This is a old review I had for TSW that I still feel plays out well. Though now that it's a "buy once" game, it's much more worth it. Hard to beat at 30$ I think
The Secret World
+A new type of mmo. It just is. It seems to successfuly do what starwars TOR was trying to do with story, mostly in that you feel involved in a story. You don't really get to choose options, but it feels like you are actually in a story & a constent world.
+Investigation missions are quests where you have to figure out puzzles using real world skills. You find a morse code transmission that says where a treasure is. How do you solve it? ...Decipher it, learn morse code. You have to unlock a computer password and the only hints you get are "the music of the seasons" and that it plays under fireworks a lot of the time. No multiple choice, just those 2 things... And those are 2 of the EASIER ones
+Current Day "magic & secret societies are real" setting, unlike anything another mmo has really done. If you are a fan of zombies, hp lovecraft, the illuminati, the dresdin files, basicly any sort of "modern wierd fantasy" the setting is great
+No levels, you get points as you get xp, points to put in skills & into powers. The amount of xp you need for points never really increases, though the quest xp you get does. The game has a staggeringly huge number of powers, something like 12 weapons, each weapon haveing 2 main trees and then 6 secondary trees (each tree being 8 powers).
+Lots of in game cut scenes & the BEST acting i have EVER seen in a mmo, nothing else has come even close. Seriously, i can not stress this enough... Every quest person you meet in this game nearly feels like a completly fleshed out character. When you can meet a tribe of red neck indians and each of them seems like a unique & well thought out character you know they are doing something right.
+TONS of content, i've played threw one full zone of 3 maps, and there are i belive 4 zones? it took me roughly 30 hours or more to do just that, and i only repeated a quest once or twice.
-Has a cash shop where you can buy visual changes for your character
-Provides only limited structure for learning the skill/power system, meaning it has a high learning curve
-Dosn't allow respecs
-Graphicly it's good game, but the character combat animations leave something to be desired
-The combat it's self is nothing amazing
-Can be a very dark & gruesome game
-This is a mmo where the story and playing threw the game IS the game. If you just want to get to end game to grind raid bosses this is a horrible choice of a mmo, see TERA.
-There is no world pvp, only large instanced pvp that feels very "zerg"
