For those of you who don’t know Aion is a PvPvE MMO released to the western audience this year developed by NCsoft. For more information please check out the official website or indeed Wikipedia.
It should be noted I’ve played the game for about a month as both a level 22 Cleric and both low level Ranger and Gladiator. The following review is based on my own experience of the game therefore take everything with a pinch of salt, agree or disagree these are my thoughts.
Now that that’s out the way I can get down to the nitty gritty. Aion by all accounts is a visually stunning, solid addition to the world of MMO’s. Visually stunning due to the character animations and the attention to detail of mobs, landscapes and surrounding architecture. It’s solid in the fact it is an extremely polished MMO will very little bugs or stability issues and it should be noted that the system requirements are not as such which it alienates potential customers and caters only for high end rigs.
Character selection and creator
The game starts with the usual create a character of which you can pick out of two races, the angelic Elyos or indeed the more demonic looking Asmodians. Initially you are given the choice of 4 different classes which after Ascension (level 10) you can customise further going down a specific path, Warriors can be Templars or Gladiators, Priests – Chanters or Clerics, Scouts – Ranger or Assassin and finally Mage can be Spiritmasters or Sorcerer.
Generally the character creator is as detailed as you want it to be and is in part impressive with the vast amount of choice on offer, there is of course the option of preset faces which you can then enter into advanced options and make further changes to suit yourself. Add to this the ability to change character height and mass and you can bet your bottom dollar your going to see some interesting toons on your arrival in game.
General Gameplay
So lets get down to gameplay! On arrival into the game you will be welcomed by the ever present UI which if you have played other MMOs its fairly standard fare with the option to change the position of your HUD and add additional bars. One thing Aion have added is a very well done tutorial panel which will flash up on your screen and give you the general low down of controls and game mechanics using both voice and video to show you it in ‘live action’.
As you can imagine the quests in Aion are also pretty standard if not bland, they include your kill 10 of these, gather 10 of these and go speak to this NPC…. Yup just like WoW, WAR, LoTRO, AoC etc etc etc, the difference for me however is in Aion the mobs are usually very well done graphically and you are often surprised by the use of short cutscenes to point you in the right direction and to make you feel that little bit more involved. I would say however over all the quests are far too generic and seems like they were simply cut and pasted into zones with little thought.
Combat
This brings us onto the subject of combat. Combat in Aion is certainly nothing groundbreaking and it certainly follows along the tried and tested MMO combat with auto attack and ‘special abilities’ available at the touch of a button or click of the mouse via your hotbars. The only real additions I saw of note was the ability for combat whilst in flight and also the use of skill chains, which if Im honest I thought was a dumbed down version of WARs. The one saving grace and probably what makes Aion such a compelling game is the afore mentioned animations are nothing short of majestic, be it gladiator swinging a polearm or a Cleric calling down bolts of lightning from the sky its just mouth watering to look at and there is no getting away from it. Also the responsiveness feels spot on, unlike WAR I didn’t feel like there was a delay on pressing the skill and the ability launching onto the target. Add in the cost of dieing which is quite a hefty experience deduction which you can buy back for kinah (game currency)- and it adds a certain excitement factor into every battle and yes it is very easy to underestimate an opponent in this game with the variety of stuns etc at the hands of general mobs.
PvP
PvP was an interesting one to judge as I had limited pvp due to being level 22 and also my main is a Cleric, don’t get me wrong its not that Clerics suck at PvP its simply I spent more of my time healing my comrades than caving some poor Elyos’s face in with my mace or staff. Add to that I was always getting ganked by groups of players from rifts and it wasnt exactly enjoyable.
The fact that the lore of Aion is based around the civil war between the Elyos and Asmodians so when you hit level 25 the game really opens up concerning interaction and pvp with the opposite faction, it’s a slight bewildering to me that they haven’t added in a lower level aquivelant or indeed a small battleground. My advice for anyone is hunt in packs! From what I’ve heard from guild members the abyss is not a forgiving place, tasked with completing quests can soon before a chore if attacked at half health by an Elyos eager to get another notch on his kill list…. !
So yeah I will no doubt write some pvp specific articles when I hit 25 and have scouted out the abyss so stay tuned for that
Crafting
I’ve never been a big fan of crafting in my MMO’s and Aion hasn’t bucked that trend, I still do it however its still as soul destroying as other MMO’s. To give some feedback on it I found the success and fail progress bars an interesting but sometimes annoying feature however liked the use of work orders and even experience gained for both the collection of materials and the success of crafting an item, whilst both are relatively trivial and you couldn’t really level just by gathering and crafting I kind of enjoyed seeing the blue writing awarding me 300 odd exp for making some ore.
Quick Cons
The Grind -a patch awarding more exp from quests is on the way, its much needed at certain levels where you are reduced to grinding out a level or so to access more quests or content.
Low replayability – it would be tedious to level up another character as there are no different areas to quest in and no different story to hear
Time investment – this isn’t as casual friendly as your WoW or WAR and if you want to make your toon powerful your going to have to put in the man hours.
Seen it all before – its not the MMO most gamers have been shouting for, this is very much a fantasy cut and paste with its own stamp on it.
Quick Pros
The Graphics – they really are superb and it makes even the most mundane task a pleasure if you keep your eyes open.
Gameplay – its easy to jump into, combats fast fun and furious
PvP – is fun and definately group orientated , if you get the right group of people and get teamspeak set up then it should be a laugh
Nice ‘Extras’ – Titles actually mean something, Built in Questhelper (of sorts), Personal stores
Conclusion
I’m not going to say Aion is the perfect game but I do think its worth a subscription and I’ll definitely be investing more of my time into it. Its made a solid start to its introduction into the West and it will be interesting to see how they build on it from here. How will they handle the demands of us fussy folks from these parts over the coming months?! Lets wait and see.
Anyway hope you enjoyed my kind of mini review of sorts, if you have any questions then I’ll be more than happy to answer them in the comments section.
