The World of Cord

So here’s Cord (the Elven Ranger) studying his map that ports him home to Celondim. There is one thing I really have to stress on about Lord of the Rings – the graphics! They are simply gorgeous. Now, my system has handled everything turned up full-blast, and I opted to use DirectX 10 since it also supported that, but you see those little floating letters around Cord? The animation on those was soooo smooth. Very impressive.

Now…gameplay…I’m not totally sold on that part of the game yet. It’s a little mundane with combat. I click and click and click. Gambits are more or less like EQ2’s Heroic Opportunities, where if you trigger actions in the right order, you’ll enable a special ability. I have my Warden gambits figured out so far, and you do learn more as you progress and level. I’ll have to see how the combat goes as I level up…just right now, there’s something “missing”…

The quests are another high point for me. I find them very enthralling, and instead of trying to knock a few off at a time, I am finding myself getting into the story more than EQ2 quests, and wanting to run back to town to complete one and see what the rewards are before moving on too quickly to the next one. High marks to Turbine for this implementation.

Crafting seems to be very simple in that you just have to have the right components, click the “Make” button and away goes your character, creating that item. I have not failed yet, so I don’t know if you can even. I would compare this crafting system very much to World of Warcraft’s in that it is very basic. I have made myself a few pieces of leather armour that have been good upgrades, however, so hopefully the crafting system is “useful” as the game progresses.

The odd question I have had in the “OOC” channel have been answered by players very politely and quickly, so I my first impression of the “community” aspect of the game is good. No attitude yet – in fact, in one quest, before attempting to kill a Signature named mob, I noticed another player character standing next to me. A quick “Hey, you looking to kill him for the update too?” to him had us quickly grouped up in a fellowship and we easily took him down and got our quest updates. If I had to compare that to some areas of the game in EQ2, you can very quickly get met with attitude there at times…

So far, it’s a pretty well-done game. I’m definitely not bored yet, as the lands seem massive with tons of exploration to be had!

Check in from time to time to see how the Warden is progressing.