Aion: Final Hands On Preview

18 Aug 2009 at 16:12:39 by Bill Vaughan

After several closed beta sessions, I give my final impression of the highly anticipated MMO, Aion, by going over and re-assessing what I've experienced in these past few weeks. See the earlier previews for more detail on many of the things discussed here.

This weekend saw the final closed beta test session for Aion. I was lucky enough to have had plenty of in-game time, but when the servers shut down for the last time I couldn't help but feel for all those that had only recently joined the game. Like many MMOs, though not all, you can't race through Aion's content in a matter of hours. Admittedly, I didn't aim to reach the test level cap of 30, instead, I chose to explore all that Aion had to offer, but after around 20 hours played on my main character, I'd reached a fairly respectable level 16, seen two Elysea zones and its main city, taken on each profession and most importantly, enjoyed my time in-game. A lot.

The first thing that hits you when Aion loads up is the look of the game. Like Age of Conan, the character customisation is highly advanced but, unlike the other MMO, Aion characters don't start off in rags. I don't think there is a piece of armour in the whole game that is designed to look ugly. When creating characters you can see what your toon looks like in three outfits; his undies, which still manage to look like armour, the gear he starts the game in or some pretty resplendent end game gear. The ability to customise your armour and weapons later in the game also aims to please those of us who value the look of our characters and, let's face it, we all do a little bit, don't we? Even gamers who prefer to play hideously ugly creatures, although stuck with only humans at this point, have the chance to create something suitably nasty-looking (see right).

If that wasn't enough, the emotes and idle animations these characters are capable of are the icing on the cake, but it's not just the toons that will appeal to players; The world of Atreia is beautiful too. While out and about questing, the broken Tower of Eternity is always there looming in the background, and the sky is permanently dotted with what, at first glance, appear to be stars but are actually the opposite faction's towns and cities. The sun-kissed land of Elysea is bathed in sunlight, whereas Asmodae, the upper half of the shattered world, is in constant shadow.

Don't expect Asmodae to be any less attractive than its light counterpart though; Although set in a slightly darker atmosphere, the landscape and inhabitants of Asmodae are just as beautiful. The quests take a slightly more sinister approach to things, encouraging characters to be deceitful and brutal. A disgraced NPC early on in the game warns characters that the main city of Pandaemonium is full of back-stabbing and treachery. Indeed, your 'welcome' to that city is positively hostile compared to the reception you receive in the Elyos city of Sanctum, as is your Daeva ceremony. Despite all this, the two factions aren't clearly defined as good or evil. The Elyos, though graceful and full of good intentions, are sometimes vain and self-righteous, and the Asmodians have had to cope with an, albeit slightly, harsher landscape, forcing them to become fierce and ruthless. You're given the option of playing a 'good' Asmodian by only killing what's necessary, and you're free to decimate as many harmless creatures as you like when playing Elyos.

Anyone who's played an MMO in the last few years will find their way around Aion easily. The controls, user interface and key-bindings are all familiar. You start off with a couple of skills, but your arsenal of attacks increase in number and power as you progress through the levels. The skills you have automatically gain ranks as you ascend, but new skills must be bought from the class trainers. Certain skills, known as chain skills, only unlock after using others, then further skills unlock after using the second tier and so on, but some only activate occasionally. To save space on your bars for all these actions, when the next tier of a skill activates, it replaces the icon on the action bar as well as appearing in the middle of the screen. When the next skill in that chain is available, it replaces the icon again. So for example, if you had a skill that unlocked two subsequent skills, you would need to press the appropriate button three times to carry out each different skill one after the other. It's a nice way to mix up combat, which can be a little grind-intensive in MMOs.