The Matrix Online Hands-On Impressions

Both GameSpy and GameSpot are offering up some final impressions of Monolith's The Matrix Online, now that the game has officially shipped to retail. A snip from GameSpy's article:
After you fully flesh out your "red pill," you're thrust into world of The Matrix. What follows is a lengthy, and informative tutorial mode, in which Link, the popular "operator" that the helped Neo in the movies, guides you through the game's basics. It primarily focuses on combat and you emerge from it with a firm grasp of how to do battle. Many of the game's more intricate elements, though, aren't covered. When it comes to crafting, tweaking your character's skill loadout, and generally tooling with the myriad utilities available in the game's staging area, you're on your own. Be prepared to bust out that manual, use the in-game help, or hop on the forums.

And a snip from GameSpot's article:
The Matrix Online offers an open-ended character development system that doesn't restrict you in the same way that most online RPGs do by forcing you to choose a character class and then stick with it. Instead, you've got a branching skill tree here, and you can eventually "memorize" different abilities from all the game's different professions, which fall under three different categories: operative, hacker, and coder. So, effectively, you're not stuck being a martial artist or a modern-day mage. Instead you can be a little of each, or one or the other, pretty much at whim. However, this system doesn't necessarily seem to be as open-ended as it sounds, since you still must gain experience levels to power up, and as you do, you'll spend ability points on your different stats. So your character will eventually have a leaning toward a different style of play.