Ten Ton Hammer reviews Guild Wars: Factions and concludes:

Despite a few niggling complaints I still have with the original Guild Wars system, I found the Factions really stood up as a quality stand-alone product. Though not as thorough or intriguing as Guild Wars: Prophecies, Factions still can be looked at as a quality addition to the Guild Wars line and a very fun product overall. With its rich PvP system and updated PvE experience, Factions brings a more efficient experience to the Guild Wars journey, which also detracts from the overall experience of the storyline. All in all, Guild Wars: Factions remains a power-house stand-alone product and can be explored by new and veteran players alike.

Games Radar has followed up their Guild Wars critique with a Factions review.  This time the score is 8/10:

While the new character designs look great, we were disappointed in how they played. The Assassin played like a second-rate Warrior. Their attacks looked impressive with lots of acrobatic flips and lunges, but their skills didn’t seem to pack enough of a punch. We were also a little underwhelmed with the Ritualist’s summoning abilities which called forth a mass of pathetic transparent spirits that couldn’t really hold a candle to the Necromancer’s undead minions.

The first headline additions to the game are undoubtedly the two new professions that you can choose to undertake. They are the dervish and the paragon, and more details can be found in previous GameSpot coverage.

What's more, you will be tasked with the exploration of a whole new continent, called Elona, which, in terms of environment, will have a North African feel to it. Sure enough, our look at one of the tutorial quests for the game was set in a sandy yet temperate zone, in which the player needed to complete a series of trials set in a massive stone temple.

Now, in my personal opinion, once all the general graphics, models and textures have been done, the graphical effects can make or break the game. I enjoy good graphical effects (or anything shiny) and so these are the most appealing to me. Fortunately for the game, I approve of the effects, in fact not only that, I am also quite impressed. Okay, they are not in a world of their own (so to speak) but they are none the less an excellent addition to keep everything flowing visually.

After playing Guild Wars for a while, I can now understand how even busy people can have time to play. Guild Wars represents a paradigm change from the standard model of "pay to play" gaming world. That's right, there is no monthly fee! A lot of people might wonder how such a model for a could be profitable, but if you read Jason Baker's preview on Factions, you'll know that the developers have a different way of looking at things. They believe that gamers want to play a variety of games, so they've structured their model to allow it.

With the latest stand-alone game in the Guild Wars universe, Guild Wars: Factions, NCSoft shows they are unwilling to part from their unique design philosophy for the franchise, regardless of how the competition may be doing. All jokes about their gay-looking character models aside (yes, Rangers still look like "Wham" male groupies), one can only commend NCSoft for setting up a great infrastructure for Guild Wars. You buy the product; it's not subscription-based, the servers appear stable and they are set up in such a way so that you always end up in "realms" (or "districts" as they call them) with the highest population of players, and the patching process is extremely efficient. To top that off, the community team is constantly coming up with PVP-oriented competitions and new content.

Factions introduces two new character classes, the Assassin and the Ritualist. Having played the Assassin on the beta weekends and being more of a warrior-orientated player in the first place, I thought that I would step out of my comfort zone and go with the magic-using Ritualist. Oh my goodness. To use a common turn of phrase 'they're teh bets and completely pwn'. The animation of the spirits that you summon, struggling against their chains and then realising that they have to do your bidding, is one of the best characterisations I've seen in a game for a long time. The power that they give the Ritualist as well as the range over which they give it is amazing, with the Ritualist becoming somewhat of a long-range support specialist.

Aficionados of the original Guild Wars - now known as Prophecies - will be aware that it's the MMORPG that you can eat between other games without ruining your appetite. Dispensing with the levelling-up trudge of killing small animals, it's an action-packed affair that you can play in short, controlled bursts without any negative impact on your character. And crucially, there's no subscription fee.

Factions is of course Chapter Two (of several planned) and is available either as a 'standalone product' or as an upgrade to your already installed Guild Wars. There's only one game client, so my Factions character now sits alongside those from Prophecies in the menu. Of the two new classes available, the Assassin is a swift and deadly killer - with minimal armour - and the Ritualist is able to summon up an array of spirits at the drop of a wand.

However, in the case of Guild Wars Factions, you're looking at a totally different beast. From the outside, the game looks and plays like a MMORPG. But, in fact, it is not. Why? The mechanics are different: Factions servers act like a matchmaking service, providing "lobbies" within certain parts of the game. Players gather in these towns, a visual chat room, if you will, and sell goods and hook up for quests. It all looks like a MMORPG game until you leave the town; once that happens, you're on your own. This is where the MMOG splits away from the MMORPG. Factions looks like a persistent world, but it's not. You won't pass live players along the road. You won't accidentally invade a group's camping trip. The only time you fight alongside a human is if you've joined a party; everyone plays the same local "map," but only those players within the party.

Has your guild recently formed or did it finish the season outside of the top five? Do you want a final chance to compete for big prizes in the Guild Wars Factions Championship at Leipzig, Germany this summer?

Take on the best guilds from around the world! Show off your skills in front of the international press! Win the GWFC Open event and your guild will be on its way to compete for $100,000 in cash prizes!

Guild Wars' mostly-an-MMORPG approach has always made it a hard game to categorize. Sure, it's massive, multiplayer, and online, but it lacks the monthly fees and repetitive gameplay that all too often characterize the genre. So it's appropriate that Factions, in essence its first expansion pack, doesn't quite match the traditional definition of an expansion either.

First up, you don't need the original game to play it. You can buy Factions, start a new character, and begin exploring Factions' new continent, Cantha, straight away. Factions characters and those from the original Guild Wars campaign, Prophecies, can interact with each other. Factions also comes with 300 new skills, piles of new equipment, monsters, guild features, warring factions for players to ally with, and so on.