When I was first shown Champions of Norrath at Sony Online Entertainment's offices, I was immediately bullish on the game; I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and this is more or less a sequel -- the developer is the same, unlike with the "real" sequel, BGDA2, and it uses an updated version of the technology that drove that game.

Given that both Forgotten Realms and EverQuest are more or less completely by-the-book fantasy realms in the J.R.R. Tolkien mold, they're only distinguishable by hardened fanboys of one or the other. Elves? Check! Dark Elves? Double check! You get the picture.

So, while Interplay toils away on its own sequel to BGDA -- which is looking fine in its own regard, mind you -- the developers at Snowblind Studios have been taking what they learned from making Dark Alliance and applying these lessons to a whole new world.

And, while I was expecting a refined game that bore more than a passing resemblance to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, the truth is that Champions of Norrath is all but indistinguishable from its predecessor, and in most cases, the only differences that really stick out are changes for the better. After putting some serious playtime into this early version of the game, I feel that my initial optimism was well justified.

An Adventure Brews

As the game begins you're asked to defend the Elven city of Kelethin, a winding maze of platforms suspended in the treetops, which has been invaded by exactly 45 goblins (there's a counter.) As you wend your way through the mazelike town, slaying the brutish creatures, you're assisted by the town's mediocre militia and assaulted by fiery projectiles which fly from the forest floor onto the town and set bits of it aflame -- including yourself, if you're in the wrong spot at the right time. It's still a lonely trek, one player -- but it feels more involved thanks to these little touches.

Goblins ransack Kelethin.
The visual polish that ran rampant in BGDA is just as present in CON -- the misty pines below the town, the wooden slats and thatched roofs of the town, and the sparkling, burning fireballs -- it's all splendid-looking stuff. Later environments have their own little flourishes, like birds that fly overhead, and that beautiful rippling water. SOE is trumpeting the fact that the game will ship on a dual-layer DVD, which is needed to encompass all of the game's art assets.

That would be a staggering amount of visual data, but the opening areas and the developer's characteristic attention to detail offer clues that they're not exaggerating. (Xenosaga, the only other PS2 game I'm familiar with that ships on a dual-layer DVD, did so to contain massive quantities of video data, and its graphics were no slouch either.) If you want a better look at the action, you can slide the camera in closer than you could in BGDA, but it seems to be less effective at showing you the enemy hordes in your path and I shied away from it.