If any part of what you've read above sounds very complex, that's because it is. While Shadowlands offers a tenacious tip system that insists on explaining everything you do as you do it, unless new players read every single tip and spend a lot of time reading the on-disc starter's guide and the game's community message boards, there's a good chance that beginners will still find Shadowlands to be very complicated, even overwhelming. Fortunately, these beginners won't be alone; like the original game, Shadowlands features multiple chat channels, including a new beginner's chat channel that low-level beginners can use to ask for help. However, unless you've been playing the game for quite some time, you can expect to get lost at some point in deciding how to specialize your character's perks or how to complete certain quests.
The game features huge, imaginative environments.
You might expect a highly complex online RPG like Shadowlands to be accompanied by a huge, sprawling world. You'd be right. The expansion pack's new areas are absolutely enormous. The distinct absence of creatures and interesting scenery in some parts of these areas is rather obvious as you run through them, as is the annoying possibility of falling off the edge in some areas to land in some random part of Rubi-Ka. However, many other parts of Shadowlands' areas are populated by all-new creatures and characters that give quests, and many of the expansion's new environments are nothing less than inspired. You can expect to see highly varied, and in some cases, extremely beautiful and colorful, outdoor vistas, as well as enormous dungeons composed of highly detailed architecture with a futuristic theme. It's somewhat unfortunate, then, that Shadowlands did not update its character models; while Anarchy Online's characters were the best-looking online RPG characters around in 2001, they haven't aged all that gracefully, even though the expansion adds even more unusual and creative character faces to each race for you to choose from when creating a new character, as well as a huge variety of new weapons and items that appear on your character's person when equipped.
But Anarchy Online continues to sound great; though many of the game's voice samples and audio effects remain unchanged, Shadowlands introduces a new set of sound samples for its various monsters, as well as an all-new musical score that seems extremely appropriate for the game's setting and blends well with the original game's music.
The new expansion doesn't improve Anarchy Online's character models or make its gameplay much more streamlined for newcomers. However, Shadowlands adds a huge amount of great new content in the form of all-new quests and a vast new world to explore, making Anarchy Online the best it has ever been. Whether you've played the game or not, you'll find that Shadowlands has a lot to offer, and it's a stand-alone game that comes complete with the original Anarchy Online. If you quit Anarchy Online a long time ago and have considered returning to the game, Shadowlands will make it worth your while. If you've never played Anarchy Online, aren't afraid to go through a bit of a learning curve, and you're interested by the game's far-flung futuristic premise, you should definitely give it a try.
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