DC Universe

Shadowdragon & Batgirl @ JLA Watchtower

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 9
Controls: 6
Difficulty: 5

I think this is the MMO I'm looking for! It's not the medieval fantasy D&D setting that I want, but everything else works so well that it doesn't matter. Oddly enough, it's the only RPG that has character creation options for me to make my main character, Shadowdragon.

Character Creation
The character creation, while not as detailed as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KOA), Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) or Dragon's Dogma is really fun. There's not a lot of variety on facial features since it's a superhero game. All of the details are on the costume/armor. There are various character types and combinations of power. The limited palette options also prevents less artistic people from making a bad looking character. For my character, Shadowdragon, I naturally chose Batman as the mentor. His powers are fire-based and he fights with 2-handed weapons. Shadowdragon's weapon, Dragonsaber is a 2-handed sword, but in DCU 2-handed fighters start with a hammer. I checked out the weapons list and they do have swords later in the game. So I made a medieval themed character for a contemporary game!

Story/Quests
I haven't gone too deep yet, but the quests have been fun so far. Many of them involve a coop with one of the Justice League legends. When you first wake up in Braniac's ship, you get to fight side-by-side with Superman. As a student of Batman, you're guided through by Oracle, which is reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. There are battle royales all the time on the streets where you fight along side other players who are logged on. I didn't see that in DDO.

Combat
This is one of the few MMOs with a decent combat system. It's not limited to 2 moves like DDO. Your regular attack has a short combo and you also have special attacks. While it's not (as good as) KOA... it's also far from DDO. The biggest selling point is that they made a conscious effort to make the game control pad compatible. Because of the graphics and setting, this game feels like Batman: Arkham City, so I'm often hitting the buttons for that game. I have to get in the habit of not holding X to run... which I did in both Batman games and KOA.

Loot
Treasure comes at an OK pace in this game. Your character already starts out with basic armor in the beginning, so it's kind of OK. The money comes in slowly, but I don't disagree with the pace. A lot of dropped items are weird, but I think it just takes more playtime to figure out what everything is used for. Any armor piece you pick up adjusts itself to your character's color palette, again preventing mismatched looks. This is such a simple feature, but I wish all RPGs had. All modern RPGs seems to split armor into 5 or more pieces. And with a random drop system, you're more than likely to have a mismatched suit. So it's nice to be able to adjust the colors to match. I would have loved that in KOA!

DCU is also free to play with purchasable add-ons and upgrades. Also noteworthy is you have to endure an initial 15 GB download. It's worth the wait though as this is a great game.