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Ventura Quest

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ventuz

V

ventuz

Ventura Quest
vquest331 and vquest327
For vquest331 - http://www.hiveworkshop.com/maps/?id=6601
For vquest327 - http://www.hiveworkshop.com/maps/?id=6618
Review by Ventuz and Wpus

Map Author - Ventura
Game Genre - RPG (ORPG)
Map Size - Epic
Number of players - 9
Number of suggested player - 2+


Introduction - 5/10
Since it's an orpg, a storyline isn't necessary. You just load up the map and there are two taverns right in front of you to choose a class or type in your load code.


Gameplay - 7/10
The game is like a basic rpg map, but the classes you pick greatly influence how you play. If you've ever played the real version of EverQuest, the playing styles for the classes are basically the same. A warrior is a tank and pretty much needs a healer to help him survive. Some skills and certain classes are useless and it gets frustrating being forced to raise your useless skills rather than enhance one that you use more often.

One of the major disappointments I found was that it's virtually impossible to play the game solo and still enjoy it. (You cannot play it solo and use the save/load commands to save your character).
It becomes so tedious even when you're playing with a couple people, it's really designed for a group - I'd say 4 or more of the right classes that work well together - that can play for long periods of time.

There are rare creep spawns in the game that drop specific loot which can be decent and is usually worth it, however, some of the creeps are too rare that it becomes quite frustrating. The epic quest spawns come to mind; they are supposed to be rare on purpose, so that everyone doesn't get their epic so easily, but hours and hours of mindless killing low level creeps without any benefits other than hoping your named spawns gets extremely boring.

The backpack feature which allows you to carry 10 extra items is very nice, but when you do a save/load, the items in your backpack do not get saved, so you are forced to wear your best 6 items and load with those, disposing anything else you might've acquired.

Selling excess items for money would be great if money had some real purpose in the game. You can buy weak armor and weapons and such, but they are equal to, or weaker than the loot you can easily acquire by just killing things. Part of everyone’s epic quest requires them to spend 300 platinum on a vender coin, but that's the only thing you really need to save money for. Buying SoW (enhances your movement speed) potions and Teleportation (if you died in a certain zone/area and your corpse is there, the potion will take you directly there) potions are cheap and by the time you need to really use them, you'll have more than enough money, so it just keeps growing and becomes useless.

Another fundamental frustration happens when you finally get up to level 60, experience becomes harder and harder to get, as the highest level creeps are level 58, not including bosses or named. You're supposed to get a group and hunt in Plane of Fear, but not enough people play the game to make that actually happen. PoF isn't accessible if you are playing the game solo and it's impossible to do with any efficiency unless you have a big group of decent players with decent loot. In version 3.27, basic plane of fear creeps have 30,000 hp, but in 3.31 (the latest version as of yet) the creeps have 120,000 hp. The loot from Fear is great if you're lucky enough to find a bunch of players with high level characters of the right classes to be able to do it, but it's very tedious.

It's quite fun to play though, you just need someone to play with to make it much more enjoyable. Leveling up in certain zones, hoping to get that elusive named creep to spawn, or trying to get some random loot can be very fun. It makes for many great hours of entertainment the first time you play it through.

Overall, it's a very good ORPG map and the only real problem is that at the moment so few people ever host it and that it's really dependant on having a group of people play it. Otherwise I think it would deserve a higher rating. It's a fun map.


Cleanliness - 7/10
The terrain is set up into different zones which make it very interesting and quite neat, it appears as though the game is quite large, which it is. It doesn't follow the typical ORPG layout which seems to be just a giant box, with stuff randomly all over. It mimics zones as best it can from Everquest in the Warcraft format.

Occasionally it can get choppy with lag if you play for a while (version 3.32 was supposed to fix that, and if it ever gets released I hope it does) and the save/load feature can somewhat ruin the gameplay experience since you can use it in a bunch of different versions. An example would be using your newest 3.31 code to load your character into a 3.27 game and go to Fear, where the mobs have 30,000hp rather than 120,000, making it a whole lot easier.


Replay Value - 8/10
The replay value is pretty good because of the unique strengths, weaknesses, strategies and play styles of all the different classes. You can collect loot with your higher level character and give it to a brand new character, making it easier and more fun to level them up. There are some items that only specific classes can use, such as bows being for rangers, staff weapons for monks, and leather type armor for monks. You can also save multiple characters if you decide you feel like trying out a different one for a little while.


Overall Score - 7/10


Pro
+ Hours of fun
+ Save/Load Code
+ Risk Vs Reward
+ Different classes to play as

Con
- Spend hours to get specific loot
- Save/Load Code reusable between 3.27 and 3.31
- Needs at least another person to play with

To download or not to download
Yes, download it if you love ORPG maps and hours of fun

Comment
3.31 was the latest version to come out. Ventura claimed that there would be a v3.32 with one last code reset and last map to come out, but it never happened. As of May 13, vquest website vanished. (It might come back or it might not)

Update - May 23
For more information, visit http://vquest.eqvault.ign.com/index.php
 
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