I picked up a retail copy of Vanguard Saga of Heroes while checking out the new Wal-Mart in my area. I’m very happy that with the additional gig of ram and the new video card that the game is actually playable now. And I’m not kidding about being playable. In the beta with only 1 gig of ram the game was horrid. I maybe got 10-20 FPS in open areas and 1-10 in huge populated areas. Now I get an average of 25-64 FPS at a resolution of 1280×1024 with settings on balanced.

I’m playing a ranger, which is a first for me. It’s a nice change of pace to have a little stealth mixed in with a little ranged combat to go with my usual melee type class I go for. It’s started to dawn on me how old school the game is with it’s death penalty. Which you here in every review of the game. They also didn’t hide the fact the game was the way it is. It’s just not something I’m used to.

I died a few times not noticing the exp I lost each time I died. Then it slowly came to my realization that I was also leaving behind items on my corpse. There is an option to bind certain equipment so it stays with you when you die. But it’s makes whatever I do a more thought out process when I start to engage in combat. Something I don’t worry about in some of the other games in the mmorpg genre. Overall I am enjoying the game. Which does surprise me.