Looking back, I actually played this game once before, but never bothered to make a review for it. “Well that’s not very professional” I told myself so here it is: Gates of Andaron Online.
From the start the game really didn’t look like much, you make a character after choosing to be devoted to one of two kingdoms, either one devoted to strength and war, or one devoted to magic and keeping the peace and balance in the world. The game takes a lot from World of Warcraft something I see a lot of MMOs doing these days. The first thing is the log in screen, which is a clear rip off of WoW's Burning Crusade screen, the next obvious take is the Alliance vs. Horde factions, and finally; one of the less obvious to anyone but people who play the priest class (like me) is that the they like dance around on the tightrope thin line between Light and Darkness magic something I personally found appealing. They even take it one step further, combining the two into what is known as “sacrificial” magic, AKA the magical art of Seppuku. 
(Yoshimistu from Soul Calibur [and Tekken if you want to get technical])
Sadly although the classes are not stereotypical to the races, there’s not really much in the originality department. There are only about 5 types of heads and 5 colors of hair per race, and the armor itself doesn’t seem to look any different until you start running through dungeons over and over again desperately trying to find the unique items off of the bosses. By the way does that sound familiar to anyone but me?
Another thing I don’t like about this game going back to the mage and priest classes; is while they are so squishy you could compare them to sponge cake, they have the ridiculous advantage of being able to cast magic as they move (something WoW tried and GuildWars later perfected without fault) after taking the time to get used to this handicap I found that absolutely nothing could touch me, thanks to kiting and my old friend Mr DoT, who pities the fool who thinks they can keep their health up around me. (Sorry bad pun)
After soloing several bosses without suffering so much as a paper cut I decided it was time to give up on this game. I really tried and tried to like Gates of Andaron, but sadly the game as a whole just isn’t very good at all. Anyone who wants to play this game is better off looking for another one. Maybe you can find one you like by scrolling through my other posts (*hint hint* o. o)
GoA scores a 2 out of 10 a score I seem to be giving to a lot of games lately. (Careful what you wish for eh?)
