Guild Wars Nightfall review

Like its predecessors, Guild Wars Nightfall breaks the standard business model set by Sony and Blizzard by offering a streamlined, massively multiplayer online role-playing experience with a robust PvP system and lots of new missions for adventurers - minus the monthly fees.

Set in the Egyptian-inspired land of Elona, Nightfall adds two new professions to the original six from Guild Wars: Prophecies (the original Guild Wars, which was retroactively renamed when the first expansion came out). The Dervishes are scythe-wielding masters of melee combat, armed also with various area-of-effect attacks and enchantments. Paragons are ranged spear-throwing fighters, capable of boosting your party’s abilities with inspirational shouts. Series gurus should be pleased with these new additions, which complement the original professions better than the somewhat disappointing Assassins and Ritualists from the last expansion pack, Guild Wars: Factions.

As with the previous Guild Wars games, you’ll need to choose a secondary profession. With seven alternative professions to choose from and hundreds of unique skills to learn, you can mix and match professions and skills to create almost any type of character. Would you like a Dervish/Monk who can hold his own in hand-to-hand combat and heal on the side? Or do you prefer a Paragon/Ranger who can rain spears of death and set traps?

The choice is yours and Nightfall expands on Guild Wars’ already flexible character creation system by including the option to create and save templates for various character builds. No matter how many skills you’ve unlocked, Guild Wars only lets you choose eight skills to take with you when leaving a town to adventure or compete in PvP. The skills you use to complete quests may not be the same ones you’d prefer for PvP competitions. In the past, players would have to manually tweak their attributes and re-select their skills. The new template system is a welcome new feature and makes managing your characters a breeze.