In the world of movies, music, in fact, all forms of media, it is often difficult to tell when something is deserving of a sequel. A lot of movies have open endings, and if their ultimate fate is not decided by a saturday morning cartoon, such as Godzilla, then…wait. What am I talking about? Sorry, I was spacing out for a minute. Moving on. This is the second part to my first impressions review on Aion: The Chinese Tower of Eternity, the Beta. There are some things that were not discussed in my previous post, which are an important part of gameplay. Since I did not want to completely obliterate any articles below mine with a humongous wall of text, I decided to add a second part on here describing combat, classes, and an actual description of the flying system(not a praise).
I. Classes:
Classes. Some people love them, some people hate them. It divides nations and destroys relationships. People want a class to blame when they’re losing in city sieges. Others want a class-less skill-based system. It’s a difficult choice for any company to make when developing an MMO. For the most part, a class system tends to be the more popular choice. Though not clearly defined in all of them, most RPGs have some form of class system. Aion is no different. In fact, it doesn’t seem like they were being very creative when it comes to creating classes. You have your four stereotypical archetypes: healer dude, heavy armor dude, agile dude, and caster dude.
I’m not going to lie, the classes are all really fun to play, despite their very archetypical stereotypes and cliché names. You start off either as a warrior, a mage, a priest, or a scout. At level 9, you can complete your ascension quest, and then by level 10 you’ll be able to choose your second class. Here’s the breakdown:
Warrior: Your standard sword/shield or giant bashy weapon guy. These guys hit things up close, and hit them hard. They can turn into a Gladiator, which is an offense-focused warrior, or a Templar; a defensive warrior.
Mage: Another stereotypical class. Gee, I wonder what they do. These guys cast spells. Fire, ice, earth, whatever. They hit really hard with said spells, and can often dispose of enemies(monsters, that is), without ever having the monster come into contact with them. Mages can turn into sorcerers or spiritmasters. Spiritmasters are a pet class, they can summon pets, and still use their ranged missile spells. Sorcerers get no pets. Instead, they get highly devastating ranged spells.
Priest: Equipped with a bow and arrow, the priest lunges from the shadows to drive their twisted blades into their enemy’s throat. They then – what? They don’t do that? Alright, so priests are actually healers. They can choose either Cleric or Chanter as their secondary class. Clerics heal gooder, and Chanters buff gooder.
Scout: The scout can turn into a ranger or an assassin. Rangers attack with a bow, and assassins are melee DPS. There. Done.
So the classes aren’t very innovative on paper, but they’re done so well, you won’t really care that you’re the 5,000,000,000th cleric in the world.
II. Combat
Aion brings skill combos back into the equation. You won’t be arrow-mashing like you were in Age of Conan, though. Skills activate as soon as you press them; you don’t need to press up, up, left, down, left, start, abc, up, select in order to fire off your salvo. Let’s say you have “Skill 1” and “Skill 2”, when you mouse over a spell or ability it will tell you what place it holds in a skillchain. Now, let’s say “Skill 1” and “Skill 2” are both in the same skillchain. Skillchains have a whole window dedicated to them, so you can memorize or reference how your spells are going to chain and what the effects will be. Additionally, we’re going to say “Skill 1” is hotkeyed to the number “1” on your keyboard. When you press “1” to fire off “Skill 1,” the button for the next skill will show up on your screen. From there, you can either click the button, or press “1” again to fire off “Skill 2.”
I’m a fan of how skillchains were done in Final Fantasy XI, and I wished that if a spiritmaster used “stereotypical spirit master ability #1” that I, as a sorcerer, could use “stereotypical firey thing #2” and we could create an effect together. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works; you create your skillchains by yourself. It’s still really well done, though. Get the skill chain right and you’ll trigger an effect. For example purposes, we’ll say “Skill 1” and “Skill 2” create a knockback effect. If both spells hit, you’ll knock your enemy back. Effects can also be seen on the skillchain window. Some effects will trigger every time you complete the skillchain, others will have a certain chance of success.
Finally, to wrap up the combat section, we’ll discuss something melee need to worry about. The game encourages movement during combat. They have implemented certain bonuses that are trigged by moving in a certain direction. For example, if you move left or right(strafing), you will see arrows pointing left and right under your character. It means you have triggered that directional bonus. In this specific case, that bonus is increased dodge rate. Pushing forward on your enemies will increase the amount of damage you do, and pulling back will increase your block rate. You must be holding down the button for the effect to remain active. If at any point in time you stand still, or move in a different direction, you’ll remove your directional bonus or receive a different one, respectively.
III. Flying
I know, I discussed the wings in my previous post, but didn’t really mention how to use them. It’s actually pretty simple. I’ll use the default keybindings to explain it(these can be changed). First of all, you’ll notice right away when you’re in an area where you can take off. You’ll see a green ring surrounding your “fly” button. To take off, press PageUp on your keyboard. You’ll be hovering just a few inches above ground, at this point. In order to increase your altitude you would press “R” on your keyboard. To decrease altitude, you would either slowly glide down using the Space bar, or pressing “F”. Once you’re close to the ground, you can land by pressing PageDown.
That’s all there really is to it. Note that you can glide everywhere, even in areas where you’re not allowed to take off and fly around.
IV. Happy Ending
That’s all there really is to the first 10-15 levels of Aion. Again, I wish I could’ve seen the Abyss, but the beta was only about 6 days long, and I’ve had a hectic work schedule recently. Nevertheless, most of these things apply to all levels past ten. You’ll be using skillchains and directional bonuses often. Obviously, you’ll be flying a lot, too. Needless to say, I’m still looking forward to this title and hope to play it with all my friends, and the people who have posted comments on my previous post(I made new friends!).