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On Champions Of Norrath, Forgiving Game Reviewers?
Thanks to Curmudgeon Gamer for its article discussing technical problems with PS2 title Champions of Norrath: Realms of Everquest, and why official reviews of the game didn't seem to mention those problems. According to the writer, who had been "experiencing frustrating lock-ups and hangs which have caused the loss some of my progress through the game", it turns out that "two of the reviewers did see the game hang and didn't mention it in their reviews." However, he argues: "That's a judgment call, really, and since each saw the problem precisely once I can understand leaving it out of the review", and ends by suggesting that "the real burden rests not on the shoulders of the reviewers but on the creators of the game and, potentially, the console itself."
I am currently working my way through this game and have experienced the missing graphics bug several times. The bug caused most or all of the background textures to be completely black. The only thing you could see would be things that moved, like your character and the monsters you were fighting. The ground, walls, rocks, etc were completely invisible when I experience this. Although sometimes it would recover on it's own, most of the time I reloaded the game to correct.
It seemed to happen most frequently when I had been playing for about an hour and had changed areas, causing the game to load a different tileset.
I also saw the lockups while playing it. The solution is simple. Eject the disc and put it back in and the game will continue to function without a problem. A real problem I found though that isn't talked about enough in reviews is the shoddy casting system. You have two buttons to cast spells with, and you HAVE to use those two buttons (There is no casting directly from the spell book) So if you have 2 defensive spells you want on as well as your two attack spells ( If you play a mage for example) You have to continually rebind the passive spells to Circle or Triangle, cast them, rebind the attack spells, and repeat 30 seconds later when the defensive spell runs out. The game requires you to push SIX times on the controller to cast one defensive spell. I wish they could somehow release a patch to allow casting from the spell book.