A Little Rain Must Nightfall: Jeremy Starley took a look recently at the newest Guild Wars stand-alone title, Guild Wars: Nightfall.

Everyone's favorite subscription-free MMORPG is back with another new campaign, launched a mere six months after the release of Factions - Guild Wars' Asian-flavored expansion. This time we are visiting the African-themed lands of Elona, and the ride is quite a bit longer. As is the case with the previous expansion, the base game is not required to play, but you won't have access to the material from the original game or Factions unless you own them.

Rather than the ultra-short PVE campaign of Factions, Nightfall treats us to a much longer storyline. In fact, you will most likely hit the level cap - yes, it's still 20 - about one-quarter of the way through the game. As has been said before about Guild Wars, maxing out your level does not indicate the end of your character's growth, but rather the point in his career where it gets interesting.

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What's New?

As with Factions, Nightfall adds two new character classes: The spear throwing Paragon and the whirling Dervish. Both classes come with new skills and weapons, although some feel very familiar, like they slapped a fresh coat of paint on some old skills. The Paragon is a good ranged damage dealer, and also has a variety of buffs for himself and his party. The Dervish fights in close with scythes and damage dealing spells.

Guild Wars adds a major new gameplay mechanic with Nightfall in the form of Heroes.

A Hero is an NPC companion much like the Henchmen in previous releases, but with some major differences. Where the henchmen are basically predetermined, single-classed NPCs that are a set level at specific points in the campaign, Heroes are essentially NPCs that are entirely dependent on your input. They start out as a specific single class, like Warrior or Elementalist, but from there you get to decide everything from where to assign their skill points, what skills they use, what their secondary class - if any - will be, and what equipment they have - almost like having alternate characters that you can group with. The Heroes level up just like you do, so if you stop grouping with one for a while, she stops leveling until you take her out on quests again.

In addition Nightfall also includes a new PVP feature that involves two players with a group of three Heroes each battling it out. No more waiting around to find a group to fight with, just grab your Heroes and go! Sadly, the Heroes perform better in PVP than about half of the players I have grouped with.

A nice change this time out are mouths that actually move during cutscenes! No more guessing who said what. Unfortunately, Nightfall is the first game in the series that doesn't include a CG intro movie. It's not a huge loss, but they were always fun to watch.

Nightfall also includes a number of small changes, such as a window to preview the effects of dye on your armor and icons on the map that tell you what a particular collector is looking for. Crafting, such as it is, has also changed a bit now. It is now possible to retrieve components from magic items and use them on other items, like a sort of socketed item system. Some of these features, including the dye window and item components, are available to GW players who don't own Nightfall. Wasn't that nice of them?

Graphics - You got a purdy mouth.

The original Guild Wars started out with very good visuals, and each successive release seems to improve on the standard. Nightfall features gorgeous African-themed landscapes, from scorching desert to Serengeti-style plains, from scenic coastal beaches to lush jungle. Somet