Talion is Gamevil’s latest mobile free-to-play MMO. Talion is a two faction, fantasy MMO that started in Asia and has now come West. The backstory seems common. You as a “talion” enter a world called Nar where demons are wreaking havoc. You chose to align yourself with either the Aegis Alliance, “who fight for the right of unlimited freedom and sanctuary”, or the “brutally power-hungry” Bident Alliance.
You start the game by choosing an alliance. From there you can pick from one of four gender locked classes. Classes fall into such categories as strength focused warrior, dexterity focused dual-wielding DPS class, intelligence-based battlemage or a dual wielding, DPS gunslinger. The game has a respectful character creation UI. The game boasts that character customization through gameplay can affect up to 48 different components. It seemed like very early on I was toting an impressive look for my gunslinger.
)
Graphically speaking, the game can be categorized as strikingly beautiful. I had no trouble running it on an iPhone XS Max, but of course that is considered a high-end phone. I also played on a 6th generation iPad where the extra screen size was welcoming without issue.
A Man Out Of Time
The Talion story comes off at times as being a bit cliché and, in some areas, the dialog seems cheesy. The good news is the text translations are solid. It’s just odd to meet a mighty warrior with a common name such as “Mike” or “Kirk” who starts off by saying “Phew”. While it might be an attempt to keep the environment light-hearted it ends up snatching the player out of the fantasy mindset.
)
What About Combat And Questing?
Combat and questing by default are set for the dreaded auto-questing and auto-combat, which seems to be more common nowadays in mobile gameplay. These can be disabled but the game seems to like to keep reminding you about auto-mode. The UI at times uses a flashing arrow to point to the current quest on the sidebar. The game seems to want you to select the associated quest, thereby engaging auto-questing.
If you decide to go it manually you will wind up navigating in areas with plenty of mobs. There is no click to move support. Manual movement and camera rotation are performed using the typical two-thumb on-screen joystick approach. Ironically when auto-questing is enabled and your talion dashes through a horde of mobs, to get to his next destination, he draws no “aggro”.
The game does have combo-base combat and offers up quite a few skills, even early on. There is a dodge button, but you are limited to three dodges a battle for some reason.
)
Oddly, some of the tutorial missions seemed half useful. For example, you get a tutorial mission on equipment enhancement. The game merely shows you how to get there through which menus to select but provides very little useful on how-to enhance, e.g. needing armor enhance stones.
Advancement is accomplished via levels along with associated skills upgrades, active as well as passives.
A Full Fledged MMO
There’s no doubt that Talion has a lot of MMO features baked in. Things like equipment enhance, guild support, alliance support, story dungeons and PvP options will make veteran MMO players feel right at home.
While I was not able to personally partake in PvP, the game boasts support for 20 versus 20, realm-versus-realm (RvR) matches in different battle modes. RvR modes include Deathmatch, Team Battles and Occupy (players try to capture points on the map using coordinated attacks and catapults as an offensive tactic) and a “Major Clash” mode which is currently in beta.
Guilds can go on raids to defeat raid monsters. Raid areas exist where enemy alliances can enter at the same time as your guild. Raids then turn into a PvEvP experience.
Of course no F2P mobile game would be complete without in-game shops, daily login rewards, achievement/milestone rewards.The cash shop is in-game currency while the premium shop boasts packages you can buy via real-world transactions.
)
Bottom Line
It’s not that Talion is a terrible game. There are a lot of things to do and it truly is a fully fledged solid MMO. Most people will need to decide if the gender locked classes and auto-mechanics will be a turnoff. Talion seems to implement many of the mobile MMO tropes that developers nowadays seem to be adhering to. While feature rich Talion seems to offer little innovation.
Score: 6/10
Pros
- Customization system
- Auto combat and auto questing if that’s your thing
- Robust feature set
Cons
- Unoriginal gameplay, nothing new here
- Auto combat and auto questing if that’s not your thing
- Gender locked classes
- North America only has one server so you can’t play both factions
