City of Villains is better than City of Heroes for one reason and one reason alone… Everyone loves to be the bad guy.
After a while it all just sort of blends together and you’re left going “Well, what else is there to do?” and that’s where the game drops out from under you. You’ve done what there is to do within’ the first 20 levels, it’s just a lot more of the same with no alternate content to give you a break.
Another failing is regardless of which version you’re playing you rarely feel ‘super’, this is a two part fault. The first part is inherent to what the game is, an MMOG, you can’t be any more super than someone else thusly no one is actually super at all, everyone is just average. Interestingly enough rather than making the players the heroes there are SUPER Super Heroes which do all of the fun stuff rather than the players.
The other fault of it is that in all of the level designs and quests you never do anything super, you kill some guys with guns, or robots, or you kill a guy with a TV on his head, or you kill a snake man, or you kill any other amount of generally the same things with different models.
The game fails entirely at providing variety of game play, it’s an awesome base for something great to be built off, but right now it’s like one quarter of what could be a great whole if they ever figure out how to make you feel heroic, give you some alternative things to do, and add a little special something that makes the game different and interesting. Though, in its defense no MMOG really has that last quarter.
City of Villains succeeds in the same place its benevolent cousin does, the character creation. It’s amazing, awesome, super great and all that jazz. Truly it’s the best character creation system in an MMOG or any game to date.
The end all question: Is it worth buying the box? I’d have to say, yes if you haven’t played City of Heroes and no if you have. It’s the same game as City of Heroes just with coat of evil put over it.
However if you’ve never played City of Heroes pick up City of Villains, it’ll give you a month or two of entertainment and you may just be one of the people it really jives with, they are out there. Overall though it’s a time killer and the most fun the product offers is before you even enter the game with making your character.