Guild War Factions - Part One

Published Wednesday, May 10, 2006 by gamegirlrobot | E-mail this post

Alluring beauty in exotic costumes, deadly spells with powerful enchantments. It is a dreamy realm where a girl's wildest dreams can come true.
No - it's not beauty pageant. It's Guild Wars Factions.

After feeling strange and embarrassed in real-live MAGIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering) tournaments as a girl surrounded by hundreds of other not-so-girly guys, I decided to abandon all types of "real-time" combats in which you can physically kick your opponents butts if you want to. Online RPG provides the same experience without the embarrassement, for girls of course. MAGIC came to mind because Guild Wars Factions game-play is quite similar to the idea of the once very popular trading card game.

Guild Wars Factions is a fun game without doubt. I enjoyed it since the very second when I held the game box on the way to the cashier in Target. It has all the elements of a cool game which can entertain you for a while. Well, there are still things I found, comparatively, annoying and they provided room for improvement.

GameGirl likes:

The initial tutorial is short and simple. There is an option to skip the orientation if you think you are good
You can pick a primary and a secondary profession from 8 professions. And each profession comes with approx. 10 - 12 spells/enchantments. With this combination, your character is never the same as your friends'
By exercising chained spells and enchantments, the ability of your character during combats can be as powerful as you ever imagined
The difficulty of the missions increases intelligently proportionate.
You can pick computer generated players of different professions to be on your team if your friends are not online. Remember: your worst enemy is loneliness
Game loading time is short
Level of customization of characters is adequate. I like the fact that I get to pick a face from 10 different faces to further customize my character
The characters are attractive however you mix and match it
It's free to play online

GameGirl dislikes:

There are a lot of running around in the game. I don't like to run in real life or the virtual world. If the game can provide more "stations" where you can get to instantly by clicking on the map, more time can be saved for real battles
The descriptions of the missions can be too long sometimes
The view of battles sometimes is blocked by various things, i.e. trees, hills, monsters, etc. Even after clicking the name of the character cannot "zoom" to the center of the battle that the character is engaged in. This is critical during important battles. It will be beneficial to zoom to a certain distance and proximity of the controlled character with the click of a button
Landscape in the game is ok. Although I can't use the standard of judging Salvador Dali's surrealism (http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/) to judge game art, I do have certain expectations for the gaming industry

If you want to play with me or against me, look for "Game Girl Monk", "Game Girl Ranger", "Game Girl Warrior" or "Game Girl Elementalist" in the America District 4. See you there.

If you want to see a lengthy review with the complete story and thousands of screenshots, please go to gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwarsfactions/index.html

GameGirl Says...