ony Online Entertainment’s newest console addition to the EverQuest universe is impressive indeed. In fact, the amount of content Champions of Norrath offers is almost too much of a good thing (if that’s even possible).

Developed by Snowblind Studios, the company behind the original Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath offers up the deepest dungeon crawling experience in the console universe to date.

Champions’ list of features reads like a perfect recipe for success. There are five playable character classes each with a wide variety of customization, including the ability to name your own avatar. All the dungeons in the game, save the city hubs that connect the whole world together, are randomly generated so that each and every time you play the game the experience is different. There are more than 10,000 randomly generated items in the game, and players can even modify them to create their own unique items. The list, as they say, goes on and on.

But perhaps the biggest and best piece of the Champions puzzle is the fact that the game can be played online with friends. Using the Network Adapter, PlayStation 2 gamers can take Champions online to explore and level up their characters. In fact, the game has three different difficulty settings so that you can play it again with your leveled-up avatars.

This title can be played offline as well. In fact, you can insert or remove your character from an adventure any time you want. Play with three friends at Jimmy’s house, and when his mom kicks you out for being a deviant, you can download your character to a memory card, and then continue playing with different players online.

All told, Champions of Norrath is a very compelling dungeon crawler. The ability to play online definitely makes it a standout in the sea of recent releases in the genre. However, the game isn’t perfect. At times, it bogs down from the sheer amount of content it offers. Sometimes I felt like I almost had too many items to wade through or too many pointless dungeons to clear.

These simple complaints aside, if you love leveling up and searching for the latest and greatest weapon for your characters, you really can’t go wrong with Champions of Norrath. It’s a solid game that gets even better if you have the ability to go online and set out on adventures with other players from around the world.  

ANDREW REINER   8.5 With four-player online play, and the original Dark Alliance team fueling the development fires, you’d think that Champions of Norrath would be an easy pick over Dark Alliance II. As it turns out, both games excel in different ways and are equally rewarding. Norrath’s greatest strength is its ability to make gamers come back for more. Both the online and single-player components have legs. With random dungeon generation, three difficulty settings (which require higher level characters), and over 10,000 items, there’s more than enough content here. While both games play very similarly, Dark Alliance II edges out Norrath with little additions along the lines of dual-wielding and sprinting. Norrath is better suited for players who seek extensive multiplayer, whereas Dark Alliance II is the perfect fit for those who simply want a polished adventure to play through once.