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Last time we looked at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, it was in a somewhat lamentable state of affairs. Just after its launch nine months ago, the game was a mess of bugs, dropped features, broken quests, regular crashes and system requirements no mortal man could hope to achieve. It was, frankly, a disaster.
And yet, we couldn't help but note that in spite of its disastrous implementation, Vanguard was full of good, ambitious ideas. We liked the concepts underlying such things as the diplomacy system, which allows you to treat conversations with NPCs as a kind of card game, and the excellent crafting system. We liked the idea that we could build our own houses or even boats; we liked the combat system, whose chained attacks and clever manipulation of resistances made most other MMOG combat look staid and boring.
The problem, back in February, is that these concepts were like rough-hewn gemstones being carried along in a river of human excrement. Vanguard was so utterly, painfully broken, both technically and in some key design ways, that reaching for its finer moments was like sticking your fingers into a leper's weeping sores to extract a nugget of gold. Other equally pleasant metaphors spring to mind. I'll spare you.Shored UpIt's a good-looking game - and it'll even run on your PC now, which is a definite improvement.
In February, we gave Vanguard six out of ten - a score that, in retrospect, was probably a little generous given the shocking mess the game was in. Shortly afterwards, Sigil Games CEO Brad McQuaid (he of EverQuest fame) admitted that the game had been released unfinished due to financial constraints, and probably needed another three months in development before it was up to scratch.
Well, fair enough. Sigil - now wholly owned by publishers Sony Online Entertainment - have now had nine months to work on the game. As we observed in our original review, MMOG titles change and evolve in a manner unmatched by any other type of game. If our February review was a snapshot of a painfully incomplete product, then it seems only fair to return and take another snapshot.
The first sign of just how much has changed in the world of Telon comes when you install (or re-install) the game. Setting aside an evening to get back into the game turned out to be a mistake - in that the evening was spent simply installing and patching, with only a few minutes afterwards to run around and play with settings. At a rough estimate, the game took three and a half hours to install from DVD and then patch on a decent UK ADSL connection - we don't know exactly how much patch data that equates to, but it's certainly a hefty amount.
Once you're actually ready to go, however, the first difference between today and nine months ago is immediately apparent. The game works now; not in a creaky, half-baked sense, but in a way which actually makes it feel like a proper, tested, polished product. It loads in a reasonable amount of time, manages a decent frame-rate (the only major hardware change to our test rig was going from an ATI Radeon X1950 to a Radeon X2600 - a nice bump, but not enough to account for the performance boost), and doesn't crash. The view distances are fantastic, and you can even turn on a fair amount of detail without making your PC sob in horror.The ability to build your own houses remains a big draw of the game - most modern MMOs have abandoned the idea of player-owned property.
Not all the graphical problems are gone, admittedly. There are some odd glitches in the system, like the fact that you can see the world being "built" around
Last time we looked at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, it was in a somewhat lamentable state of affairs. Just after its launch nine months ago, the game was a mess of bugs, dropped features, broken quests, regular crashes and system requirements no mortal man could hope to achieve. It was, frankly, a disaster.
And yet, we couldn't help but note that in spite of its disastrous implementation, Vanguard was full of good, ambitious ideas. We liked the concepts underlying such things as the diplomacy system, which allows you to treat conversations with NPCs as a kind of card game, and the excellent crafting system. We liked the idea that we could build our own houses or even boats; we liked the combat system, whose chained attacks and clever manipulation of resistances made most other MMOG combat look staid and boring.
The problem, back in February, is that these concepts were like rough-hewn gemstones being carried along in a river of human excrement. Vanguard was so utterly, painfully broken, both technically and in some key design ways, that reaching for its finer moments was like sticking your fingers into a leper's weeping sores to extract a nugget of gold. Other equally pleasant metaphors spring to mind. I'll spare you.Shored UpIt's a good-looking game - and it'll even run on your PC now, which is a definite improvement.
In February, we gave Vanguard six out of ten - a score that, in retrospect, was probably a little generous given the shocking mess the game was in. Shortly afterwards, Sigil Games CEO Brad McQuaid (he of EverQuest fame) admitted that the game had been released unfinished due to financial constraints, and probably needed another three months in development before it was up to scratch.
Well, fair enough. Sigil - now wholly owned by publishers Sony Online Entertainment - have now had nine months to work on the game. As we observed in our original review, MMOG titles change and evolve in a manner unmatched by any other type of game. If our February review was a snapshot of a painfully incomplete product, then it seems only fair to return and take another snapshot.
The first sign of just how much has changed in the world of Telon comes when you install (or re-install) the game. Setting aside an evening to get back into the game turned out to be a mistake - in that the evening was spent simply installing and patching, with only a few minutes afterwards to run around and play with settings. At a rough estimate, the game took three and a half hours to install from DVD and then patch on a decent UK ADSL connection - we don't know exactly how much patch data that equates to, but it's certainly a hefty amount.
Once you're actually ready to go, however, the first difference between today and nine months ago is immediately apparent. The game works now; not in a creaky, half-baked sense, but in a way which actually makes it feel like a proper, tested, polished product. It loads in a reasonable amount of time, manages a decent frame-rate (the only major hardware change to our test rig was going from an ATI Radeon X1950 to a Radeon X2600 - a nice bump, but not enough to account for the performance boost), and doesn't crash. The view distances are fantastic, and you can even turn on a fair amount of detail without making your PC sob in horror.The ability to build your own houses remains a big draw of the game - most modern MMOs have abandoned the idea of player-owned property.
Not all the graphical problems are gone, admittedly. There are some odd glitches in the system, like the fact that you can see the world being "built" around
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