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Aika: Fun For a Certain Crowd
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
One of the most touted entries into the exploding free to play market, Aika Online arrived a bit over a year ago. In our latest review at MMORPG.com, Som Pourfarzaneh takes a look at Aika Online and offers this compelling thought: "we can easily recommend trying it if you’re interested in an Eastern-themed fantasy MMO with a heavy emphasis on PvP." Check out Som's thoughts about Aika Online. Played it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Aika has some pretty graphics in a style loosely reminiscent of Aion or Guild Wars, with an Eastern military-cartoon feel to it. It’s very colorful but has a distinct sameness to a lot of its art assets, which kind of blend together after playing the game for a while. Character combat animations are pretty spiffy, which is nice, but as you’ll be using a lot of the same skills over and over again, you’ll probably start to find them as repetitive as the environments.
Read more of Som Pourfarzaneh's Aika Online: Fun For a Certain Crowd.
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Comments
Aika's number one problem is character feedback. I just didn't "feel" good playing or moving my character about. It felt tedious and boring. Matter of fact, I have that problem with 90% of these eastern FTPs and even some western games.
The game seems to have been made by developers who were given the peramaters of the game. The drones then made the game. Once done...no thought seems to have been given to acessing weather the results were fun and changing or dropping elements.AND THE RESULT....boring.
It's...another F2P MMO, who'd have thunk it?
Korean gameplay says it all.
Nice Graphics, Exciting PvP promisees, but you have to slave like a dog to get there.
Nothing different expected from Korean "traditional" gameplay Design, NCSoft is only starting to learn new ways now, immagine all the smaller Korean Designers. They all use the same model, and that does not appeal outside Korea, and even in Korea it is starting to work less and less because of Competition from other places.
I know many Koreans who jumped over to WoW from Lineage II when it came out and were very happy to expose how Fun it was back then. So in a way, it is not really a quuestion of Demographic as we are let to beleive, Korean players are Human beings like us not Aliens from some other Planet.
They too, do not appreciate Grind, but when you have no choice and all the games available use the same model, you then choose the one that has the most appealing graphics or other features. And this may explain why Korean Devs are actually very good with graphics, because they are competing on that level for Player Appeal..but at the same time, they are very attrophied in terms of Gameplay Design and cannot compete on that level outside of Korea.
Anyways, just my observations and deduction.
"Move allong peeps nothing else to see here"
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
You should mention the awekward running. It feels weird and glitchy.
Smile
Isnt the main feature of this generic garbage that you get a little girl pet?
Hate gender locked classes in games
That plus reading that apparently all five factions use the exact same city and areas, it just seems to sound like a shortcut? Instead of making five fully developed kingdoms that each have their own style. Could even maket he pet different for each kingdom to add more to it.
Nonetheless, glad to read the review, this is one I have never gotten around to trying but it has always been like at the very far edges of my radar as a maybe someday if bored enough.
tried it.............WASD poorly implemented , gameplay is generic , another grindfest
and yup the 1 of the main features is a "girl" pet that grows ...........
6.5 ? , 3.5 is more realistic
RE: so we can easily recommend trying it if you’re interested in an Eastern-themed fantasy MMO with a heavy emphasis on PvP (and faerie sisters).
That about sums it up. GF and I played it for a while, a couple weeks actually. From a coder's standpoint the pran system is pretty interesting. The concept of adopt an NPC works well and could easily be expanded upon. Also the game runs nicely for as modern as it looks. Too often "pretty" means it runs slowly. This didn't.
My GF loved the questing and the prans. I think she'd have stayed playing it, but I was bored and getting irritated by not having a feeling of progression or change of scenery.
Overall as a "cute quester" it's better than most. If you like that sort of thing.
Lol, I love the photo that is used for this article. Oh wow, killing boars eh? That seems so fresh and exciting! I have never killed boars in a forest before. Maybe this game has The Sword of Thousand Truths in it to??!!?! The asian f2p market, such innovation there.
Originally posted by Scot
It's...another F2P MMO, who'd have thunk it?
thunk?? wow I'm learning new words today. Thank you for enriching the english language!
I AGREE 1000000000% I never have or will be one those G.I.R.L just me but I can't stand it when customization is limited it's the biggest turnoff but what's even worst with games like Argo for example it's age locked or apperence locked and gender locked.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
It doesn't come anywhere close to EQ or EQ2 for that matter.
It's just a korean grinder that hides behind "huge pvp battles" that is just a bunch of havoc of like 50 players mobbing another group of 50 players randomly for points or camping the entrance to their side, while VERY occasionally actually being about controlling the items for buffs.
Throw in a stupid "pet" that is just a little girl that slowly grows up while annoying you 24/7 and functioning more as a barbie doll to dress up/pedo bait, you're really not left with all that much.
Classes may feel "different' but that's because there's so freaking few with no room for specialization beyond "Who payed the most to have the best gear" which really shines in the massive content. The paladin with max enhancements to her gear only takes 1 damage from each of the 40+++ people hitting her at once? F2P, what did you expect?
It's all stupid, it really is. Throw in all the "global controversy" with all the BZ's and Asian players that ruined the original release of the game and you see why people still have a horrendous taste in their mouths from trying the game..
Well if we stop the hate because it's not rift and start playing the game here's what i liked in this game:
The graphics, especialy the panel of colors, look like a fairy tale, somehow like the beginning of fable.
I also liked the overpricing of equipment with the npc, and the quests not giging you much, you will have to craft them or trade them with other players, +1 for immersion here starting to look at the auction before level 10.
The dungeon with selectable difficulty is also cool, you can start it at lvl1 and like get out of it at level 10 . The dungeon is also cool because if you die in there you can't get back, unless you use a special item i heard about, but you have to care about what you're doing in there not reading mmorpg.com at the same time.
And it's funny to see the quests "cut scenes" criticized why everyone is so happy about it in TSW or SWTOR.
hmm what else... oh yeah! There are sandworms!! Real sandworms that you don't see at first and that move underground from time to time! It really is a good asian style game with awsd control and jump to please the western gamers.
Does the game have zones..?
That is the only thing u need to ask, if the answer is no... then support the developer. If yes, then pay no interest in a developer who is trying to rip you off.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I think you go the Picture subtitles mixed out. o_o
Mediocre at best, a scam at worst. I refuse to play any games that have an item mall.
I completelly agree with ur score. Anyway:
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/4118/1315159660139.png
Grind?
took me 1 month to get in decent PVP level range (over level 60) Thats not much of a grind for any mmorpg.
key is you have to quest. quests give huge xp boosts compared to just killing mobs.
its probably the best free pvp mmorpg.
paid pvp mmorpg? i've not found one worth paying for since Shadowbane.
gee a paladin with a skill that gives temporary invulnerability... never heard of that before... but wait, my warlock has a skill that can ignore that invulnerability as long as i don't mind sacrificing my health to do it... interesting.
mmorpg reviews are like asking a kid who just finished Army Basic Training what military life is like.
Fun For a Certain Crowd... Pedofiles!
this game probably has more going on than Aion and Tera will, when tera come out.
I honestly had a ton of fun with this game. There was a lot of things to do, IMO, and the relic wars were so exciting.
But then again, I did play it amost 7 months ago, so things might have changed since then.
I think it had a lot of potential, but I felt it wasn't advertised as much as it should have been.
I msut not have been part of that certain crowd....I was bored by level 10.
Was very active player of Aika for 2+ yrs, keeping meh char capped and best fitted. The developers eliminated boredom instilled by players capped and outfitted by weaving pve into pvp magnificantly; acquiring relics through pvp made dungeons and leveling easier, while on the switch side leveling up and getting best gear through dungeons made pvp and getting relics easier!
Sadly, every producer has ruined this game so far - Gpotatoes specifically has done this by keeping xp rate/drop rate/reinforcement rate very low forcing players to become dependant on the cashop. It need a rehaul if it wants to compete with newer games.