Champions of Norrath is a repetitve and cheap Hack and Slasher.
So basically this is the same boring game made by the people that brought you Dark Alliance, and they didn't feel like improving anything about it.
----------Battle System----------
Champions of Norrath is an down-top-view dungeon crawling Action RPG. The point of the entire game is to crawl through a dungeon and make it to the exit, or find an item for a fetch mission, there's really no puzzles within the game or anything that require thought. You just run through it unmapping the unexplored randomly generated dungeon.
You gain experience for each monster killed, but none for completeing a quest. After each level, your character will get ability points to distribute amoung the four ability sets, Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Stamina. After you sort out your points, you then get to add another point to your Skill set, which gives you Melee attacks or new spells.
There's only one person within the town that sells you weapons and armor, but what he sells is totally random. Monsters drop items at random at a REALLY high rather, and it seems ridiculous that a Giant Ant will drop an Ax after you kill it, but whatever. Your character will have a weight limit, so the more items he picks up the faster he'll reach his limit and can't pick up any more. What you have to do at this point is to warp back into town and sell all the worthless crap you picked up, and then warp back to your spot, you'll be doing this OVER and OVER again, it gets old.
The only difference about this game and Dark Alliance is the fact that you can play four players instead of two, and you can go online with your game. That's really it, Champions of Norrath is the same exact game.
----------Characters / Story---------
At the start of the game you pick your character out of a selection of five classes, I choose a Barbarian. You are opened up with a conversation with the Elvin King, who is at war with some Goblins and Orcs. Your "goal" is to be the "Champion of Norrath" but the further you get into the game you unveil the real plot.
I loved the first Act of the game, but there's honestly not much story within the game. After the first Act you get thrown into a dwarf world that's battling giant Ants for about 2 hours, and then you get thrown into a Water stage for no reason, I mean, the Acts barely connect, they just seem so random.
The dialog and "character development" are really really bad. Your character is a silent hero that says what you tell him to say, but there's really no expanded options like in Jade Empire for example. The dialog the NPC say is so worthless it's not even worth reading.
----------Graphics----------
Compared to Dark Alliance, the character models haven't improved, and in some cases they devolved. The level designs are completely random this time, so they aren't as creative (but.. I'm not saying Dark Alliance had creative stages). The water effects look great, and theres more little things like frogs and birds that appear in the background. It's a slightly prettier game, but I hate the randomly made dungeons, which shows how lazy the developers are. The camera is better compared to Dark Alliance, since you can zoom in and out. You create your character at the beginning of the game, so there's slightly more options on your characters appearance, but it doesn't really matter in the end because the only times you REALLY get to see your character is in the status screens when you equip new armor, and even then most of the armor obscure his face.
The biggest problem with the graphics is the overall generic presentation, there's nothing creative about any of the level designs, the character models or anything. The dialog scenes are very crappy, it's just close ups of characters talking while they headnod and flail their hands around, no realistic movements. The editing within the dialog scenes is also poor, from the way they go from scene to scene, it's very choppy. The game also features a few glitches where when you start of the game, the background slowly loads up while you run around waiting for the floor to load, and sometimes the game will slowly load as you rotate a camera a little to fast aswell.
----------Sound----------
The music is really good, not very rememberable, but it was great background music that kept you focused on hacking and slashing away. The voice work is better than Dark Alliance, but still not good compared to any other game out there. The actors just sound so bored. The main character doesn't speak, but they give him stupid one-liners within battle like when you first enter a dungeon he'll say something stupid.
The biggest flaw with the sound is the delay with the dialog scenes. When you walk up to a character and initiate a chat with them, the dialog box will pop up, and slowly scroll the words. By the time you are done reading what the dialog says, the voice FINALLY kicks in. This delay was really distracting, although it only was affected during chats where you start. If there's a full blown cutscene, then the voice makes the words.
----------World Map----------
The world map is the same worthless hub-world like in Dark Alliance. You start in one safe area with one person that sells and buys items, you then branch out into fields and dungeons within each hub. You'll find Portals that can transport you around the world. You also have to your traveling advantage is the Magic Scrolls that transport you back to the guy that buys/sells you items.
The game is broken into Acts, five in all, and within each Act is a new world, which feels like there is no connect at ALL between them. You can't travel between Acts either, so if there was a sidequest you wanted to get back to, you're screwed and can't finish it. Because you can't backtrack between Acts, and the Acts being quite short, the game feels very very linear (just like Dark Alliance).
----------Time to Complete Game----------
Time is not recorded, so I'm not sure how long I actually played it, but it might be between 10 or 15 hours at the most. After you beat the game you can restart with all your levels and fight harder enemies, big deal.