Aion Review

Aion: Tower of Eternity

With terrific visuals being one of its key strongpoints, this can turn players with weaker computers off from the game. Thankfully, the game can be played at low settings so that's not much of an issue. Aion: Tower of Eternity provides players with a lore of two factions, the Asmodians, and the Elyos. Both factions are different in their own ways, but ultimately they're the same in the end. Atreia, the world of Aion, is separated in half, like an applecore. On the bottom is the Elyos, with their lush environments. Asmodians, live on the top. The Asmodians have a harsher looking environment.

Gameplay:

Aion's gameplay is your typical MMO style, catored more to making WoW players feel more comfortable. The game can be played click to move, or WSAD if you're more comfortable with that. Movement typically is pretty fluid. In fact, most things about Aion are quite fluid, this includes combat. Aion has terrific combat animations, they're combat style allows you to create skillchains. Skillchains happen when you exicute a skill, when a skill activates, another skill will follow. Sometimes this can activate up to four times to create amazing combos!

Aside from that, one thing that makes Aion truely unique is the ability to fly. All Daevas (Angels) can fly in places that Aether (The earth's energy) is abundant enough to carry your wings upward. In any place, reguardless of aether abundance, you can glide which makes getting from one place to another quite easy.

Character creation is absolutely amazing in Aion, you can change every possible aspect of your character which makes your character absolutely unique to you. Every option is created with slide bars so creating your complex character is simplistic.

Aion as a whole is very close to what you'd expect from a high-quality WoW remake.

Downsides:

Grind- Hope you like grinding, because there's a lot of it in Aion.

PVP- Once you get to lv25, you will be introduced to the Abyss, Which typically is a good thing, however, the Abyss is an open PVP area with little room to hide from the opposite faction. At this point everyone from 25 to 50 are in the same area, so frequently, you will end up being ganked by high level players frequently.

Abyss Points- You gain Abyss points by killing other players, you can also gain abyss points from killing monsters and completing quests within the Abyss. The downside, Abyss Points are used to encourage PVP, however, you gain more Abyss Points from killing monsters, or guards in the long run. Making the only redeeming quality to killing players is the satisfaction of pissing in their cornflakes.

Enchanting Gear- All gear can be enchanted with enchantment stones, doing so will give the item a +1 quality, you can get an item all the way up to +10 (+15 in the next update). However, each time you enchant an item, you can break the enchantment and lose a +1 on your item, this is a very painful process and after lv25 can become extremely expensive.

Value Rating:

Gameplay: 7/10 - Exciting at first, but not enough uniqueness to make it entertaining in the long run. Good to pick up and put down when you want a short MMO fix.

Graphics: 9.5/10 Amazing graphics, probably the best MMO in terms of visuals on the market. (Until Tera and Blade and Soul release.) some textures look odd from close up however.

Asthetic: 10/10 Aion has a unique asthetic that is scene throughout the entire game. Every environment is designed to make you feel a certain way when you enter it. (Example: Poeta is peacefull, Erion Desert makes you feel like its hot, dry and miserable.)

Music: 4.5/10 At first glance, the music seems simply incredible. The music is done by the London symphony orchistral. However, the music doesn't seem to compliment any of the environments at all. In fact, the Abyss has fast paced techno music as a battle theme. Why? What the hell? In addition to that, there is only a select few musics found throughout the entire game. I think I've heard maybe 7 different songs through the ENTIRE game (Cutscenes included) and I'm 9 levels short of max level.

PVP: 4/10 PvP is hard to describe. The punishment of dieing in PVP can be significant if you're of a high rank, which makes the thrill of PVP an adrenaline pumping dance between life and death. On the downside, it makes anything you do outside of town, dangerous. In fact, in higher ranks, the punishment for dieing is 10x more severe than the reward for sucessfully killing someone. To make the situation worse, most PVP happens in the air, when you're in the air, melee attacks will place you in animation lock making it very difficult to PVP as a melee class. Anytime that you attack a target, you will be stuck in animation lock while your opponent flies away. Unless you can expend large amounts of money on crowd control stigmas, most players will get away when you've nearly killed them. For this reason, PVP as an assassin, chanter, gladiator, or templar very difficult.