TL;DR:  This game is fun and I am buying it.

The character creation is a blast, I spent 8 hours today playing around with it and I was excited with all the combinations I came up with.  The choices for powers are great, the use of stats adds another layer to character advancement, and all the other layers of character development are great.

First you choose your power set ( or do custom and take whatever you want), then you pick you primary stats (some people got confused with this but it is simple to understand if you take 10seconds to read), after that you design your character, finally once you are in game you can change the color and point of origin on almost all your powers.  So have fun with green fireballs that shoot out of your face if you like.

Next is the bonuses per level.  You do not just get powers every level you get a variety of things.  One level you get a new power, the next you get to pick a travel power, then you get a huge bonus to a stat, then you get another stat package to buff multiple stats, then you get to increase the effect of a power, etc.  You also get items to increase you stats and resistances to damage. This is just a quick run through, im dead tired but wanted to post before I went to sleep.

There are so many travel powers to choose from its mind blowing.  They all look great and have slight advantages in different areas.  I went with acrobatics and it is tons of fun.  Not as fast as speed or as vertical as jumping, but its a balance of the two and looks awesome when you are doing flips and such in the air.  My friend took rocket boots and was flying around like a mad man.

The fighting is intense and fast paced.  You always have something to do and you can get into large battles of 1v5+ immediately.  You come near death alot if you take on tougher opponents, but with the way regen works in this game you can keep going nonstop as long as you manage your powers properly.  The highlight of the night was me vs about 10 radiation mutants who had nukes strapped on their backs and giant mutants in cages that would come after you as well.  You can pick up objects and throw them or lift them to find items or rescue civilians.  The stronger you are the more you can lift and it appears that you also lift them faster too.

This game is very much an action game with tons of room for RP or just having a good time beating the crap out of stuff.  I recomend it.

Also note I was enjoying myself on a variety of settings.  I played on the lowest video settings and the highest.  Both are enjoyable, but obviously the higher settings make things look nicer.  I also played on my crappy mobile broadband card  (which if you have one you know they are not ideal for gaming) and was sitting around 50-75kbs and I was still able to play they game and had fun.  Had about 500ms of lag, but they game was still playable.  My friend played on his cable line and had no lag at all.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I CAN SAY IS THIS:  The UI reaction times are spot on.  It puts every other MMO to shame.  You do not have 3sec or 2sec swing timers.  In Champions you have .33sec and .5sec timers, as well as some slower ones for big powers.  You can also charge some attacks or spam others into combo chains for increased damage  I made a character with psi blades and I felt like a ninja on crack I was attacking so fast.

So if you get the chance, try this game out.  It took me 3 days to download it (combination of launch issues and my crappy 75kbs download speed atm) but it was well worth the wait.

As I said in the begining, this game is fun.

I honestly thought i was done with mmos for good, CO may keep me playing them.

It is a lot of fun, not only from the mmo part, but also to see what others create for their costumes

The character creator is tremendous fun and is well worth sampling, the customisation of powers is also awesome I can understand it entertaining for several weeks..... but imo all that good work is undone the moment you step into the dull simplistic and unconvincing world that your character has to live in, add to that the complete lack of presence of the comic theme and the avatars one lone action (me hero go bash) and the value of all that customisation seems sadly underwhelming.

Originally posted by Sepulcher

TL;DR:  This game is fun and I am buying it.

 

Agreed.

My big debate is whether to snatch another lifetime sub account while I can, for my daughter. She is a COH fanatic and die-hard. Refuses to even check the beta and whenever I start saying "Hey, get this...they have public quests in Champions Online.." she puts her finger in her ears and says "LALALALALA".

If I don't get the second account, when all her COH friends migrate to this new game, I'll be stuck unable to play like I am on my COH account.