Champions: Return to Arms

It’s weird, but no other High Elf in the actual EverQuest game wears next to nothing – it’s just her. I’m really not buying her argument that all the princesses are wearing harem outfits. You don’t see the dwarf princesses wearing them. You don’t see the clockwork princesses wearing them (although, admittedly, they don’t wear anything). Even the wood elves, who you’d expect to wanna be more au natural, don’t dress like this. It’s just her.

I saw in the Olympics a women’s volleyball team dressed in very scanty, too-tight bikinis, playing against a team of women dressed head to toe in concealing garments. The countries decide what their team wears. So, I dunno, maybe Firiona just wears her beach volleyball outfit all the time.

These were the thoughts I had while clicking through Firiona’s long speech about why my character, a level 1 newbie shadow knight just newly arrived to the Plane of Tranquility, was now being tasked with killing the God of War, Rallos Zek.

Really? Really? Four continents of legendary heroes, and I’m the one you choose?

Well, it’s not that bad. At least she also has a side hustle selling gear to lonely, scared, frightened first level adventurers so that they might survive the harsh beatings awaiting them in the Plane of War.

If they could afford it. I could not. Firiona laughed. I laughed. The portal to Drundar laughed. I killed the portal. Damn Decepticons.

I felt myself rising into the air as Firiona body-checked me into the portal. I ended up being attacked from all sides by the spirits of those who had been drop-kicked into the plane before me. I fought them off with the tinfoil sword I’d been given.

It wasn’t long before I encountered Natasla, a purple-haired dominatrix wh…

“Yes,” I said.

Confused, she started over, exhorting me to rethink my obedien…

“Yes, I already said yes. Sign me up. Team Evil, rah rah rah.”

“Well, okay, cool, I guess. Take this stone to the door to the west and head on in. Say hi to Rallos for me.”

Yeah. Which way is west? There’s no map at all that I could find, no mini-map, no arrow pointing the way, no help at all. Maybe there’s some combination of controller buttons that brings up a map of some sort, but I couldn’t find it. I’m pretty sure Champions of Norrath had a map overlay. I guess I should go get the original box and read the manual.

Nah.

The Plane of War is just not a nice place. After about half an hour and three levels of searching, I did manage to find the door. Yay! Drundar!

Ready to rush into the arms of my crush R. Zek, I was disappointed to find that the whole damn place was a test. I had to kill a bunch of orcs, some ogres, and a particularly nasty ogre named Thug that I took down at range with Disease Bolt since the enemy AI in Return to Arms is “special”. There were eight locks scattered about the fortress that I had to unlock in order to enter the Arena.

Finally, Rallos! But no.

It was a 4v1 fight, four undead warriors who could summon skeletons and lightning bolts against me. I regretted my existence to this point, as I’d focused on sword and shield and had very little ranged power, aside from my trusty disease bolt, which – of course – does not work on the undead. It was getting late, and it was time to put the game away.

I think I played this game a few years back. I know I blogged about playing through the first game, but not the second. Not sure why. Maybe I didn’t get all the way through it. The first part was very familiar.

The game, like the first, is a hack and slash. You can choose from a decent variety of male and female heroes, two different paths through the game, and a chance to see many locations from EverQuest re-imagined for the PlayStation.

The game supports up to four players, either through the Internet or locally. I’m not sure how that would work, and it doesn’t seem likely that very many people actually played it that way. There are four difficulties, each of which unlocks when you clear the previous one. I believe you carry your character and levels over when you replay, but I could be wrong about that.

I don’t remember this game very well (probably because I didn’t get much further into it than I did this time), but the previous game was a fair amount of fun with cool boss battles, and I’d expect the same here. Return to Arms does go through a few of the Planes of Power, which were always fun in the original game. It was my favorite expansion.

The greatest enemy, though, is the camera. It’s impossible to keep it in one place. This is a solved problem – the camera was never really an issue in the original game, and I don’t remember it being a deal breaker in Champions of Norrath. But here – stuff was always coming at me that I couldn’t see until it was right on me. There is limited view positioning, and the only way to play is to keep moving that camera around.

Anyway. Classic game. EverQuest. Bathing beauties. What more could you possibly want?