Customer Reviews

City of Villains

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm going to go ahead and rate this one as 5 stars.


City of Heroes has always been, in my opinion, something of an introductory MMORPG. The graphics are great, the animations are smooth, the gameplay is flawless but uncomplicated. It's never been as complex and in-depth as I'd like it to be but I always suggest City of Heroes to people as a good place to try out the MMORPG genre to see if they like it.

City of Villains continues this tradition. It doesn't really bring a lot of complexity with it, the gameplay isn't very dynamic -- you can't, for example, ally yourself with an NPC gang and help it take over the city and no matter how many of them you beat up there's always going to be more -- so pretty standard "video game" in those terms, but what it has, it delivers smoothly. The combat is straight forward and fun, soloing is possible but grouping is rewarded and the interface is clean and easy to understand.

That said, they have spent some time to bring some quality additions to the game:

* PvP. Finally, your hero can fight against player controlled villains and vice versa! And City of Villains doesn't just drop you in a room and say "here's some bad guys, go fight", the developers took some time to give us something to fight over. There are 3 new PvP zones:
-- Bloody Bay. Heroes vs Villains. There are missions to accomplish inside the zone and also, some of the finest outdoor leveling you'll ever see, IF your team is winning! If your team is losing, you'll be too busy fighting off your enemies to take advantage of the rich leveling opportunities.
-- Siren's Call. Heroes vs Villains. Siren's Call consists of a series of "hot spots", visible on your map, where hero and villain NPCs fight for control. Last man standing wins the hot spot and it's your job to make sure your side wins. As you win more hotspots, control of the zone shifts to your side and a special store opens up for your use. You also collect a bounty on your head while doing this and a random enemy will get assigned as your bounty hunter, and he gets nifty prizes if he can find you and kill you. At the same time, you'll have someone else's bounty. So do you want to help fight for hotspots, go hunt for your bounty, or hope your bounty shows up at a hotspot?
-- Warburg. Free for all, anyone can fight anyone. In this zone, your goal is to fight your way through NPCs, capture a scientist and lead him to a base where he will give you a launch code for missiles. These missiles show up as a temporary power and you can launch them against your enemies at any time. You can also ambush other people and take their scientist from them, after they've done the hard part...

So this isn't just "sandbox" PvP, this is PvP with a goal.

* Ragdoll physics. In the old game, "knockback" effects were pretty basic. The target went horizontal, fell down and then got back up. In the new engine, they added ragdoll physics, similar to Half-Life 2. If you knock someone back, they'll react to the terrain in a much more realistic manner.

* New archetypes. Although similar to City of Heroes archetypes, City of Villains puts their own spin on them. Brutes, for example, don't tank like Tankers but they tank better than Scrappers. They also don't hit like Scrappers, but they hit better than Tankers. Corruptors are basically Blaster/Defenders. There's also a new archetype called Masterminds, which can have up to 6 pets with a high degree of control over their actions. (And there's others.)

* Bases. Supergroups can now have their own base, designed from scratch using a base editor, bought with "Prestige", which is earned by guildmembers while fighting NPCs. You can then go out and capture Items of Power to put in your base. The Items grant bonus buffs to everyone in your supergroup but they also open your base up to enemy raids, as they seek to steal back your Item! But wait, there's more! Additionally, once your base is capable of recieving an Item of Power, you can raid other people's bases to steal their Item and stick it in your base.



Now you see why this is basically a seperate game, not simply an expansion.

If you buy City of Villains and do not own City of Heroes, you will be able to play a villain and do everything any other villain can do, you just can't create a hero.

If you have City of Heroes and do NOT buy City of Villains, then nothing changes for you: you can't access the new content and you can't make a villain or own a base.

If you have City of Heroes AND City of Villains, then you can do everything.

Note also that the monthly subscription for the game is the same whether you have COH, COV or both. (That is, if you're already playing COH, you can buy and play COV and not have any change to your current monthly subscription.)

After reading all the other reviews I'm sure you know what to expect. I'll start by listing the flaws of the game, or what most people complain about:

-same type of missions over and over and over
-no items, weapons, or armor to collect (I personally love this)
-there are still a few bugs here and there
-CoV classes need to be balanced against the Heroes

What is fun about this game you ask?
1. There are no items to collect! Why do I love this so much? You don't have to gather 40 people, then raid some dungeon 10-20 times, spending 3-4 hours each time, to get an item you want. But there is no economy? Correct and it's great. You don't have to spend a month collecting gold to buy that 1000 gold purple sword that is soooo uberific.

2. Combat is fantastic. You really need to pay attention to what is going on or you are toast. You actually feel like you have super powers and you have to know how and when to use them.

3. Successful PvP combat is based off skill not items. You don't have to worry about that 5 year old playing a decked out rogue in all purples killing you over and over because he has good items. If you want to be good in PvP then practice, it's as simple as that.

4. All characters are different. There are dozens of different character combinations and tons of ways to specialize your super powers. Not to mention the 1000's of ways you can design your costume.

This is a fun game. Yes the missions are repetitive, but you don't play this game for diverse missions and long drawn out story lines. You play this game to be a super hero\villain and bust some heads with really cool powers.

Have you ever wanted to play a villain? Than this game is for you!! City of Villains (CoV) is essentially an expansion of NC Soft's previous hit game, City of Heroes (CoH). But the it can stand alone and be played without purchasing the first game.

CoV continues the tradition but with an evil twist. In this game, you create a villain and choose its archtype and power sets. Then you enter the character creation section--which is a fun game in itself. The options for customizing your own villain seems endless and there are new and more monstrous options available.

The archtypes for CoV will seem new, but they do resemble CoH archtypes. Brutes for example are like tankers but with more ability to do damage. Corruptors are like blasters, etc. They do have a new class, masterminds--where you can summon and control various minions (unlike controller pets that were unable to be controlled.)

After creating your villain, you are put into Rogue Isles--first you have to break out of prison and then you get to go on various schemes--rob a bank, kidnapping, etc. Gameplay for this is very similiar to CoH but New to CoV is the PVP zones--these zones allow you to fight other villains and heroes from City of Heroes. These PVP zones also have missions and goals which make it more fun than just a free for all--though they have that option too.

Also new to CoV are supergroup bases that allow your SG or guild to create and customize their own base and protect it from raiders. But to build and outfit a base you need prestige points which need to be earned from doing missions...in SG mode, so it gives you an extra reason to do missions!!

CoH was the first MMRPG that i have played and the only one that i continue to play. I was happy to add city of villains to my account, especially since the monthly fee for both games is the same ($15).

The one issue to this series that I will mention is that it is updated usually every 2-3 months with new issues. These issues bring new content, new zones and new missions to keep the game ever evolving and updated. But it also brings character tweaking (some would say nerfs) that can negatively affect the way you are used to playing your toon. These changes usually affect the powers you want, the slots you use to enhance those powers etc..and my toons were able to adapt to these changes well...but i play a defender/controller and they were not as adversely affected as some archtypes.

All in all, this is a great game..you would want both CoV and CoH to get the full experience of the games...especially since the monthly fee covers both. CoV adds some much needed depth and the PVP zones give a new feel to the game. It also adds SG bases and raids to both games.

PROS::
1. one monthly fee covers both games
2. PVP zones --there are 3 zones and each zone has new zones/missions and goals in addition to the pvp element. the pvp zones are optional so you can choose not to go there, but you would be missing out on a key feature of the game.
3. easy to learn to play--great for those starting to play MMRPG

CONS:
1. Require an internet connection and monthly fee
2. Missions become repetitive over time and are very similiar to CoH missions/gameplay
3. Character "tweaking" with new issues can affect the way you are used to playing

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Mysteria Morna--level 22 corruptor
FREEDOM SERVER---we have PIE!!

PlayNC says that City of Villains is a stand-alone title. And although you don't need City of Heroes to play it, it seems to be too similar. The difference is... this time, you're the bad guy. And just how the bad guy never wins, neither do you, in my opinion.

First off, don't get me wrong, City of Heroes is a great game, and this is essentially the same game. The same satisfying gameplay and the same satisfying character customization. The customization is probably a quarter of the fun, with at least 10,000 costume choices, five very different initial classes (and different from City of Heroes's classes), and dozens of power sets. You get a new power every two levels (and later, every three), and you aren't just limited to your primary and secondary power set you chose at the beginning--there are general power sets available to everyone including the travel powers of Super Speed, Flight, Teleportation, and Super Jump that are all available by level 14. The different classes are your typical tank and rogue (Brute and Stalker), then two ranged classes (the Corruptor is damage/heal and buff, the Dominator is debuff and hold/damage), and finally the Mastermind, which controls punks, robots, ninjas or zombies, and more of them with increasing level. Instead of parties and guilds, there's teams and Super Groups. Teams have some interesting features like Lackeying to bring someone up to your level and Malefactoring to bring someone down. Up to eight people can be on a team and the more people enter a mission, the more difficult it will be. Super Groups can have customizable bases and if they have a base, they can raid another Super Group's base.

These features are nice, but the problem is that when you get down to it, those are all City of Heroes features. It's just City of Heroes with a dreary tone and can be compared to it in every aspect. In City of Heroes, you might rescue someone from kidnap. In City of Villains, you go ahead and kidnap them. In theory, that sounds plausibly fun, but the mission plays the same way to you. Furthermore, the setting of City of Villains is, of course, the opposite of City of Heroes. Dark, dreary, and the streets are filled with gangs, lizards, bad cops and more gangs. You'll see cops fighting thugs, but even if you try and be nice to the thug and kill the cop for him, he'll still have a place in his heart to kill you, too. It's not like City of Heroes where civilians notice you and thank you for saving them from thugs. They don't even fear you, instead they pass you and say odd comments. Walking through the streets of the Rogue Isles doesn't give the satisfaction that Paragon City does.

And as much as I said City of Heroes is a great game, it also has its problems, which City of Villains inherited.

1. The gameplay itself is not boring, but the missions are unnaturally repetitive. If you think I'm simply complaining about 'FedEx' quests (kill that, get an item, bring it back) like in World of Warcraft, that's not it. In World of Warcraft, there are areas called instances that, when entered, create an area for your party separate from the server--they're unique and take a while to get through. And then apart from that, there are quests, most of which take place outside of instances. In City of Heroes/Villains, every quest is one of a handful of identical quest types that takes place in one of a handful of identical instances. An office building, a laboratory, a depot, cave, etc.

2. Like a lot of games, the end game content is not terribly strong, and since City of Villains is newer than City of Heroes, it has even less content. (Although, most people seem to enjoy starting new characters.)

3. PvP in general is not balanced and recently, entirely based on the sort of upgrades (similar to gear) you have, which are expensive.

4. There seems to be semi-frequent disconnects and crashes for everyone and this has been an ongoing problem--there seems to be a lot of bugs they haven't fixed.

Well, I hope all of this finds some use to someone trying to find the right game. This game (and City of Heroes) is pretty cool and although I compared it to World of Warcraft, I'm not really a fan of that game and was only using it as comparison since everyone knows it. It's very different and some of the negative points can be overcome when do you do things like shoot fire from your eyes. As with most MMOs, a free trial might be your best bet to see if you like it.

City of Villains introduces the darker aspect of the superhero world to the universe started by City of Heroes. Players can assume the role of villainous juggernauts and terrorise Paragon City. This game also introduces the first real player-versus-player fighting, since player heroes can now fight player villains in special city zones.

Initially the new characters that are available to villains are very fun and interesting, but mostly so because they are new. Eventually these new classes and powers fail to entertain because the underlying game is still the same. The mission system is practically the same with a few modifications and the missions are hardly different from those in City of Heroes, save the intent. The style of fighting is altered a bit with an interesting-but-insignificant rage buildup system. This is not a big problem if the game's style of play is fun for you, but for those that are hoping for new and exciting content, this isn't it.

City of Villains is a fine game technically and should bring great entertainment to hardcore players, but it lacks in originality.

After being totally burnt out on WoW, I found City of Villains a great alternative. I have been having a complete blast with this game. First off, dont buy this game expecting WoW. It is not. No, there is no AH. No, there is no item grind, no ninja looting. However, those are definite strengths. Because of this, there is little to no competition for looting mobs, which results in a very friendly user base. I log in, relax, do a few missions, log out. And think to myself "that was fun!".

Yes, some of the missions can get a little repetitive, but I still find it quite enjoyable and relaxing to play. I dont feel as though I am playing a complete time-sink.

Go ahead and CoV a try! Especially if you are burnt out on other MMORPGS and would like to try something a bit different.

Like its predecessor, City of Villains isn't sure what it is. Is it a game emulating comic books? Or is it a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game with a few trappings of comic books? In the case of City of Heroes, the balance is weighted in favor of the former answer, while City of Villains splits the difference. Unfortunately, most players will likely be coming to this game hoping for much more of a comic book flavor than they will find.

As with CoH, CoV constrains characters into a few character classes, called archetypes here, but essentially, you have characters who can take a lot of damage, deal a lot of damage hand-to-hand, deal a lot of damage from a distance or have thugs or other minions deal damage for them. Interestingly, instead of using the same archetypes as they did in CoH, the designers have elected to change each of the heroic archetypes for villainous characters. This is good in that a villainous Stalker doesn't feel exactly like a heroic Scrapper, but since Player Versus Player combat is a large portion of the game, having archetypes without the benefit of as much time to balance them has led to some rather wonky effects on the game, both in combat against other players and against computer-controlled opponents.

My Stalker character, who is about the same level as my Scrapper, can bypass whole sections of missions automatically, because he's able to turn invisible (like a ninja) until it's time to flip out and cut off heads (like a ninja). Is this fun? Sure. Is it what's intended by the developers? Almost certainly not. Is it going to be changed later on, possibly without any advance warning? Almost certainly.

PVP raises another issue with the game: As in CoH, your villains cannot just randomly decide to take a poke at one another. Instead, like gentlemen duelists, they have to head to the nearest combat arena, sign up for a match against each other and duke it out there. There are in-game explanations for this -- a monstrously powerful uber villain organization that has no problem with gangs running wild in the streets but objects to supervillains fighting -- but it doesn't feel very much like the comic books. Do the Hulk and the Thing make an appointment to punch each other out? They do in City of Heroes and their enemies have to do the same in City of Villains.

Likewise, there is no chance of running into a superhero player character roaming the painfully named Rogue Isles, nor will your villain race from angry mobs of superheroes in Paragon City. Instead, both sides will have to line up to meet in special cordoned-off PVP zones or visit fake versions of the enemy territory, stocked with non-superheroic stock troops of non-player characters.

Finally, the much-heralded bases for teams, excuse me, supergroups, are only really viable for a supergroup that is relatively large in number and plays all the time. To get anything other than a blank room (or a decorated room characters can't easily interact with) costs a great deal of what passes for money in the game (imagine: a supervillain game where the villains never get to enjoy anything they steal, since it's whisked away and replaced with Infamy and Prestige automatically), including monthly rents that can quickly drain a nest egg. Many of the features of bases, like invasion and defense missions, require even larger teams that resemble MMORPG uberguilds more than they do actual comic book teams. Individuals will be able to get their own bases, eventually, but the problem could have been resolved by making bases much cheaper and having more of "the good stuff" in reach of the non-enormous, non-24/7 supergroups.

The game, however, does improve on its predecessor in several key ways. Unlike some of the other reviewers here, I was not impressed by the endless simply decorated boxes the buildings of most of City of Heroes consisted of, nor the multiple zones of "burning box buildings at an angle" that fill in for half-destroyed regions of town. (And, of course, there are the "box buildings shrouded with pea soup fog" and "box buildings surrounding a bunch of tree" neighborhoods as well.) The Rogue Isles have a great deal more flavor than any neighborhood in Paragon City other than King's Row can muster, and much of it feels organic, if still not entirely realistic.

Similarly, although it's very linear (all your supervillain characters progress through almost identical storylines), the stories in CoV are actually much more involving and interesting than the ones in CoH, of which a few were intellectually interesting (the truth about the Clockwork King, for instance) but little more. CoV stories are full of pathos, hatred, love and betrayal and the overaching villain organization makes the Sopranos look like the Brady Bunch. Great stuff.

Ultimately, though, if you're looking for a game that emulates supervillain comics like Sleeper, Wanted, Secret Six or the classic Secret Society of Super-Villains, CoV is extremely hit or miss, with the designers trusting more in MMORPG cliches than they do in the comic book tropes that brought gamers in the door to begin with. Your characters, who all lack secret identities and display a uniformly evil nature (one mission has villains casually kidnapping people off the streets of Paragon City to be organ-harvested by a CoH NPC villain organization) will spend more time in hospitals than any comic book character ever has and fight far more villains and generic super-cop NPCs than they will ever even see a costumed hero, player-controlled or otherwise.

City of Villains takes a modest step forward from where City of Heroes began (and remains mired, for the most part), but just like its predecessor, it feels like the superhero/villain game that's come before the truly great one, which will blow this one out of the water.

When designing a game based on comic books, every design decision has to go towards what makes the game feel more like comic books and make it work. If not, you end up with a game that, eventually, you wonder why you're playing. It's not a great MMORPG (other than the wonderful /sidekick system that lets characers of different power levels play together, it adds no innovations to the genre), it doesn't much emulate comic books, it's just a fairly conservative MMORPG with a light veneer of four-color heroes and villains.

A fun game to pick up for a month or two, but nothing that compels a player to stick around much more than that.

This is a really fun game if you want to play mmorpg without all the mid-evil stuff... lets face it every mmorpg game out there is stuck in the past!

This game is easy to play & understand. Its one of the few online mmorpg games set in modern times, & allows FULL costumization of your character.

People complaining about the time it takes to make a character are missing half the fun of the game, you'll find dressing your "toon" one of the highlights of the game. As you progress in the game you gain more costume options

Capes
Auras
extras costume slots (you can currently have 5 differnt looks)
Wings (after 15 months of paid/played game time)
etc....

lots of new content added every 6 months or so.

this is a game worth trying if you are still thinking about do so :)

I highly recomend it!

City of Villians is a fun game. You get to be a villian and fight heroes in a vst big land. There's lots of quests and a tutrial to help you. The only downside is u need to pay each month or 3,etc depending how much u payed. If u get a copy, u might get one month free but u have to activate it first.

"City of Heroes" is a good, fun online expierience... and "City of Villains", when combined with "CoH" tops that level of fun off. I have both so this review is only really relevent if you have both games as they play really well off of each other.
Let me start with the basics: character design. It is the same as CoH, yet there are more sinister costume pieces and as you progress further in level you uncover more interesting pieces like a larger variety of capes and such. Of course, with the new Veterans rewards comming out... capes will probably be replaced by the most anticipated wings. Still, the costume design is arguably my favorite feature of the game.
The hunting and missions are all rather decent although they are pretty much of the same vein as CoH... but the new Mayhem missions have a bit of excitement to them because you can destroy the surroundings to "alter" the area. You kidnap people... which actually equates to rescuing them but a small technicality like that equates to nothing big at all. The team ups can be pretty rewarding. Another fun aspect is that when a victim is destroyed, they fall like a real person would... as in dead weight.
The bad aspects of the game... the biggest being issues with lagging game play. If you spend too much time on, the game tends to get a little choppy and freezes. Also, the server for CoV tends to loose connection allot so that contributes to some frusteration.
Still, little things like that don't really detract all that much from the appeal of being a badder than bad guy. It is fun, creative, and sometimes... a little too adictive.