According to the developers, the Isle of Souls was originally sealed
away from the rest of the Lineage
II world because of the hatred aimed
at the Kamael by the other races. The Kamael were originally created by
the giants to battle the gods, but when the giants lost that war they
sealed off the Isle of Souls to protect their creation. It’s
unknown in the current lore how the Isle of Souls was reopened, but the
Kamael are now out and about in the L2 landscape.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14898" title="Look Out!"> src="/image/view/14898/preview"
width="200">

style="font-style: italic;">The Crystal Caverns
are an extremely intense zone to play in.

Just as I was getting my feet under me with this new character, killing
little creatures with single swings of my sword, the developers pulled
us to a halt. For the next bit of the tour, we were going to jump into
some very high level characters and really get a feel for some of the
new instanced dungeons in the game world. While some of the several new
areas have been introduced in this new expansion – including
the 79-80+ playground called Hellbound – our party went
adventuring into the Crystal Caverns which is located in the Isle of
Prayer.



When it comes to in-game graphics, the developers at NCsoft have
certainly honed their talents when it comes to creating graphics in the
L2 world. Set in an underwater area, the Crystal Caverns were an
incredibly beautiful instance, with sea plants splayed over many of the
architectural designs that were displayed throughout the instance. Fish
swam in the water (sealed off by gigantic glass domes) over our heads.
Each of the monsters in this zone was designed to look both menacing
and aquatic, and the developers succeeded with flying colors.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14899"
title="Female Final Form"> src="/image/view/14899/preview"
width="200">

style="font-style: italic;">Changing into the
Kamael Final Form.

As one of the highest level instances in the game, Crystal Caverns was
certainly a challenge for our party. The initial foray met with some
incredibly heavy resistance, and if it wasn’t for the
protection of our GM liaison, we would have player wiped several times
over. Though our party did have some experienced L2 players in it, we
were not without our fair share of newbies (myself included) so it was
often a struggle to get past certain areas. The combat was fast and
furious, and I certainly had to make up my fair share of the party
damage or death was quickly upon us.



The race of the Kamael are aptly proficient in their various combat
areas. While the male Kamael are incredible swordsmen (our tour guides
were constantly asking where the male Kamael was so he could tank), the
female of the race are equally as proficient in their skill with the
crossbow. What isn’t expressly stated in the numerous
previews of the Kamael expansion is the fact that the Kamael require
souls to power most of their higher level abilities.



Initially, I found that I simply didn’t generate enough souls
to use many of my powers. The creatures that we were fighting were
massive monsters that required a little bit of time to kill, so by the
time I had generated a decent number of souls, we had already plowed
through several encounters. Eventually, I discovered an ability that
allowed me to create souls using my own health, which players who would
progress normally would probably know about. However, even with that
ability it was often difficult to find exactly how many souls I had in
reserve. Without that number, it was often difficult to plan my attacks
and I’d suddenly be without souls in the middle of a fight.
It’s not a

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14901"
title="A close up view"> src="/image/view/14901/preview"
width="200">

style="font-style: italic;">A close-up of the
female Kamael's Final Form. Those tattoos on her body actually move.

big issues, and I’m sure the developers
at NCsoft have already addressed the issue or made the counter more
visible to the common gamer.



The final part of our tour was quickly upon us, and the developers put
us in a room where we could simply try out the various abilities and
transformations that were on our new high level characters. It was fun
watching our entire group juggle between the various transformations,
from the unicorn, to the yeti, to the bison, to the four-winged angel,
to the scary dog-like creature. The best transformation of them all,
however, was the Kamael’s Final Form.



This one shot transformation (the recharge timer is incredibly long)
requires the Kamael character to generate a high number of souls but
then shifts the character into a ass-whopping, death-dealing, winged
machine of doom. If you haven’t watched our href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14818">Kamel gameplay
video, you need to check it out. These screenshots just
don’t
do it justice.



With the end of our day clearly in sight, I made a note to myself to
immediately re-install Lineage
II on to my computer and give the game a full review. If
the amount of fun I had at the press day is replicated during my review
of the game, the scores should be tremendous.