earned from the lawsuit over Dark Alliance 2 in a very strange twist of fate (for more on that, check out my Dark Alliance series article). What’s my opinion on Return to Arms, and it’s ridiculously cool cat berserker men and lizardmen?
****. Yeah. Dude. Catmen! Any game that has playable monster races has an immediate 25% review score bump from me, and I’m only half joking.
You’ll just have to wait and find out…
Until next time, where we’ll probably continue my random journey through most likely another PS2 game. Wasn’t that console great? You could throw a rock at it and either end up playing either an amazing classic like Return to Arms, or Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (were they classic just because they both have arms in the title?), to some famous middling jank like Red Ninja, Altered Beast or 10,000 Bullets. I bring those specific names up for no particular reason…
Pros
- + Classic dungeon delving, button mashing gameplay.
- + Great character classes, with some good and distinct variety.
- + Impressive graphics due to the Snowblind Engine.
- + Great co-op experience.
Cons
- - Hard difficulty, even compared to some of its contemporaries.
- - Framerate issues in some scenes.
- - A potentially too long playthrough time.
8
out of 10
Overall
Champions of Norrath is a great PS2 action-RPG, and one that lives up to the great legacy of the first Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Great gameplay, awesome character classes, and some great graphics equal one particularly fun co-op dungeon delving button masher.
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