Champions Online Reviews

Another batch of slightly above average reviews for Cryptic Studios’ Champions Online brings us into the weekend.

The Escapist doesn’t like the idea of a score:

Incredible depth and customization. Like, to an absolutely ridiculous extent. The cel-shaded graphics look nice enough, and it’s pretty fun to be swinging your way through some nifty environments as your superhero of choice. Unfortunately, if you don’t plan on diving headfirst into the game, it can be hard to get into. Great sense of humor, though.

GamesRadar gives it a 7/10:

Champions Online is an unusual game. It’s quite broken in many ways, but it quickly grows on you, and becomes surprisingly endearing. It doesn’t always make itself easy to like, and it’ll die on the vine unless it gets more areas to quest in and endgame content pretty damn soon, but it’s a fun break from the normal MMORPG template, and even with its problems, it’s still worth checking out.

Strategy Informer gives it a 7.5/10:

With the customary spit and polish the engine will receive over the next year, Champions Online certainly has the potential to turn into the best superhero MMO out there. For now, that mantle still belongs to City of Heroes, but having played both games throughout beta and release, this is certainly a more daring title in the initial stages. Let’s hope the path to Millenium City prosperity is proven to be smooth.

Hellforge gives the first ten levels a 7/10:

So in the end I found levels 1-10 to be extremely entertaining but lacking an overall challenge. The first ten levels have done a decent job of acquainting me with the play style of the game and an effective job of enticing me to peruse the next ten levels. There are things that I hope get worked out as time goes on and I also hope that true challenges present themselves. Champions Online is definitely worth playing but the question I hope to continue to answer is will it be worth continuing to play? Time will tell.

And G4 gives it a 3/5:

Champions Online is a colorful, action-packed title with the finest character creation system yet seen in an online RPG. The repetitive quests, instance population caps, and dearth of group-oriented content are disappointments. There are also the expected issues for a new game, including balancing problems, powers that aren’t doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, frame rate issues, and some content gaps. The good news is that these titles always improve over time, and during its first week, the developers have already announced significant patches to address some of the shortcomings. In its current state, Champions Online improves upon the City of Heroes franchise but lacks the all-important “addictiveness” factor to propel it to must-have status. A few more months of polish are needed to convert nagging doubters into true believers.