If you've ever played a fantasy role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons, you'll quickly become familiar with EOA. EverQuest is basically an electronic version of the old paper-based role playing games, complete with character races, skills, classes and equipment. While this might be an over-simplification of the gameplay for EverQuest Online Adventures, it should give you a general idea of what to expect from the game.

EverQuest Online Adventures, as the name implies, is an online game, and thus requires that you have an Internet connection and the Playstation 2 Online Adapter installed and working. If your PS2 isn't online yet, EOA will be useless to you, since it takes place completely online.

Once you have your character ready, it's time to step into the world of EverQuest, and what a rich world it is. When you start the game, you'll be weak and minimally armed. It's up to you to go find a quest, which you'll need to complete so that you can  increase your skill levels and attributes. The early quests are fairly simple, and serve as training to get you into the groove of the game. Once you've finished the first four or five, you'll need the help of other players to finish your assigned quests. This is where the real fun begins as you learn to use the community features of EOA to make friends, create teams and launch your career as an adventurer.

The controls in EOA make every aspect of the game easily accessible. When you first look at the game manual, the list of controls can appear pretty daunting, but you'll quickly find they are easy enough to learn. The control layout really makes this game more enjoyable than you could imagine. For example, to add someone to your playing group, you target them by tapping the R1 trigger, then hit the start button to pull up the Community menu. In the Community menu, you choose "Invite to Group" and that's it. If the invitee agrees to join the group, their name will appear in an icon on the left side of your screen. From then on, you tap the L1 button to target them, at which point you can speak with them, trade goods and interact directly with them in other ways. The targeting system is also used to lock on to enemies (using R1), which makes combat much simpler.

Speaking of combat, it couldn't be much simpler than it is in EOA. Just target the enemy and get within fighting range. From there you can use your melee (hand-to-hand) or ranged attack to dish out the damage. Every creature in EOA is assigned a Hit Point value, which determines the amount of damage they can take. Small creatures, such as rats, might have a low value, and thus be easy to kill, while larger creatures, such as dragons, are going to take significantly more work After you kill a creature, you will earn experience based on your current skill level and the level of the creature. For example, when you're a low level character, you can kill grass snakes and earn plenty of experience, but after a few increases of your skill level, you'll get zero experience for those types of easy kills.

EverQuest Online Adventures focus is on quests and teamwork, which makes the gameplay a lot of fun if you enjoy the social aspects of online games. Since the later quests require you work with other players, you'll find yourself making plenty of new online friends. There are two things I have to mention, else I wouldn't be doing the game justice. First off, it's very rare you'll ever meet someone with a bad attitude in this game. In several weeks of online play, I have yet to encounter someone who attacks other players or acts in any nasty or malicious ways during a game. Secondly, to truly enjoy the community aspect of the game; go buy a USB keyboard for your PS2. While the on-screen keyboard allows you to chat with other players, it's a horribly slow and cumbersome means of communication. You'll get much more enjoyment from the game if you can type out your messages on a standard keyboard, so please, go grab one. A no-frills USB keyboard can be had for around $10 at your local computer store, and I'd highly recommend one if you're considering this game.

Graphics

The graphics in EOA, are good, but far from great. Character models are polygonal and chunky, giving everyone a block-head appearance. Textures are minimal, and the weather effects are simplistic to non-existant. There are some nice touches such as groups of butterflies that follow the wind, the change of the color of the sky at dusk and how your character's appearance will change based on what equipment you have, but overall, the graphics aren't terribly impressive.

One thing to understand about the low-grade graphics in EOA is that they are this way out of necessity. After all, the servers are running games with thousands of players, and at any time you can have a hundred or so characters on-screen. Thus, the lesser the graphical quality, the better the game will run. Personally, I'm ok with the trade-off of graphical quality for solid gameplay online, and I'm sure once you start playing the game, you'll agree.

Just like the graphics, the sound, when there is any, is pretty basic. As far as a game soundtrack goes, there really is none. Along with the lack of music, the in-game sounds are limited to clanks, crunches and groans. Even in combat, the sounds are sparse and unimpressive. Much like the graphics, I found myself accepting this since the gameplay is what EOA is all about.

Normally, we don't cover online playability as a separate section in our reviews, but I have to make exception for this game. EOA was built from the ground up as an online title, and it shows. Even with modem users playing on some of the servers, you will almost never see any sort of lag within the game.

Just like its PC-based sibling, EOA is all about forming online communities to enjoy adventures with. The community aspect of this game is something I'd love to see reflected in other games. Everything from building up your buddy list to forming parties of characters to accomplish quests is made so easy as to practically compel you to seek out team mates to enjoy your adventures with. After a few hours of play, you'll find yourself quickly making new online friends, and checking in every now and again to see if any of your buddies are online.

Lastly, EOA's sense of community really fosters a feeling of camaraderie between all the players, which practically ensures that you won't meet any less-than-desirable players. Even after sinking about 30 hours into this game, I have yet to encounter one player with a bad attitude. It really says a lot about the game's design in that players can be found frequently helping one another through quests and just generally doling out tips on how to better enjoy the game.

Since EOA is open-ended, you'll find dozens of hours of gameplay to be enjoyed here. As there's nobody forcing you to complete quests, you can freely explore the worlds of EverQuest as much as you like with no penalty. Even if you finish all the available quests, you can replay the game as a new character, which is like playing a wholly different game. Since much of the game relies on working with other players, those varying personalities ensure the game is different every time you play it. All in all, you can lose quite a bit of time to this game and still keep coming back for more!

If you haven't guessed already, I have nothing but good things to say about EverQuest Online Adventures The combination of rich gameplay, a fully-realized fantasy world and the great online community features ensures this game will be enjoyable to anyone who's ever been interested in fantasy role-playing games.

The only concern I have with EOA is the monthly fee of $9.95. While this seems like a small price, if more games go with this pricing model, online gaming on the PS2 could get pretty expensive, forcing us all to choose only one or two games to play online. Let's hope that this is one of the rare times we see a monthly fee for a PS2 game.

See more screens on the EverQuest Online Adventures media page