Review: Shadowbane: Rise of Chaos
by Fyrn

When I first looked at Shadowbane.com, and the Chronicle of Strife, I felt compelled by the story and look of Shadowbane. I myself am a fan of swords, and the story of Shadowbane plots around a Sword – Shadowbane. The Box Cover of Rise of Chaos again made me really want to play this game for at least a few days to see how it is; on the box it promised a ‘Real Dynamic World Model’. Sure sounds like a great game.

But, when I finally got to enter the world after having the box for like 2 weeks (I do not possess a Credit Card, as the majority of Germans, and it took them weeks after launch to implement the promised ELV Bank Wire method) all the expectations came tumbling down on me like sore rain.

The first impression you get of something often decides whether you like it or not. And I was about to not like Shadowbane. While the Music of the starting screen was dark and promising, when the blocky character that I created and wasn’t able to customize to my liking entered the world of the Damnation server it struck me pretty hard. A small empty place with like 3 houses and a statue in the middle, a hand full of NPCs, but no player in sight anywhere.
It has been like that in many MMOs, like Anarchy Online for example that the starting areas are empty because you level out of them fast, so I didn’t let that fool me and tried to start off by talking to a few NPCs, getting a few quests, killing a few monsters. I would eventually find the huge player crowd then and have some fun.

Do I need to tell you that I didn’t succeed? I was killing frost spiders and other frosty monsters for a good while, I then also found my way into Starkholm which seems to be sort of the capital of the starting island. And guess what? No players. Well, there have been 4-5 players at once for a few times, and over the time I also found smaller groups at the most famous monster spawns, but I think you get my point – what is MMO without the MM?
But enough of my diary style rambling, and let me tell you the facts.

Shadowbane: The Rise of Chaos.

Or should the topic just be “Shadowbane”? Because this first expansion to the game does not really expand it. In Rise of Chaos you get the Nephilim, a new player race “with bat-like wings, horns and the ability to mask their infernal nature”. In reality this means you get another race that can fly, which is not new to Shadowbane. And it also can transform into human appearance, which seemed to be pretty useless to me. And you get graphical enhancements that “include new environmental effects, which will add to the overall ambiance”. In reality this means you get for example snow, which adds to the overall ambiance while it is snowing, but ruins it all again while it stops and starts. Like the Day/Night cycles in Shadowbane, snow abruptly starts and stops. I wasn’t able, at any point, to immerse myself in the world of Shadowbane at all. Running along a quadratic river that has plain blue non-reflective, non-transparent water and having snow suddenly appear out of the nowhere just doesn’t work for me, sorry.

Shot1

The Age of Strife.

Strife it is indeed, the strife between the player and an empty world with no apparent connection to its story. While the lore of Shadowbane was one of the pre-purchase attractions to me, it does not seem to have any meaning to the actual game. If you are not talking to every NPC and attempt to do any quest there is, you do not get any story at all. And worst of it all, you have to do it all alone. The already small player base does mostly focus on the PvP features that Shadowbane offers and so you will find it hard to find people to play with instead of against most of the time (if its not for the usual monster bashing for levels).

Shot1

Conclusion.

Shadowbane: Rise of Chaos is not an essentially bad game, with a small update to the graphics engine and more things to do besides chopping other player’s heads off this game could be great.

The outdated graphics, and the several other annoyances like that there is no path finding engine which makes manoeuvring your character a real pain in the ass, the abrupt weather and day/night changes, square trees, and sounds that don’t fit (a huge gate sounds like a small door) ruined the game for me. If you can ignore them, you might find the hidden beauty in Shadowbane: Rise of Chaos though. Or you could just do as everyone else, and level your character up to compete in the severe PvP beating that is going on all day.



I am looking forward to the next Shadowbane expansion, or maybe to a sequel. The story, the box artwork and other things look so amazingly good that i still, even after i have been disappointed by the current state of the game, want to see what is coming.

- Marian 'Fyrn' Rudzynski