magine this: Take World of Warcraft, strip out the unique classes and deep gearing system, make the UI suck, and replace the entire world with a couple of small-group instanced PvP arenas. Congratulations! You now know pretty much everything you need to about Fury. There will undoubtedly be a small cadre of hardcore players who make it their mission in life to dominate the ladders here, but it’s a good bet that you should pass this over unless that description already applies to you.

The combat system in Fury looks good on paper. Using weaker attacks builds up charges of one of the four elements, which you can then expend to power stronger abilities. Given the lack of any sort of mana bar, the charge mechanic and liberal use of cooldowns is Fury’s balancing factor and it generally works well. The problem is that these elemental powers aren’t fun to use.

You see, Fury just doesn’t play very well. The game’s network performance can’t keep up to the breakneck pacing of the combat; even the smallest amounts of latency can change the outcome of a match. The UI is a total albatross, offering both too little and too much feedback to readily make sense of the chaos onscreen. Spell effects are minimal and indistinct, making it nearly impossible to see what other players are trying to do around you. It’s just a mess, and it doesn’t get any better as you become familiar with the game.

Fury’s three modes (capture the flag, team deathmatch, and free-for-all deathmatch) won’t be enough to hold the attention of any but the most laser-focused fans. Likewise, customizing your character from a massive suite of abilities requires an obsession with detail far in excess of the norm, since the majority of your choices involve minor variations of “do damage from range, do damage from up close, burn charges to deal more damage, or heal damage.”

PvP diehards and WoW haters might find something of worth in Fury, but I can’t recommend it to anyone beyond that small set. Go pick up a cheap copy of any flavor of Guild Wars if you want subscription-free heroic fantasy PvP.