[Review] Aion: The Tower of Eternity

[ayu]

Aion: The Tower of Eternity

re-upload of the beta pictures
http://teresa.binarykitten.com/files/beta1.zip
http://teresa.binarykitten.com/files/beta2.zip
http://teresa.binarykitten.com/files/beta3.zip
http://teresa.binarykitten.com/files/beta4.zip




-=General info=-

Aion Online International

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http://www.aiononline.com/

Aion Online Europe

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http://eu.aiononline.com/en/

Wiki page

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aion:_The_Tower_of_Eternity

Description

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Aion: The Tower of Eternity is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in Korea with new localized versions in development. The game developer is NCsoft's own Aion Team Development Dept, a major Korean game developer. Aion combines PvP and PvE in a fantasy dream setting. A major feature of the game is flying, both to reach new areas of the game and for aerial combat.

Story

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In the beginning there was a god named Aion who ruled over a world called Atreia. This god created a race of intelligent entities to act as his servants (in likeness to angels) whom he called the Balaur. After some time passed the Balaur disobeyed Aion's wishes and rebelled against their creator. The god Aion then created the 12 Empyrean Lords. The Empyrean Lords in turn created a barrier which prevented the Balaur from attacking the humans charged under their protection. Within this barrier all things were safe. The Balaur ravaged and destroyed many of the living things residing outside of the barrier.

Some humans, living within the safety of the barrier, learned how to harness some of the same energy as the Empyrean Lords, known as aether. Such humans were called Daeva and, like the Empyrean Lords, had wings. With time, enough Daevas were born to form an army. Ten of the Empyrean Lords led these Daevas into battle against the Balaur, while the remaining two were the guardians of the Tower of Eternity, the embodiment of the god Aion. The war with the Balaur lasted for hundreds of years until one of the guardians of the tower announced that they should find a way to make peace with the Balaur. Five of the Empyrean Lords vehemently disagreed. However, the second guardian of the tower was swayed to peace. The Balaur were invited into the tower for peace talks. It is unclear what happened at that point. One of the Balaur lords lay wounded on the floor and the rest proceeded to attack the tower. The two Guardians attempted to raise the shield by going to opposite ends of the tower. However, they were unsuccessful and the tower, along with the world, shattered in two. As their final act, the two guardians sacrificed their lives in order to protect a part of Atreia. With Atreia severed, the survivors banded together to face their new world. Of the original twelve, ten of the Empyrean Lords survived. Five who had opposed peace and claimed that the weakness of the rest of the lords had allowed the Balaur to attack them reigned over the dark part of the world, becoming known as the Shedim Lords. The other five reigned over the light-covered bottom part of Atreia and claim that it was the Shedim Lord's actions that caused the breaking of the tower. They are known as the Seraphim Lords.

The new shape of the world also reshaped its inhabitants. Those that lived in the light part of the world saw little change except for an increase in their beauty. These followers of the Seraphim Lords called themselves Elyos and created the city of Elysea. The inhabitants of the upper part of the world saw many changes. Having to walk on ground strewn with fragments of the tower, their feet became talons. Having to fight against beasts, their hands became claw-like. Furthermore, the darkness made their complexion change and their eyes grew red adapting to the absence of light. They call themselves Asmodians and live in the city of Pandemonium under the rule of the Shedim Lords.

-=Review=-

I played this game in Beta last weekend for about 4 hours, and I have already bought a pre-order package with Beta key and "special features" as well as registered on several sites and forums related to the game to keep me up to date on the progress of Beta and game in general (Plus I now have the game theme song on repeat, it's amazingly good). The game differs so much from all the other mmorpgs I have played in the past so it's hard to know where to start, but here goes nothing.

The first really awesome noticeable thing must be the wings, yes! You can fly in Aion, when you reach level 10 you can spread your wings and fly wherever you want for a limited amount of time (the time your wings can be spread out that is, try to land before it runs out). And in addition to the wings, you can have PvP combat in the air, which is, wow ... just ... wow.

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The graphics is very neat and is a great improvement from the other mmorpgs I have played i the past few years, it (the game) uses the cryengine (I believe it's either a descendant to the Crysis engine or it's the same), and as you can see in the screenshot below, it's really good at the highest settings (please note that the quality of the picture is rather low).

(You can see the button/icon for the wings as well in the UI, it's the big green doted circle right next to the mini map)

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The effects of the game is a very neat experience, and when you engage in battle you can throw amazing spells or jump up in the air and smash down your enemy with your huge sword/axe, what I'm trying to get at is that in Aion, a lot of work has been made on the movements, interaction and effects of the characters and environment. For example, when you engage in battle you don't win on standing still all the time, you have to move around some times to hit your enemy in different spots. Your character moves a lot by him/herself during battle which gives a lot more life to the game. Like casting a spell makes the casters cloths move around violently because of the power of the magic, or the wind blows in your characters hair or cloths, giving that little extra life to the game (just what I want).

The character behavior is also a very new subject for me, because usually in other games your character just stands still at one spot, doing nothing while you go grab a coffee, while in Aion, the character reacts to different environment, and no, it doesn't run after food if it passes by or chase after girls while you are away (although that would be hilarious, yet very inefficient when you are afk in a dangerous area), it's a rather "idle in one spot" reaction, like if it starts to rain, my character would notice the rain and wave her hands around in the air to "feel it" (or whatever she's doing)

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

And eventually, get an umbrella : )

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

Or maybe play with the water while shes at it ....

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The characters are very customizable and you can change anything from gender, class, height, hair, eyes, face, feet ... well, just about anything. I spent a lot of time just deciding how my character should look like, and I really enjoyed playing with character creation I must say, it's fun to make a beautiful character : )

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The questing system is (as not surprising) very similar to any other system, you get a quest from a guy, you go kill something, go back and get cash and experience points. Although from the short amount of time that I played, I really enjoyed the quests, it varied a lot and had some kind of cool and exciting things that you had to do, and of course, the awesome effects of my spells helped a lot ; ). When I played World of Warcraft, I always had a quest helper to help me find stuff when I got lost in quests and lost a lot of time on looking in the totally wrong place, and as it turns out, Aion has a function like that built in which made it a lot easier to find where the quests should be done : )

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The account that I used while playing the Beta this weekend, was borrowed from a friend of mine, and here you can see some of his characters (it should be obvious which one I made)

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

The emote system in the game is very amusing, and the game already has a large number of emotes you can do. For example the "laugh" emote is very funny, as the character does not only "laugh", it runs around in a circle laughing like crazy.

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

(For the fun of it I created a character using a figure that I have on my book shelf as inspiration)

I call her ... Ayu =3

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

Here you can see more demonstrations of the emotes, in fact, you can see the emotes panel, this one in particular being "angry" or generally "very pissed of"

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

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See screenshots at the begining of the post

That is all I have for now, I didn't play very much and yet I had all this to say and I got a lot of fun out of the short time. I will play the next Beta as well, which is the 19 of June (a little less then 2 weeks from now).

If you have recognized the patterns in the screen shot names, you are more then welcome to browse through the ones I jumped.

[Lundis]

*wants to play it*

Nice review, the screenshots look really nice as well, just wow...

So that's what the GW2 developers have been doing instead of coding GW2 xD

[DrVirus]

hmm... Tempting. I think I will pass though. Last time I played a online multiplayer game (Astro Empire) I got big time addicted. Not gonna risk that again.


Great review though cats.

[remotepwn]

i wannt this game
nice review

[n3rd]

if it is going F2P then im game, otherwise I dont bother, its against my principles to pay for gaming XD....unless I get paid of course

[ayu]

These images cost me a lot of traffic, so they have been removed for now (Beta 2 archive is 100 MB+). I will upload them to another server in a few days where I do not have limited traffic.

[ayu]

Beta pictures re-uploaded on a private server. Beta1 is uploaded, new Beta2 and Beta3 as well.

will write new review if I get time

[ayu]

For those of you who are considering this game, I would like to remind you that if you want the collectors edition of the game, you have to hurry, since it's very limited, and almost sold out (yes, I already have mine :3).

Note: Beta 4 starts today.

[ayu]

Beta 4 ends today, I will fix Beta 3 and 4 screenshots as soon as I can!

Update: Beta 3,4 screenshots uploaded

[ayu]

Beta 5, has ended ... Beta 6 is scheduled to the 14th of August