Lineage 2 is almost 2 years old now and players are currently working their way through Chronicle 4: Scions of Destiny, the games latest free content addition. If youre not familiar with the Lineage series, they are leading MMORPGs in Korea where they were developed, and they have subscribers that number in the millions overseas. They havent been a huge success in North America, but Lineage 2 is making an effort to break into this market.

Online games of this kind are constantly changing, and Lineage 2 is no exception. Along with a steady stream of bug fixes and content updates, adjustments have been made to lessen the "grind" that is often associated with this series. Chronicle 4 is the largest update the game has seen so far. Lineage 2 remains one of only a few games that feature large-scale PvP guild battles for territorial control of the game world.

Graphics and Interface

The graphics in Lineage 2 have aged extremely well and the game still looks great. Some of the environmental effects, such as water, arent quite up to what the latest games have to offer, but for a seamless world it certainly holds its own. The player and creature models are remarkably detailed.

Lineage 2 has earned a bit of a reputation for its female character models, which often look more like they belong in a beauty pageant than a war with ferocious beasts, especially given how scant their "armor" is. I dont doubt for a second that it appeals to hormone drenched teenage boys, but would a warrior of any gender go into battle with their underwear showing? Yeah, its a fantasy game, and I guess this criticism could be levied against the industry as a whole.
 
The GUI is remarkably clean and uses screen space very efficiently. Id rather have a mini-map than the compass, and a few more options would be welcome, but its intuitive enough to adjust to quickly.

The game was designed to be played from the third-person point of view, although it is possible to get right into your characters eyes. Movement is accomplished by pointing and clicking, which is the norm for Korean RPGs, but North Americans seem to prefer keyboard movement controls. You can move with the arrow keys, but the options for customizing key bindings are sadly limited.

Character Creation

To start out, Lineage gives you a choice of 5 races: Human, Elf, Dark Elf, Orc and Dwarf. Dwarves differ significantly from the other races in that they only have one initial class option, and they are the only race with crafting skills.

Once youve settled on a race and gender, you decide between 2 starting classes: Fighter and Mystic. As you would expect, Fighters use weapons and Mystics use spells. This may not seem like much of a choice, but you do get to pick additional classes as you advance. Its worth having a look at the class structure before you get started to ensure youre on the right path.

Skills

The skills you have are decided by what class you choose. As a Fighter, I had one special attack for each of 3 different weapons to start out. A few additional skills become available after picking your second class, but its still a pretty sparse collection compared to most other games of this kind. You certainly wont have shortcut bars all over the screen, which maybe just as well, because I couldnt find any way to bring up more than one shortcut bar at a time.

Combat

If youve played an RPG before, you have a pretty good idea what to expect from combat in Lineage 2. Select a target, hit attack, use a special attack every so often if you have the mana, and gather the loot when its all over. One feature unique to this game is the use of Soulshots and Spiritshots, which boost the power of a weapon or spell for a single blow. They are similar to special attacks, except that they are items, they dont require mana, and they have no cool down, meaning that you can use one every hit if you want. The hitch is that because they are items, you will run out of them and youll have to purchase more.

For PvP purposes you also have Combat Points, which are extra Hit Points that must be depleted before your actual Hit Points start to go down.

Grinding Levels

If youve heard anything about Lineage 2, youve likely heard that it takes a lot of very repetitive monster bashing, tellingly referred to as "grinding," to make any progress through the game. This is fairly typical of MMORPGs from Korea, and it is probably the main thing that has held Lineage 2 back in North America. If you watch your experience bar, youll quickly realize that you may have to kill several hundred lizardmen to reach the next level, which can be pretty discouraging. You can also expect quite a bit of downtime waiting for your health and mana to recharge when they get too low.

Although tougher mobs are worth a little more experience, the quickest way to level is to fight easy monsters, because your downtime will minimized and there is no risk of death, which carries fairly serious penalities. Under normal circumstances, you come back to life in the nearest town with an experience loss and a chance to drop an item from your inventory. In PvP situations like sieges, the XP loss is smaller and you dont drop items.
Soloing is possible at the lower levels, especially with the help of the newbie buffs that have been added to make it a little easier, but youll need the support of a group after reaching the mid-levels of the game.

Another thing that makes progress in Lineage 2 seem slow is that weapons are expensive. Youll want to stick with the same one for quite a few levels simply because you cant afford an upgrade. It helps to gather the raw materials and seek out the services of a Dwarf, although this is still a lengthy process.

Quests

Most of the quests, at least at the lower levels, require considerable grinding for pretty meager rewards. Rarely do you get any experience points for completing a quest, so they dont really serve as alternatives to killing the same monsters over and over again. Its not uncommon to come across a quest that asks you to collect 100 items dropped by a particular mob.

I also came across some dungeon crawls, but they were persistent areas with respawning monsters like the rest of the world, which is a switch from the instanced approach used by so many MMORPGs these days.

There have been improvements to the quest system since the games release. For example, NPCs with appropriate quests for your level now have a telltale yellow exclamation mark over their heads. Unfortunately, the quests I came across left a lot to be desired, and they didnt do much to draw me into the game.

Open PvP

Unlike most MMORPGs, there are no restrictions on who may attack whom in Lineage 2. Typically this would make it difficult for new players to progress through the game, but Lineage 2 uses a Karma system to discourge indiscrimate player killing. If you attack another player outside a siege or guild war, you take a Karma penalty. Bad Karma allows other players to kill you with no Karma penality, and makes various NPCs hostile toward you. To work off your Karma penalty you have to go back to killing monsters.

This system works remarkably well. Ganking certainly does occur, but its dramatically less frequent than in games that dont enforce any penalty for it.

One interesting aspect of this system is that you cant see what level other players are. You have to judge them solely on their appearance, which can be very deceiving if a high-level character decides to equip low-level gear.

Battling for Glory

Guild vs. guild combat for control of the castles in the world is a central feature of Lineage 2, but its hard to get involved until you reach the games higher levels. I have been able, however, to take in a few sieges by various means, including the in-game Broadcasting Towers, which allow you to watch sieges without participating.

Sieges are scheduled for certain times on weekends, and they last 2 hours. Guilds of at least rank 4 on the defending and attacking sides register in advance, with the winning side taking control of the castle, and the financial benefits that come with it, for 2 weeks. As you can imagine, there is a lot of politics and diplomacy surrounding sieges, as a trustworthy ally may make the difference between winning and losing.

The scale of these events is impressive, and they are plainly one of the games most compelling features. I would encourage new players to use the Broadcasting Towers to get an idea how these play out, because after seeing them you may decide that its worth grinding levels to get there.

Its a little disappointing that they only occur on weekends, and there is really nothing keeping the two sides balanced in numbers. Getting a good turnout is important.

Nevertheless, this is the sort of massive persistent-world battle that a lot of PvP fans crave, few games offer, and even fewer games can actually implement from a technical standpoint.

Given the stuttering you get when you run into a town, I expected sieges involving hundreds of players to be very laggy. After running into one in progress, I was surprized to find that, once the initial loading is over, they are relatively smooth and quite playable. The game engine definitely handles large numbers of players better than most.

Bottom Line

There could be some superb end-game content in Lineage 2, but Im afraid that a lot of players, myself included, arent likely to make it that far. If I have to play a game for months before Im able to partake in any really compelling features, I tend to lose interest, although some people dont mind putting in the time, and even prefer a game that is demanding in this regard. The guild system and castle sieges do have promise, and they are significantly different from what other games have to offer. For those that find other MMORPGs too easy, or lacking in large-scale PvP battles, Lineage 2 might be a perfect fit.