Lineage Review (no fat)

Game Description

Beyond castle walls, endless valleys and steep mountains, there lays an undiscovered and mysterious world lurking with dangerous creatures. It is a merciless world encompassing good along with the evil…it is the world of Elves, Knights, Mages, Princes and Princesses.

Lineage Storyline

The storyline has a few overtones that associate it with the myth of Oedipus; a king fears that his son (stepson in this case) will grow up to take his throne and he decided to get rid of the son before that can ever happen. But the prince is sent away for safe keeping by his mother. However, unlike Oedipus's father, this king isn't the just a good guy messed up by the Oracle. So years later, after almost getting killed by the knights sent by his stepfather, the young Prince finally decides to go after his rightful throne, the throne of Aden.

Lineage- Gameplay

You can venture into this vast world, embark on challenging quests, lead your pledges into battle or just hunt down monsters. However, Lineage gives the players a storyline to play with. Therefore, fans of plot based RPGs will enjoy the march to the throne of Aden as much as anything.

Players can choose a vocation from four of the game’s classes. Pick to become a resourceful Mage, an agile and highly intelligent Elf, a powerful Knight, a Prince or a Princess. Each class has a distinct specialty that lures adventurers.

Just like in most RPGs, your character has a set of abilities that play a very important part in both the future development of your character, as well as the course of the game. The abilities of strength, dexterity, intelligence, constitution, wisdom and charisma are dependent on the class you choose and the consequent choices you make in molding your character’s personality.

Lineage- The Blood Pledge

The Prince/Princess class is responsible for the game’s name as they have the ability to form ‘pledges’. So gamers can join up and form alliances. Pledging loyalty to a Prince or Princess is in fact the part where most of the fun begins in Lineage, with the multiplayer aspect coming into play.

Lineage- Castle Sieges

Players have the ability to run a castle or even siege one. There are certain rules the gamers have to play by if they want to conquer / keep a castle. For instance, if you want to siege a castle, your pledge has to declare war on the pledge currently residing the castle. Afterwards you have until sunset to reach the main hall and slay the prince/princess of the residing pledge or have your prince/princess enter the main hall.

Attackers may find this to be much more difficult than the expected cake-walk, as the residing pledge may receive assistance from the NPCs, new pledges or even a band of hired mercenaries.

Lineage- Reputation Matters

There’s a purpose, a consequence to each action you undertake in Lineage. You can either adhere to good or evil (…or bad, to put it more euphemistically).

Depending on your actions, you’ll either be considered ‘lawful’ or ‘chaotic’. For instance, killing malevolent creatures and being an altogether good guy will get earn you good fame, whereas killing needlessly or smashing up things will have you branded as ‘chaotic’. Negative fame will affect the outcome of your game as your access will be limited to certain areas, and depending on this attribute, you probably wouldn’t be welcome in most towns.

Lineage- All that Walk!

There are no mounts to make your travels shorter and you can’t even run. So the game speed is a tad slow and even as you can teleport from one place to another, walking most of the time can be tiring…err…time consuming.

Lineage- Newbie Friendly Game

NCsoft’s non-PvP server helps the new players get a hang of the games interface, and the objectives, before they can opt to shift to the other server, so it’s a good thing for new players and players who’d rather do without the violence.

Also, new players have the advantage of not losing experience points if they get killed early so NCsoft has tried hard not let the newbie players be discouraged easily.

Lineage-A Word on Graphics & Sound

Although the flatness of the 2D environment may bother some gamers, this is somewhat compensated by good visual effects and the ever-expanding Lineage world. Every update to Lineage introduces a new world to the players, bringing in new environments and new adventures. This can either delight, or exasperate the players, in accordance with the connection speed of the internet.

Quite literally, there is nothing much to say about Lineage’s sound track. It’s an average sound track with nothing to write home about.

Lineage- 2 Cents

Lineage makes up for the rather monotonous sound and flatness of the graphics through a series of gameplay features. All in all, it’s a promising title that can offer an interesting experience to a regular gamer and it would most likely catch the eye of RPG fans.