Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Logan Booker indulges in a saga that is less than heroic.

Playing a new massively multiplayer online game isn’t as exciting a proposition as it used to be. Once labours of love, publishers have realised that MMOs are veritable cash cows just waiting to be milked until their dollar-disgorging udders are drier than a grain of sand in the vacuum of deep space. The effect of this is titles are pushed out months before they’re ready, developers taking advantage of the online nature of the genre to patch in features at a later date. Sigil’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a good example of a game that was released with such a strategy in mind.

Vanguard takes place in the world of Telon, which is comprised of three very different continents. Each continent is home to about three to five races, and it’s with this element that Vanguard separates itself from the MMO crowd – the game packing 19 playable races including wolfmen, orcs, goblins and humans, and 15 unique classes.

Each class is divided into four categories – defensive melee, offensive melee, offensive caster and healer. A few, such as the Disciple and the Cleric, straddle the line between caster and melee, but for the most part each profession is well-defined.

With so much variety, one might question if Sigil has sacrificed quality over quantity. The non-inclusion of two of the planned classes only provides further evidence for this line of thinking.

Vanguard thankfully is reasonably complete out of the box, but we did hit a wall of patches soon after creating a Sony Station account (required to play, needs a credit card, boo) and logging in. On a 24Mb ADSL connection, it still took a good 45 minutes to get completely up-to-date. On a positive note, Sigil looks to be doing semi-daily patching, but you could just put this down to the game’s newness rather than the pursuit of raw improvement.

Character generation is very fulfilling. It’s not quite as in-depth as NCSoft’s City of Heroes, but more satisfying than World of Warcraft. Along with class and race, the player can configure height, weight and, taking a page from Oblivion, a large number of facial features. In the end, it is unlikely two players in-game will look at all similar and if you can’t be arsed fiddling with all the settings or just looking for inspiration, a randomise button is available.

The game proper is a bit of a mixed bag. Vanguard makes no attempt at all to mask what it has borrowed from Blizzard’s WoW. The interface is scarily similar, as are the basic combat and NPC interaction mechanics. While not original, it provides a gentle learning curve for players coming across from what is undoubtedly Vanguard’s greatest competitor and allows the game to easily introduce its more advanced elements.

One such element in the concept of ‘spheres’, of which there are three to manage: Adventuring, Crafting and Diplomacy. Each sphere can be levelled to increase the number of abilities it contains, as well as the player’s efficiency in that skill. The first is fairly self-explanatory, and is the sphere you’ll likely spend the most time improving. The Crafting sphere is a sub-game in itself, and requires more than just a bunch of materials and a ‘Create’ button. A player must engage in a number of steps to craft an item, dealing with mishaps and complications along the way. Finally, players can try their hand at Diplomacy. While its advantages have yet to be properly defined in-game, Diplomacy involves a card game mechanic where players must ‘play their hand’ correctly to influence their opponents. Sigil has mentioned that this will eventually develop a player versus player element.

The combat system is where perhaps the most work has been done. Vanguard sets out to really differentiate itself in this regard, and does so successfully. It’s hard to say if it’s better than other MMOs, but it is certainly unique. For example, players can select both an offensive and defensive target. If you’re a healer, you can select the main tank as your defensive target, and whatever he or she happens to be bashing as your offensive target. You can then not only monitor the health of the tank, but also contribute to the fight. Vanguard also supports a ‘combo’ system, where if you’re competent enough, you can deal extra damage by combining ‘openers’, ‘bridges’ and ‘finishers’. Combat is also less random and more tactical. A player’s perception ability allows them to see upcoming attacks and spells, and counteract them in a planned fashion instead of scrambling for a panic button or fast heal.

Sadly, as much as Vanguard aspires to be the most innovative MMO of the year, it doesn’t do enough to separate itself. A lack of polish in design (two missing classes, diplomacy system), numerous bugs (alt-tabbing is simply not possible, and the game does enjoy the odd crash) and a UI that needs some improvement (and be less of a direct rip-off of an interface which is itself not great) leaves it struggling. Give it three to six months to get out of its second beta and we have no doubt the game will show a lot more promise.

Quality Conundrum
Based on Unreal Engine 3, Vanguard can look extremely pretty when the graphics are set to maximum. Indeed, there is a crazy number of graphical options to tweak. As usual, turning off/down shadow and lighting detail provides the greatest frame rate boost.

If you’re feeling lazy, the game has a number of video profiles including Best Performance, Balanced and Highest Quality. We found Balanced actually did provide a good compromise between visual splendour and frame rates, while Best Performance looked hideous and Highest Quality made our eyes bleed at the razor sharp levels of anisotropic filtering.

For: Diverse range of classes and races; expansive world; Unreal Engine 3.

Against: Feels and looks a bit ‘fake’; lacks polish; prone to crashing; very derivative.