The Jaded Eye

A series of reviews, game design ideas, and rants for your viewing pleasure.

Author: ArcheusCross

First off, i want to get off my chest that im not here to flame or bash a game, im giving a down to earth equal oppurtunity review here, so here we go:

Aion in general is really just a korean grindfest mmo (albeit smaller than some grinders) mixed with some western things to sell on the NA market. It has some good points about it and it has some bad points about it.Lets start with the good shall we?

The Good:

The Graphics

All in all the graphics in Aion were probably the second best thing that's in the game, it looks really nice and its easy to get immersed in the beautiful surroundings. Animations are smooth and all the characters look really nice. All in all the graphics were superb.

Combat

The combat in this game is actually relatively good, with moves for different situations, chains, etc. Probably one of the most interactive combat systems ive played with fingers flying to hit the right buttons for the right situations. Lets move on.

Gliding

This is probably one of the most awesome features in this game. jump off something high, hit space bar... yeah... it was nice to hear the sound of wind whooshing past your head... and mastering it was not that hard, who needs a mount anyway? But unfortunately actual flying lacked.. but more on that later.

Character Creation Customization

Seriously, this game has got to be the best in character creation customization department. I literally could make any character from any game i wanted given that it was human or looked human. I made a Lilty (from final fantasy cc) looking characters.. and it was awesome. I think this is one plus everyone could agree on to some extent.

PvP

Personally i would perfer the pvp to be a bit more open in some areas... but all in all it wasnt bad, it was more good than anything. So thats a plus. Lets be real here... the game was meant for pvp. Thats the point, even if it has pve things.

The Bad:

Grind

You can argue untill your blue in the face, but the grind is there... but its not the actual grind that kills me, its knowing its there without actual content to keep me immersed to forget about it. Crafting, quests, grinding for money becuase theres not many other ways to grind it without leveling more. So really the grind is so obvious in some parts of the game it kinda ruins the experience among all the pretty graphics and nice combat systems. Which brings me to..

Quests

How many kill x of y quests can you slap on a game with boring text untill someone crys? I dunno... but aion seems to try to do so... with the occasional "go click on this" for me quest... its not enough for the blandness of quests to shine through. Dont get me started on the gathering quests... forcing people to gather (aka not thier playstyle) is a no no in my book.

Flying

For a game that touts flying and arial combat as a feature they sure as hell dont tell you on the box that its limited... i mean wtf.. when i hit 10 i was sad to see that i hit the ground after only 1 min. Wtf? And this 1 min limit continued untill higher levs, which still wasnt much of an upgrade. So yeah... flying in aion? Not as free as it should be for a game that touts it as its feature. Not to mention it makes aeither grinding much more time consuming to level up. OH and lets not forget some areas dont even allow you to fly.... yeah... gg aion

Crafting rewards

Anyone that has crafted weapon smith or armor smith in your guild has probably cried out the same thing I'm about to post: "WTF A NAIL FOR A REWARD?!" not much of a reward considering many recipes require more than one. Sure the green design is nice after going through 30 levels of that crap, but its really too random for my takes, id rather they give us designs or money randomly.. not a damn nail...

Linear Areas

Some may argue about this, but in all reality if i cant climb a mountain or land on top of one via flying... then its just another linear "lead me here.. take me there" game. Some areas you cant even access until you complete certain quests. And that in my books is a big immersion killed among us explorers.

The Ugly:

The Gold Farmers

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that gold farmers are killers of a games economy. They flood the AH with items, undercut, overcharge, they generally control the AH unless your lucky enough to see that good deal and buy it just in time before they do and put it up for a higher price.

The spam is rediculous... today i actually had to remove some of the older names off my block list just to block new ones.. it was full! This has gotten out of hand.

Bots

I see a few on every channel.. every time... they have a hold on this game. Its sad.

NCsoft

Yes i went there... their acceptance to simply delete the characters of the gold farmers instead of banning accounts tells me that they are NOT thinking about this seriously enough. Because lets be honest here.. if they were banning accounts the farmers would have to buy more games... and that would just curb their business...

Conclusion:

While Aion has alot of potential I have to say that simply having it is not enough.... they need to "fly" with it so to speak... and up the flight times... improve quests... add more content to mask the grind etc... oh and for the love of pete get rid of these gold spammers... your clearly not doing enough... tells... mails... spam in gen chat... yeah...

Aion was good for a time... but now its time to move on and hope some gaming company out there gets it right sooner or later...

Just my two copper. *tips hat*