Champions Online - Review @ Eurogamer

In terms of quality if not quantity, the game's content is a good effort, and it will be fleshed out. In a year's time, Champions Online has every chance of being one of the better MMOs out there, and superseding its estranged elder brother City of Heroes. Cryptic has proven its ability to make that happen, so all it needs are the resources and the paying audience.
But right now, it's just not quite enough. Technically rough (it doesn't run smoothly, in terms of graphics or lag) with lumpy character progression, shallow combat, a narrow world and thinly-stretched - albeit entertaining - content, Champions Online is off to a scrappy and threadbare start. As it stands, it's hard to recommend. But it's not hard to like - for the customisation, and for offering a genuinely different flavour in MMOs: a bit of poppy, disposable bubblegum in a world of nutritious gruel.

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wolfing said:

I'm playing and enjoying it right now, but it holds no candle next to City of Heroes. Basically, its improvements are its bane (imho of course):
- Open world instead of instanced missions. This pretty much kills grouping. Nothing was more fun in CoH than gathering your group, getting into an instance and enjoy blasting/slashing/holding/healing in a cohesive group. This is not so in CO, you can group but you're pretty much just 'soloing with other people' as most missions are 'go north and arrest 10 thugs' or 'click on ten glowies'
- Open skillsets instead of archetypes. Basically, pretty much everyone is either a blaster or a scrapper (or both), with some form of self-healing, AoE, hold, pet. Sure, you can make a support oriented character but (see above) there's no point in doing it since you won't be supporting anybody.

Like I said in my 'preview', the game is fun for… 1 maybe 2 months. Even the 'alt-oholism' is not as marked as in CoH as you can pretty much get any skill from any set. Also, repeating the same outdoor missions over and over is not nearly as fun as doing randomly generated instanced missions where you can select difficulty and don't really know what you'll find inside.

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