Aion Review!

Helloooo everyone! Its you're unofficial game reviewer Amadeous!!!!!

Yeah... its self proclaimed.
ANYWAYS

So I was bored, nothing to do, so I decided to buy Aion: The Tower of Eternity (collecters edition durhh)

Let me say I was a little sceptical about the whole ideas and such, but let me start off by saying this.

Its worth the flipping 70 bucks.

And another thing that blew my mind

It used the same friggen graphics engine as Crysis.
CRYSIS
THE MOST GRAPHIC FPS THERE IS!

So here's a quick summary of the history of the game.
SO basically theres 2 races
Elyos - The happy light side of the realm, where'd you find the "humans, high elves and good dwarves"
And
Asmodyians - The dark, sulking, cynical place of the realm, where you'll find "drow elves, corrupted people (not demons) and like... evil.. dwarves?)

Theres another non-playable races of the game which are Balaur, the live in the Abyss, basically thats where the "demons" live and the battleground of the Asmodyians and Elyos.
They basically rape anyone who's into view.

There are 4 races
Scout - can go into Assassin (melee DPS) or Ranger (ranged DPS/ debuffer)
Warrior - can go into Templar (Tank) or Gladiator (melee DPS)
Mage - Can go into Sorcerer (nuker) or Spirit Master (Summoner, can go tank or nuker or dps)
Priest - Can go into Chanter (healer/buffer/debuffer) or Cleric (MASSIVE healer/buffer)

Both Asmodyians and Elyos have the same skills and same classes
Though, they do have a few unique skills
Such as Divine Light for Elyos
And Shadow-something for Asmodyians

Right, anyways.

So here i was, installing the game when something came up in my head.
Ugh.. i'm going to spend a good week to get to level 10... like I did with WoW....
And plus its a korean MMO.... there's bound to be grinding involved

Yeah... I was wrong, and I was happy i was wrong =O
The grinding is pretty much acceptable, really.
It took me a good 2-3 days of casual (no more than an hour a time for 2 times a day) gaming for me to get to level 10 (first job exchange)
And a saturday for me to get to level 14. It's not that bad, and it has an enticing plot so you dont realize you're spending hours on end to get 20%.

The wings, I thought at first, were a little overated. I mean.... they're just wings... I mean, its just for travelling fuctions right?

That was until I PVP'ed in flight.
2 things that went through my mind
1.) That was flipping AMAZING the engines they had
2.) Poking people is badass enough.. BUT IN THE AIR?? Thats like.. Chuck Norris on steroids!

So enough about my ranting of how awesome it is, heres some downsides that i thought could use some work.

The Spam
I know, in EVERY MMO theres a spam saying "Level 1-10 $9.92" or something.
But Aion's got it BAD
Of course, they do have occasional wipes, but again, they can just create new characters.
However, the game's only been released a week, so I can only hope for the best the GM's and Tech don't get lazy and quit like they did in Lineage 2.

Mobbing.
I personally like to mob, but I find myself often at a time 1v1ing monsters, and they take a good 30 seconds to beat. I know I'm only an Assassin, but my first mob skill is at level 45. Jeez that's going to take a while huh?
I've taken a look at other classes, they seem to have their first mob skill at level 20-30. But again, shouldn't there be atleast 1 CC skill for an assassin to run away or stun?

Money
Kinah is the currency in Aion. They have a GREAT economics engine with private shops and auction houses (you can actually find ANYTHING in an auction house)
Money is a little TOO easy to find, and a little TOO hard to get too. I find myself always a few grand short when buying the new item, and selling items... well.. can sometimes be a hassle since you don't know whether you get more profit from selling to players, or to shops.
Then again, it's in every MMO, and I might be a total retard for saying this.

Balancing
Yeah... as an assassin, I pretty much rape everyone in PvP.
Even a full out plated tank.
Hey, it might just be skill,
but it could use a lot of work.
I stun very often.
'Nuff said.

Monster AI
This is actually a good thing... what am I saying LOL
A lot of the monsters will have something called "Pre-empetive Attack" which is fancy for saying they will hunt you down on sight. This could get annoying, for instance, you run away from one guy, then you run into another guy, and another, and another... and eventually you'll have 20 people chasing you down. And with no CC skills.... you're pretty much screwed.

Some other good things:

Character Customization
You can make your character look like Obama.
How awesome is that?
You can basically do EVERYTHING to your character, eye width, lip size, cheek size, chin jut, noses, headsize, body size, muscle size,height... and I'm rambling.
I mean, I've seen people make their characters look like Anime and Video Game heroes such as Sephiroth, Naruto, Sasuke, Ichigo, and Cloud!( okay.. i made a cloud look alike... he's just that 1337)

Oh by the way, Happy birthday to very special someone =P (hint, he owns the forum)

Legions
I myself haven't joined a legion, but from what i've seen, its very fun :D they have a cloak that can have their clan emblem attached to the back of it! That itself looks badass.

Friendliness (is that even a word o.O?)
The people on the servers are REALLY friendly, its like they somehow dragged all the idiots and gave them copies of WoW.
You can ask anyone anything, and you're bound to get someone to help you. Or, you can consult google and some person who has lotsa time will give you instructions on how to do a quest :D
You can pretty much ask anyone to party you, everyone just spend a good 60-80 bucks on the game, I'm pretty sure they'd like to finish quests as much as you do!

All in all, its actually a GREAT game.
At first I thought it was a little overated, but it turns out, it isn't.
I'd say its worth a good chunk of the 70 i spent for it, but I'd have to wait till im level 25 in order to face the opposing race to check out RvR PVP :D

I'd reccomend this game for anyone that has money and wants to take a break from WoW or want to try a high end MMO.

Theres one thing I would suggest to NCSoft, make a 5-10 day trial so that people could see how it feels to play Aion and see how its really worth.
I mean, with a 5-10 day trial, you'd attract SEVERAL potential customers so that you can get more muneys :D

Well thats it for my review.
Thanks for reading!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Game Reviewer Amadeous
(Jeez thats a mouthful)

P.S. My name is Amadeous on server Meslamtaeda. My race is the Elyos.