AION 2

I used to play the original Aion. This is more like someone stripped Aion for parts and only left what could be milked for profit. Most of the reviews describe the issues with this game with far more finesse than I, so I'll stick to my personal bullet points. There's a few pros, but a LOT of cons. I will go over them, but sweet and to the point. Pros: Absolutely amazing character creator. You can make a gorgeous twink, a buff hunk, a flat chested or big breasted woman, fat, skinny, two toned hair, scelera and dual-toned irises of any color you want- or you can go wild and make Handsome Squidward, Nigel Thornberry, or a literal child (Though I side eye you if you do the last bit). If they sold the game's character creator just for making OCs, it would do brilliantly. The world is absolutely, phenomenally gorgeous. It is built with verticality in mind just as much as the horizontal plane. Flying is actually part of the plot and not just a means to get around faster like other MMOs. Each faction has their own zones and storylines. Elyos is pretty, order, some degree of friendship involved- Asmodians are a few loners banding together in a VERY cutthroat environment. Game is fantastic screenshot material. Cons: The plot is superficial. It's not as bad as World of Warcraft has been in Midnight, but it's not as good as FFXIV or Elder Scrolls Online. Subscriptions are server bound, not account bound, and you cannot have both factions on the same server. Which means if you wish to play both factions you have to cough up 30 dollars a month for a sub. You can only visit the other faction's worlds at set intervals and only for an hour. Mounts and appearances are server bound, not account bound. Inactivity clause. They delete everything after 6 months of inactivity if you don't consistently cough up a sub, with no recourse to recovery. Kernel level anticheat prevents streaming to your steam deck or with other streaming programs. It also gets mad if you play your account on more than one computer. On AMD graphics cards, it tries to seek out a specific file it cannot access which causes a memory leak that can freeze and then blue screen your whole pc. The game does not respect your time. South Korea is legally required to add energy systems to MMO games to prevent people developing addictions, so nobody should have any hope they will remove the energy system. You can only get about two dungeon runs a day, at best, and that does not include expeditions. Dungeons and expeditions are also built in such a way that if the rest of the party speed runs ahead of you and you fall off a cliff or something you get bricked from the rewards with no incentive for them to wait for you, as tanking and healing are suggestions and not actually important. Crafting is also horrifically RNG based. There is a high chance your stuff will break as you craft it, and you forfeit all of the materials in the event of failure. There is only a 10% chance on extracting dungeon loot to actually receive it as a permanent skin. There is AI use both in some of the voice-lines (not disclosed) and in Arcana (disclosed). I could go on but all of this is why I specifically put the game down, and why I cannot in good conscience recommend it even if I love the gimmick of the player having wings.