Lineage 2 Collector's DVD Edition - PC (MLS)

i have been playing this game for a long time now about 10 years i play alot of other games but in the end i always go back to the king of games (( LINEAGE ))

Let me start by saying that Lineage 2 is for the hardcore. It is not a game like WoW (hate to point fingers) where leveling is easy.1.) Graphics - 5/5 - This games graphics are beautiful. In every review liked or disliked everyone agrees that everything in this game is so well done. This game is also almost 2 years old now and the only MMO with better graphics is EQ2. The Characters are great looking, the monsters, the landscape, and the towns. It all is perfect.2.) Sound/Music - 4/5 - The sound is very well done. Such as little things like walking on grass to stone, sounds great. When fighting though it has your basic sound of a sword hitting something and grunting. It isn't original at all but it is better than nothing. The music on the other hand though is excellent. It really brings you into the fantasy realm and captures the moment.3.) Gameplay - I will divide this into a few sections. PvE, PvP, and the community.The PvE 4/5 - in the game is tough. It requires a lot of grind (like I said it is for the hardcore only.) The game really kicks off at level 20. Because of the access to the Necropolis's and Catacombs. What they are, are underground places where you fight mobs with 4x normal health and drop 4x the normal Adena (the currency). It requires a group to go down there. But it is a ton of fun. When you die you do loose experience and you can drop weapons. I am level 49 at the moment and I have only dropped something once which was a level 20 shield. And my clan member picked it up for me so it worked out. The game offers some pretty hard bosses such as Antharas. Antharas is a dragon who is extremely hard to kill. He has only been killed once on my server and it took over 200 people to do it. In the next chronicle (chronicle 4) It will ad another Dragon boss Valakas the fire dragon. Who will be harder than Antharas. It is good having bosses that are that hard because you have to have so many people work together in unison to achieve something so great.PvP 5/5 - Now this si where the game really shines. The PvP. What it is, is basically a karma system. Think of it as the Wild West. You kill someone in cold blood people will come after you. Now applying this to L2 is when you kill someone when they don't fight back your name will go red. When your name is red you have a higher chance of dropping your items. So people will come looking for you to possibly get your items. The ways to get rid of a red are to kill monsters and it will slowly go away, or die 1 or 2 times (depending on your karma) and it will go away. Now if you attack someone and they attack back whoever wins they will not go red, their name will be purple for a few seconds meaning that they are still in battle mode. PvP can be very fun though I will give you a little story that happened to me.A few people were in my clan and one of them died and dropped their earing (jewelry protects against Magic Attacks). Anyway someone came by and took the ring and ran. The other people in my clan perused him and ran into his clan. After a long word fight both clans called for reinforcements. Me being one of the reinforcements for my clan. When I got down their each clan was lines up. As soon as the first arrow flew by everyone just charged in. It was about a 8v8 battle. It was so insane. In the end we got the ear ring back and we won. But that is just an example of what can happen (because it did happen).Now another high point of the game is castle sieges. They are when one alliance owns a castle and once every 2 weeks another alliance (or more) will siege it to gain control of it. The is a 2 hour sieging period where if the defending alliance holds it for long enough they still have control of the castle. If the attack Alliance wins they now have control of the castle. When an alliance owns a castle they can tax the castle town for their own profit. Which is one of the benefits of having a castle. In a good sized castle siege there can be up to 500 people on the battlefield, and it is very fun. Win or loose I always have a blast.Community 4/5 - The game does have a lot of botters and farmers. It does hurt the game but there are also many good things. At around level 20ish you should try to get into a decent clan. It will help you out greatly. Because a good clan can provide you with weapons and armor. (My clan provided weapons and armor for me all the way until level 40). It is hard to make it in this game with out a good clan which is where many people quit. The cool thing about all the clans and alliances are that fights can erupt at any given moment between keeping the tension between them. It always keeps me on the edge when I see someone from an enemy clan walk by me.In the end I love this game. I have played just about every MMO out there and this is by far the best. I highly recommend picking this up. You can try the 14 day trial but I doubt you will see the game's full glory in a short period of time.

Played this game since it first came out in 2004. I have been hooked ever since. There is so much in the game now that it has been out for so long, that there is always something for you to do. The only thing that I don't like is that it takes SOOO damn long to level up your characters. Other than that, I love this game.

This games is the best computer game available. Who needs World of Warcraft when Lineage II exist! I'm hooked and spend most my pastime on this game...and never could I have thought a computer game could do that to my schedule!!! HAHA...even work breaks find me sitting at my desk. Try it...love it. buy it...you won't regret it.

Like anyone, I am very leary to join up with any MMORPG. It's just really tough to justify forking over money every month to play a video game, unless it's really amazing. Unfortunately, my experiences with MMORPG's have been less then stellar. My last disastrous experience was with Horizons. That game was the worst managed, least fun game I have ever played. So, needless to say I was a little jaded when it came to MMORPG's. I've played World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Everquest, etc., etc., so I am very familiar with the world of MMORPG's. Having dilligently read all the gaming reviews, scoured the forums, and porused through the newsgroups, I came to the conclusion that Lineage II was not a very good game. So, I didn't buy it.2 months later, I'm forced to buy this game(I made my buddy buy a game earlier in the year, so I was on the hook). I thought I would play for a couple of token "I really tried to enjoy it" weeks and then call it quits. I was wrong.Introduction/GraphicsThe first thing you will notice is the AMAZING graphics and scenery. LII is still using the Unreal 2 engine, and they really have it wired. It's hard to believe that this is the same old tired graphics engine that has been around for such a long time. It really shows off when it is night time, and there is a full moon out. NCSoft will display a wild and imaginative skyline that literally takes your breath away.In the same token, they do have one major flaw in the graphics dept. and it is terribly silly. The Time of Day Transitions from Night to Day and vice versa are awful. I don't know if they do that on purpose for some reason, but it is such a tragedy to ruin what is otherwise a wonderfully rich and beautiful world. You'll be standing somewhere in the middle of a hot and sunny day, then BAM, it's midnight. Literally no transition from dusk to dawn, and so on and so forth.Besides the knock on daily transitions, their fighting graphics are spectacular. Each spell, sword swing, staff smash, has amazing effects to go with it. You can tell that NCSOFT really spent a lot of time emphasizing good combat graphics, and it shows.AudioThe sound is great. It has a wide range enviromental noises that change smoothly from each appropriate area. Having great enviromental affects can make a game so much more fun and have a level of realism that just can't be achieved without it. It really immerses a player into that world, and I love it. The character affects associated it with all character actions is good as well. I won't say great, because I can't think of one item that really caught my attention enough to remember.GameplayThis is tough to judge with an MMORPG. The nature of the beast requires a certain amount of level grinding that just can't be avoided, which just becomes a second job after a while. That aside I will point out some positives and negatives I found. The fighting in the game is fun, and the character menu is your standard RPG layout. Complete with inventory, hotbars, XP and Magic meters, so on and so on. The macro system is average, and purposely so. If anyone has ever played an MMORPG that can be exploited using the macros, it can really suck.The questing is a little weak, but it does improve with every new edition that is published with LII, currently on Chronicle 3 for this review.This game allows for full PvP (Player vs. Player) action, which means that other real world players can go and kill you if they want for no reason at all. This adds a dicey element to the game that you just can't get with a non-PvP game. Have you ever caught yourself playing a online game and thought, "Man, I would love to kill that annoying turd that keeps mouthing off, or keeps getting my squad killed." Now you can. It feels really good to crush someone who has been talking trash for 2 days, way too good. On the flip side, it's really devastating when you get owned by some other character when you know it's probably some 10 year old kid who just schoooled you. This aspect of the game really narrows the focus of who would enjoy this game, as it really appeals to the hard core gamer. I know some people who will not play PvP simply because it is too stressful. I love it. The system is designed with a karma system so it's not a total free for all, as their are penalties for just killing everyone randomly all the time, but you can agree to fight with another person with no penalites at all; or just make a character that is pure killer, that says damn the consequences, and kills all that stand in his path. This part of the game in my opinion is one of it's best highlights.On the flip side, there is a clan and alliance system that is pretty good. The clan system is pretty robust, and does have some major benefits to be in a high level, powerful clan. Clans have alliances with other clans, which basically makes them even stronger. These alliances can setup castle sieges, where they siege the local castle, to vie for control of that area. If you belong to a clan that holds a castle, you make buko bucks and gain tons of privelages that non-castle holders have.The other advantage that clans have is they are great to setting up parties to go out and level with. This is the fastest way to level your character, get gear, and overall have a great time. Lineage II does a great job with their clan/alliance system, which only improves with every new Chronicle.Negatives:There are some major negatives that are felt pretty deeply in this game. The first issue is the money making problem. It is really difficult to make money in this game, and money is the key to this whole game. Want to level faster? Buy some goodies that will help you kill things quicker. Want to make your guy stronger and kill things quicker? Buy the nicer gear. This formula is not unique, but is absurdly lopsided in this game. You would have to spend 24 hours straight 7 days a week for 1 month to get enough money to buy 1 piece of top of the line gear for a level 20 and lower characert; and guess what? by the time that happens you would be level 40. It is very disproportionate, and very frustrating.Which dove tails into the other major problem of this game. Ebayers/Money Buying. Since it is so difficult to make money in the game, it has sprung up a multi-million dollar industry where companys' sole reason in life is to sell you the video game money(adena) in exchange for your cold hard cash. Yes, that's right, you can spend your hard earned dough to buy your video game character that armor you've been dying to get,or that sweet sword you know would make your life so much easier. Don't let anyone fool you either, as it happens all the time all day every day, and most people won't admit it.Ebayers are people who just skip the whole game leveling process and buy a pre-played account, so they can have that uber character with none of the effort. This happens a lot as well, and is very, very annoying(Moms and Dads, please stop giving your kids money to spend off your Credit Card!!!)Finally one of the worst thing that goes on is botting. This is where people use a 3rd party program to "play" the game for them. It essentially fully automates their characters to kill non-stop without resting or dying. This is very prevalent in Lineage II, despite some lackluster efforts by NCSoft. Their is a petition process you can go through to turn in these botters, but NCSoft's response is mediocore at best, with a very small percentage of botters ever getting banned.These are all major issues, but they are not unique in LineageII, as they are prevalent in all MMORPG's, so take it for what it's worth. Although, the botting in Lineage II is pretty bad, much worse then some other games then I have played.OverallI have been playing for 9 months straight,almost every day and I love this game. It is designed for the hard core gamer in mind, and is not for the weak at heart. The PvP makes it very interesting and keeps you on your toes. While the clan system adds depth and enjoyment on different levels. I recommend this game to anyone who has come from playing any other PvP based MMORPG, or who is interested in a hard core fantasy world. I dont' recommend this game to anyone who is impatient or does not have lots of time to spare, as this game will need a tremendous amount of both.As we are only currently on Chronicle 3, and will finish with Chronicle 12, we can expect this game to be around for a very long, long time.....