I just punched Space Hitler in the face, then rocket jumped onto the roof of a nearby building to gun down his army of summoned daemons.

I'm level eight.
Level nine is gonna be awesome.

Alright, I've played this game far too much to not have written my honest opinion on it.

BASIC SUMMARY: You are a superhero who's conveinently arrived to the world in times of crisis, and you (naturally) use your powers to help the general populace and occasionally assist the "Champions" themselves against greater threats.

PRO's:
-Supermassive customization system (Everything from tights and capes to with a lizard-face, tail and double-jointed legs)
-You can throw anyTHING at people, provided you have the strength to pick it up. Freight (Cargo) containers included.
-A wide and diverse variety of powers that you can choose from*, with many actually well-balanced "Archetypes", or pre-build powers to choose from as well. (See cons for "*")
-Tons of references to other sources when you pay attention.
-The ability to essentially create even the story behind your hero (Where'd they come from? Why do they fight for the common good? Etc...)
-You can create... your own rival! Your Nemesis will actually even be the cause of multiple missions.
-You can skip the tutorial and get right into the main world (after your first character that is)
-In-depth tutorial and tooltips for newbies, provided they choose to do them.
-A diverse amount of areas that you can choose to explore (You don't have to leave a zone if you don't want to, there's generally higher level foes available somewhere)
-Wide variety of unlockables. If you see an NPC using something, you can get it!

But, this game does, sadly, have it's problems

CON's:
-Though you can skip right out of the tutorial, you always have to do the same starting set of missions every single time, and there's not much getting out of them. It can get a bit stale if you do it too often.
-Can get VERY grind-y! A lot of the good-quality items can take an extensive amount of materials to actually obtain, and potentially days or weeks to acquire. (This is true however for many MMO's, though, serously)
-MANY things are locked if you're not a Subscriber (Gold member). Free-form builds, where you pick your powerset, are only playable if you either subscribe or drop $50 into the game just for that. Many Archetypes are locked without Gold as well. (Total of 9 classes availible right at the get-go, which is few compared to the grand scheme of things.)
-Game has quite a bit of noticable bugs (But most of them are hilarious, like backflipping at hilarious speeds.)
-Nemesis system feels a bit tagged-on, just to say they have it.

I think I covered just about everything. There are times when I can't stop playing and will get hooked for a week, but then, you can actually set this game down for a time and come back to it again later.

Just in case, I started to play when it turned into Free-to-Play. I don't have the experiences with anything before that time either. This is my self explanations and the whole experiences I got during the time I played this game. (Yes, over 5k hours)

When I started out, the game got recently into free-to-play. From me, it was great! I got into the game, got a hard time to choose my very first archetype (Free build for Free players) and the customization of my very first character, which I finally made a kinda "Lizardman fighter tank" looking for the Tank build (The Behemoth). Back in time, we had 2 primary stats for our character builds. When I played it out, Free Players, on PvP, could do at least to go Toe-to-toe with the subscribed players, which they are Freeform build (making their own powers,etc.) As for the crafting, I do remember the old system, where you needed to gather materials to craft your equipments. It was grindy, but in the end, it worthed it. And if you wanted to continue to do your researches for the crafting, you needed to go to a special location for each branch you wanted to do!

Maybe 1 year later, I went to the lifetime myself, thinking to support the game, like many others too! Then... they started to make one the mistakes I still am not happy with it: The Patch that it changed the whole system: The Champions Online ON ALERT. I was quite neutral with the stuff that it changed that we needed 3 Primary stats, but it was more focused to try to create some "balances" beyond superpower builds. The problem is, that system greatly degenerated about how it was. Instead of you need to focus on two stats and that you needed a teammate to help you out (MMO everyone! not MSO (Massive Singleplayer Online)), they did clearly put that everyone can solo MOSTLY ALL the contents without any other players (Except Therakiel Temple and I don't count the alerts, see below). So yes, a full team instance can be soloes without any problems now!

Where is the MMO feeling in that?

As written in my brackets. We got the Constant farming with the Alerts. The Alerts are instances that they constantly change after a set of time, doing some rotations in fact. The idea at first was quite innovative at first, but it was simply mind grinding them for getting free XP and leveling faster, most of the time. Otherwise, you can do those for gaining Money or Mods (new crafting system). But since most people do Experiences alerts mostly, mainly none does the two others. There is also another type of alert which you do gain another type of ressources that it is called Questionites. It is used for buying stuff in the store for free!

How cool is that! But here's the catchy thing: There is also a Questionite / Zen exchange which you can get Zen (currency from Perfect World by using real money into virtual money) by exchanging your questionites. But the Zen currency are coming from OTHER PLAYERS! So if you want Zen by exchanging your questionites, you should check what the other players has to offer to you IF they want to exchange it. I mean, the Lifetimers get Zen for free each month, so they can do that in the game freely without any problems. If we take another game from Cryptic Studio, for example Neverwinter, there is no such thing in the game! So you can't get Zen for free except if you want to pay on your own with your money from your wallet.

Anyway, I could return another disaprovement if we look toward the Crafting system, right now. Since we changed into 3 primary stats, the old items are not good anymore, so we needed to make our gear to be changed. The materials we used before are now useless. We need to get a Certain mod which it will improve our stats. As simple as that You can do that under 1 specific place. Do you remember when I said that you needed to go to another place to continue your crafting? Those places are no more around. There was a hole with some lights going out near a Prison in the City where you could enter to get into a specific crafting lab. Now you can't! They removed it. I was not happy when I noticed this. Heck, we were able to enter in a library before. But instead of re-opening the library, they made a Door, standing out of nowhere, front of that door, to let us go to a place of an ancient crafting instance: THAT HOLE near the prison, completly at the opposite of the city!

Then we have the famous PvP. The game never been too balance, I must say. The reality is that the PvP is really dead. I don't mean those who enjoys the Duels and such. I am rather more focused the PvP instance, where you do gain Points to get PvP gears too, along with PvP costumes! No one enters in those instances anymore. No one cares about those PvP. Mostly everyone prefer hitting each others in a duel, which it doesn't gives any pvp points. Since the duels are there, 1 vs 1, the Dev made a Team duel during one of the updates, no one wants to do that anyway. So what's the point if the players don't care anymore?

Seriously, I could add much more with my disapointment of the game of its state (My list would go on and such, no kidding), right now, but if I could make a favor for Cryptic Studio, I would say this one:

"Please, remake the game fully. This game is on the verge of being dropped down into the abyss. If you want to see it shiny, I would suggest to make a new one and maybe, just maybe, listen to the players to those who have a idea to fix all the problems from it. You are too focused on trying to get this game as a money sink. Do like you did for the character editor: Get Creative, dammit!"

I know this isn't much, but to those who read my review, I supported the game fully. But I do feel, since a while, that this game really need a kick in the butt to get up, once again.

In my experiences playing MMORPGs, there are few I return to as much as Champions Online.
On the surface, the game is rather asthetically pleasing. It has a gentle cell-shading style that gives it a pleasant comic booky feel, environments and enemies that vary greatly between bright and popping, or dark and grim, and a very spectacular character creation system.
The extensive character creation allowed to players is one of the most detailed I have ever seen. Right away, you have hundreds of options for each part of the body: head, torso/arms, hands, legs/feet, even the size of each body part is highly customizable with many sliders working on length, size, and more of the same. And then the ability to change the colors of each individual part can result in some incredible or nauseatingly dizzy character designs. Currently, the most lacking thing for adjusting body type is the inability to make characters more chubby in appearance, the closest thing behing adjusting body-mass, which Hulkifies your character, but doesn't give any appearance of being heavy. Also concerning, as of late there have been players that make characters but don't play, favoring a quiter RP to killing baddies. Due to this, character creation options have slowly, but surely, started becoming limited in earlier levels. Still, the options allow for great creativity.
Still on the note of appearances, the range of powers is handled quite beautifly. Few abilities look choppy and strange in effect, often blending well together to create a fantastic super hero feel. Between two differently-themed characters with the same power set, the powers can suit both equally due to how they look and work in-game. The travel powers are no exception, and can be quite spectacular in functionality. There are different variations of the same power available to even unsubscribed players, which allows for better creativity in movement. Unfortunately, most of the more cool-looking power-sets and travel powers must be purchased from the store, but that doesn't hinder the ability to enjoy the game, unlike other MMOs I've seen.
Gameplay is also remarkably smooth, though it is far easier to play the game with a gamepad than a keyboard/mouse. On the keyboard, the use of abilities resides in the number keys or number pad, and requires holding the ALT or CTRL key sometimes to select other powers. To target, move, attack, repeat requires either speedy hand motions or a more compact way to control. Also, unless the skill of holding both mouse buttons and aiming where you want to go is mastered, using the keyboard and mouse to travel can be clunky and awkward. Upon plugging in a controller, it is quite clear the game was once to be on a console. Using powers, targeting, interaction with mission items and traveling are all far easier like this.
The functionality of the power sets is for the most part handled well. There are several power archetypes available in categories listed as ranged, tank, support, and hybrid, which lets players immediately know the recommended focus of each power set. While there are still some issues with power balance, each archetype is easily a piece of a whole, making teams truly a team where every individual has a purpose, making interacting with other people a fulfilling experience. That being said, the streamline of each power set can feel incredibly limited. While leveling, one or two ability slots have a choice, and more often than not, the choice has an obvious answer. While it makes sense that archetypes are set powers, it feels like there should be more options in selecting powers, and the options are in need of being equally beneficial to the player. Another issue can be the Free-Form power selection, which lets a player hand-pick each and every power earned as they level. The process can be incredibly tricky, with one wrong choice upsetting the whole character viability, not to mention that when all the right choices are made, characters can become extremely overpowered, which drags on the interaction experience.
More debatable are the effects of microtransactions in the game. Unlike many of the other MMOs I've played, the purchasing of content simply does not damage the ability to enjoy the game, since you don't have to make purchases to progress in the game. I have been playing for a little over four years and have not spent a single cent on it, and still I find it incredibly fun. The introduction of Questionite (or Q), lets players earn resources to purchase content with effort as opposed to a card number, which adds to the amount of time certain types of players put into the game. Not to mention the mission sets- once having to been paid for- that for the past year have been free for all to enjoy. The lockbox drops from enemies can get irritating, filling up one's inventory, and vehicles are still extremely over-powered in the game, but those downsides do not truly inhibit the average player's experience.
The last big issue seen as of late is the decline of large-scale content updates to the game. While numerous small things have been added- auras, new costume sets, new vehicles, etc.- there has been a notable lack of new missions and events for players to really participate in. It is unapparent when this update drought will end, but it does put a damper on the game for long-time players.
Champions Online is one of the most enjoyable games I've played in the last decade. It has a personality that has few competitors in the gaming world, lending in part to its roots in pen-and-paper RPG. It's beautiful, realitivly easy to play, and has a great slew of experiences for its players.
I can't give the game a proper number rating, since I tend to rate individual parts as opposed to the whole, but I will say this is possibly my favorite game in terms of MMOs.

tl;dr:
+Great asthetics
+In-depth character creation.
+Smooth power designs.
+Microtransactions not a big deal.
-Awkward controls.
-Archetypes get repeatitive.
-Overpowered players are common.
-Recent lack of big-scale content updates.

Champions Online: Free for All

By far, the worst MMORPG I have ever played.

Refered by many reviewers as "The best 'free to play' Superhero MMORPG", Champions Online is by no means "Free for All". Whilst you can download and play through the first missions for free, the archetypes (power sets) the game provides free (silver) players with are by no means 'ballanced'. You get to pick one of the three. Healing, Damage, and defense. This was the idea the developers had to convince the players to subscribe and go freeform, allowing Gold (subscription) players to choose any power from any powerset as they wish. This already had made the game extremely unballanced, giving Silver players no chance at PVP. And how can you achieve this Gold membership you ask? By only 15€/month, OR, a crushing 299€ for a lifetime subscription.
However it does not end there.
Allong the years, freeform players have studied (copied) builds from other players, builds called 'Flavour of the Month'. Well, the last Flavour of the Month build has been going on for six months straight. This shows us the Developers not only refuse to 'nerf' these skills the community refers to as "overpowered", they actually could not care less about the game's ballance.
As for PVE? For Silver players? Nearly impossible. For gold members? Unchallenging. Dull. Hold a button down and you've killed ten enemies within three seconds. Again, this is a mechanic the developers came up with to convince players to subscribe.
As for the "variety of costume options"? Also a lie. Allthough you can create your own character freely, to obtain the actual good-looking armour sets, you'd be required to (who'd have thought?) spend even more money at least 5€/per costume set. Not to mention -no- vehicle in the game is free either. You'd have to take your chance with lockboxes (5 euros for each 5 pack-which, contrary to popular belief, rarely reward you with any vehicles whatsoever) OR purchace ZEN to buy them directly from the store. How much would a vehicle cost, you ask? From 15 to 20€, each.

Final veredict? Do NOT recomend, unless you've got more money than you can spend, but then again, you'd be investing on a broken game that is slowly falling to pieces.

[EDIT]:

Before I forget, to players downloading the game for Roleplay? Don't bother. A crushing total of 99 in every 100 players is devoted to Erotic Roleplay. As I tried it myself, I could not have a decent conversation for a whole TEN minutes before somebody tried to get into my character's pants. It becomes hillarious at some point. Hillariously sad, sadly hillarious. Unless you're the kind of person that's into that kind of stuff. Then that's none of my business.

One of the few Super Hero based MMOs out there that's honestly super enertaining and fun! Champions Online has huge open world maps, and a Character Creater on par with Skyrim's. Completely Free to Play, it offers hours upon hours of amazing gameplay without you ever having to give a cent. Everything that can be bought is completely optional, not required, but still will ehancing your gameplay experience.
Experience life as a super to the fullest, with vehicles, secret hideouts, team ups, and all sorts of amazing stuff.
This is definatly a game worth playing.

This game has the best visual character creator. The game itself is not very good though.

At launch, i would rate this game at: 9/10 - Amazing, fun and even though needed balancing, it was so good i didnt care.
Now after the Free-2-play update: 1/10 - I wouldn't wish this game on my worst enemies. Broken pile of abandoned dung. If you come on this game for anything, just play around in the Costume creator.

I still login to this game in the hopes that one day i will be able to fix the game with my own hands and hire people who are passionate about revealing the true, good game hidden beneath the rubble it now is.

I made a walking ♥♥♥♥♥,
11/10

one of the first games i played, was worth the exp of playing :D

Good solid games but too repetitive gameplay & a bit boring missions...

Champions Online is a superhero MMO RPG game, that became Free2Play few years ago and is a spiritual successor of City of Heroes.
You will have to make Perfect World account to play this game. The game isn't exactly at the peak of activity, but is still being updated with small events and new shop stuff. Community is also there, even if some zones are almost completely empty.

Now, as far as gameplay itself goes it's a standart MMO RPG. Well, Superhero theme sure helps to set it aside from usual fantasy trash though. Colorful world and characters, as well as occasional nice action music. And that they got some more sense of gameplay, by having world that doesn't take few hours to travel though, while still giving it nice details. All characters having travel power helps. Gameplay also feels faster and arcadeys, but it's still same old target-based thing you seen before. The main gimmick is that in order to get "mana" (called "energy") you just have to keep using your most basic power on target. There is also Players vs Players duel mechanic, but it's just "abuse the week's most broken powers combinations".

Now, the game is Free 2 Play. And yep, those who pay get gameplay stuff as well. Like, costumes, classes, small boosts. You can farm special "questionite" recources to trade those for in-game shop money, but it takes ages. You also can be a monthly sub, getting all the stuff by default. None the less, what you really should be looking forward are costume pieces and Freeform class. Because the strong point of this MMO is a customization!

Freeform can be said is "the way that game is supposed to be played", as it allows you to pick absolutely any powers available in the game! Water, Thunder, Kung-fu, Dual Pistols, whatever. Sure thing having such broad selection bring problem where are some combinations are clearly more superior than others, as balancing so many powers would be near impossible. Sadly, F2Players only have access from beggining only to Archetypes (read: classes with pre-set powers.) and only to few of them.

And biggest feature this MMO has: One of the best characters costume customizations around. It really is what keeps half of those players, who still play Champions, around, along with RolePlaying. It allows players to do wide arrange of things. Don't thing of thousands slides of "how thick is that eyebrow" or "wanna make that single muscle wide". Well, it does have some of such slider. But main focus will be on changing costume pieces of various body parts around, whetever it's belt, cape, head or wings. And there is many of costume pieces to choose from. You can make superhero of your dreams. Actually, what you can do and what many do, is to make a character who doesn't even look like your generic superhero, whetever it's some robot-zombie-pirate, anthro of your choice or, well, troll character that brings acid to your eyes. Though, I wouldn't say that it looks smooth, all non-human heads aren't animated, for example. Clipping is also the thing, but what you would expect from something what has this many choices.

So yes, customization and costume creation is really something what outdoes any MMO and most of other video games, and you are most likely to learn what is "RolePlaying" from this MMO, which is quite common there thanks to features I just told you about. Thus game has great social-part value to it, while having slightly above-average for MMO gameplay part (and below-average compared to non-MMO games).

Unless you don't care of such stuff.

Or want sandbox.

Or just sane videogamer.

Still spent more time with it than I really should have.

Not as great as it was and not even in the same league as city of heroes. Still sort of fun but a bit crampt and restrictive compared to it's origins. The power systems aren't great but the stories are pretty cool. Worth giving a go.

This game is both good and bad. It's bad in the sense that missions are repetative and you feel quite aimless as you wander through the city. Canada is cool for a couple of missions and so is the bizarro world. However, it's just not as well made as City of Heroes was. The content is good. The costume creator is mediocre and so much of the content/costume/items are "purchaseable" that really should just be part of the basic game. The amount you would have to spend to access all of these things, without any idea of how they work or what you need to do to use them is astronomical. (Sure you can earn a lot of these items over time but meh) With so many other games to choose from, I find myself only coming back to play this game in its most basic of basic formats. No vehicle, no really enhanced anything. I just can't force myself to sit long enough to figure out how everything works. I really do miss City of Heroes and it's tutorials on building mods and slotting and ... well everything that this game is not.
That said, it's still enjoyable but it's a pale game in comparisson with CoX. Until Valiance and CoT, this is what we have though.

It's ok.

Champions online is currently the formost superhero exp.

On the upside:
+great character creation.
+Epic power listing and RPG system.
+casual progression and gameplay.
+cross character friend/ignore system, easy menus, ingame itunes control.
+lots of mission and world to explore.
+they treat free players well.

Things that can leave a bad taste:
-limited classes for free players.(these classes are a good start and u can earn Zen($=cred) ingame to get around this without spending a dime)
-although i view casual gameplay as a plus since so many games have been going overboard with diffaculty, cahmpions lack of challenge cuts down on the time it takes to hit max lvl and complete all content. Note: the game does have replay value.
-if ur big into pvp then this game offers an unbalenced Tank build wich kills dueling.
-crafting or fusion system is next to usless. Not 100% but...

Once u get a 'freeform' character the game realy opens up and becomes truly enjoyable. Aside from tab targetting the game is responcive and offers a great free2play exp.

9/10

Good game and all but...
Prepare to be disconnected 50 times in one playthrough

More Achievements Than TF2. Best Character Creation I've Ever Seen. Awesome Events. You Get To Design Your Own Nemesis. Do You Need Another Reason To Play?

A great game with a amazing character creator. But, sadly because it's a PvE game, you will spend most of the late game roleplaying or dueling and not much else.

I would definitely recomend this game if you want to bring your superhero to life.

I have been playing Champions Online since it went free to play in 2011. I have added Champions to Steam just to write the review. I have NOT paid real money for anything in my accounts.
Champions Online is a free-to-play superhero-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game by former City of Heroes/Villains developer Cryptic Studios based on the Champions license. The game's rules and setting are loosely based on the HERO System ruleset. The graphics are like how American comic books look. Your controls are limited to fewer skill buttons. The level cap is 40.
If you are not willing to pay real money, you still can have some fun on Champions Online, you just have to be limited in your choice of avatars. The game has ore you can collect as reward for certain missions and can be sold in game for store points. Has a good cosmetic customization system even for F2P players. The quest content is free and enough to reach level cap. It is an Ok free to play superhero MMORPG.