It's clear that Cryptic learned quite a bit from working on City of Heroes, particularly the game's biggest initial draw: customization. Players can create characters in dizzying detail from the ever important costume to the color powers have. Players even have their hero names attached to their login account, so they won't have to worry about creative spelling for a coveted character name. Additionally, characters aren't necessary locked into class roles. Powers are divided into eighteen Framework categories like Sorcery or Power Armor, but players are free to select abilities from across multiple disciplines at any time as long as they meet the prerequisites. Stat enhancing gear and upgrades determine proficiency with these powers. Also, players can assign themselves roles in the character screen and to grant themselves bonuses, which usually also come with some limitations. For example, choosing the Avenger role boosts offensive capabilities at the cost of reduced hit points and a slight resistance to being healed. The big flashy superpowers and beautiful city combined with the game's cel-shaded make the comic book theme come to life.

Best of all, heroes have access to a variety of travel powers very early in the game (right after the tutorial) so they can traverse the large landscapes the game has to offer with minimal hassle. Most of the travel powers involve some version of flight, some with some fantastic looking effects. Abilities like teleportation, burrowing and swinging go a long way toward creating the ideal hero and creating a sense of variety in character design. However, there are no vehicles for Batmobile fans or shapeshifting powers yet, except for perhaps transforming yourself into lightening with a late game Electricity power.
However, players will need a fairly clear idea of what kind of character they want to build early on, since the retcon (respec) system leaves very little room for bad decisions or experimentation. The system uses in-game currency to undo powers one at a time, and the further players go back in their careers, the more expensive things get. Unfortunately, there's no flat rate for redoing the entire character, nor a means of selecting a single ability while leaving the rest alone. Things become extremely expensive after about four steps back, to the point where it borders on absurdity. The system also sets up a vicious cycle where players try to make money for a retcon by doing missions, but in doing so level up, thus increasing the price. The spectacularly high price of a retcon makes it extremely difficult to remove a power that might have come in useful during the early phases of the game but fell out of use. With the game's current setup, unless the player happens to be a financial wizard, it would take far less time and energy to completely restart a character and bring it to level 20 than it would to accumulate the funds needed to remove a low level ability.

Once players get into the actual gameplay, things really start to heat up. The interactive environment goes a long way toward getting players into the role by allowing characters with great strength the ability to pick up objects like cars and hurl them at foes. Players need to be in the fight in order to accumulate energy, allowing them to pull off bigger moves. Not only did Cryptic build upon its CoH experience, but Champions Online borrows a healthy bit from games like Warhammer Online, which becomes apparent when player step into their first Open Mission (Public Quests in WAR terms) and drop-in PvP matches. With open-world missions, players from the surrounding area can jump in during any phase to complete a number of tasks that build up to a climax, usually in the form of a boss creature that requires many heroes to defeat. A couple of these Open Missions seem to be bugged to the point where they can't be completed and/or they don't reset properly, which - to be fair - isn't terrible considering the game just launched, but it still makes for a fairly bad impression. However, there are quite a few that work and they provide a fun challenge. There's just the matter of bringing enough people together to finish off the boss. Open Mission bosses immediately return to full health if all the nearby players are defeated, so all the players' time and effort can easily go to waste in a split second, which we can see putting a lot of players off.

However, there's plenty to do besides the Open Missions. Jobs come at you from a multitude of sources. Contacts provide storyline and repeatable missions, but heroic scenarios can also be discovered by picking up loot from fallen foes or discovered by happenstance while exploring the city. At times, civilians will come running up to your hero crying for help. However, most missions take place in the open world and usually involve hunting a character or retrieving objects, which means that players are often camping around spawn sites and sometimes competing with each other for mission goals. In worst case situations, players can run in and steal an interactive object from someone who is busy fighting the surrounding creatures.
There are instanced missions, but with a few rare exceptions, they all tend to be extremely short and can be completed in 5-10 minutes. This supports the game's design philosophy of having a strong solo experience and allowing players to quickly jump in for a gaming fix during their lunch hour then jump out. However, the unintended consequence of this is that there isn't much incentive to form teams. Sure, teamed players gain experience faster and the entire group can sidekick to a single individual, bringing everyone to more-or-less equal fighting terms, but only a handful of scenarios make it worthwhile. There's little reason for players to come together for more than a few minutes to complete an outdoor hunting mission and constantly hopping from one location to another for five minutes at a time gets to be a hassle. Players defeated in instanced missions respawn at the beginning of the level, and the majority of them are so small that it's hardly a problem to rejoin the group, so teammate resurrection powers are kind of pointless. Lastly, instanced mission bosses tend to be such pushovers that it rarely takes more than one or two players to soundly defeat them in short time. With all things taken together, Champions Online isn't exactly the best game for those who like to socialize a lot while playing.