Well all, I plugged in Neocron for the first time over the holiday and I though I'd pop in and tell everyone what i think.
First, let me state that neocron has about the Ugliest character models you've ever seen. They might as well have called the game "Prison Guards Online". Everyone is the same size, heights, width, everything. There's nearly no difference between everyone's toons. There's only a handful of different faces, and outfits, so the first thing you notice about the game when you log in is how similiar everone looks. That sucks. (oh, and the women look like men in the game too, just with longer hair.)
Second, the chat interface is not as good as Anarchy's. Its tricky to maneuver through and its annoying as hell to toggel through. To be frank, all the menus are like that. When you go to your inventory, chat, status, or anything else you use a function key to get there, which opens a menu that you need to "x" out of in order to regain control of your toon. So while you're doing just about anything you are unable to engage in combat. That's annoying.
The game isn't as diverse as AO. Not as many skills. Not as many attributes. Not as many classes. Not the completely different looking races. All and all its much more bland then AO when it comes to character developement.
But, despite all that there are two things abut Neocron that make the game enjoyable. First, at first inspection it doesn't seem to buggy at all. I can hang out with 10 or more people while in combat and still everything is very smooth. I was able to play the game only a few days after release with no real problems. When i played AO on day one i think i logged in 10 minutes of play time and 4 hours of kicked out of the game time.
Second is the combat. My God the combat. Its a first person shooter with RPG character making aspects added in. Its great. When my buddies and I fight a monster we are actually fighting the monster, not just pushing Q and then looking to see what's on TV. The combat is just awesome. I was getting the hell shot of me, so you know what i did? I ducked behind a crate! And it blocked the shots coming in at me! It was so cool, i couldn't believe it. We learned that if one guy has a gun and another guy has a club the guy in meelee combat will actually make it harder for the guy with a gun to shoot at the monster. The combat in the game is so much fun i couldn't believe it. I've had more fun fighting in the newbie sewers then i ever had fighitng anything in AO. The combat makes the game worth playing, the rest of it is secondary (at least for me).
