
Aion lets players ascend to divinity and fight in a celestial war. Here they will wield divine powers and the capability of true flight, to bring deliverance to your people and restore balance to a world shattered by cataclysm.
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Name: Aion In the world of post-cataclysm Atreia, the forces of good and evil wage war over power. Aion the god over Atreia refused to give equal godly powers to the Balaur and so they decided that if they couldn't have it, no one could. So is the setting for Aion, a planet ripped in two where the good inhabit the side of light and the evil the side of dark, you must choose which side to ally yourself with, are you an evil slaying do-gooder, or an evil heretic bent on world domination?
Upon your first login within Aion, you'll be greeted with the character creation screen, the vast array of options available to you put most games to shame, allowing you to achieve a significantly unique look for your character. The character creation system has a limit on what you can achieve but this limit between each value is vast, it's too vast, while most players will choose to create a character that to them looks typically human, because of the ranges of values between options you can literally make your character into some sort of medical abomination with either arms bigger than your body or legs as long as pikes, equally as vast as the sizes are the characters themselves, you can be as huge as a Troll or as small as a Gnome, the first thing noticeable about the height of a character is because the difference is so large, the game has to compensate for the animations and the size of your character by either slowing them down, if you're too big, or speeding them up if you're too small. While it's certainly nice to include so many available options for players to choose from, you do come across the odd player or two that have taken these customisation options to the extreme, creating something which certainly doesn't fit within the game.
During the character creation process, you get to choose which race to ally yourself with, the Elyos or the Asmodians, both look pretty much the same, one of the most obvious things and something you'll have seen a lot of within the trailers and artwork is the wings, the Elyos have white wings and look mostly human, while the Asmodians have talons on their hands and feet, and their wings are black. After choosing your race you are given the choice between four classes which are the same on both sides; the Warrior, the Scout, the Mage, and the Priest, the game actually has eight to choose from but since four are specialized classes such as the assassin which is a specialization within the scout class, you only get to choose one of those once you reach level 10.
Character combat in Aion isn't something unique, it follows the traditional combat experience you'll find in a plethora of other MMO games where your skills and abilities determine your strengths and weaknesses during combat. Each of your combat abilities need to be chained together to become more powerful, certain abilities can only be used by performing its pre-requisite and you only have a short period of time to pull it off. Thankfully these moves aren't something difficult to master, they're mapped to the same key for ease of use, instead of making you place each within its own slot. The combat moves you pull off do have a cool down period so you can't happily spam your most powerful ability until ultimately killing any foe foolish enough to cross you, the cool down timer is placed alongside your character when in combat so you can keep your eyes on what your character is doing and not what your quick-slots are, while it's a similar system to most other games, it's a tried and tested combat method and one which is quite engaging, unfortunately however it can become a little repetitive as you start using the same abilities and keys during combat over and over again but then this is the same for most games in the genre.
One of Aion's unique combat aspects is aerial combat and it isn't that different from its ground based counter-part. The majority of the combat moves you have on the ground can also be used while in flight, some are more useful while flying while others are on the ground. The aerial combat itself isn't always on the same axis, you have to take into account the altitude at which you're flying and any opposing forces, ranged combat can be a huge help here but equally as deadly once up close is melee. You can't however stay in flight for as long as you like, you can only stay up in the air for so long before your character falls out of the sky, later on in the game you can get items which will increase your flight time and extend your combat abilities further but ultimately you only have around a minute of flying time before you have to land and regain your strength before taking to the skies again. Aerial combat is fun theres no doubt about it, but the limited flying time also limits the combat and the fun, flying makes a nice change of pace from the norm because it isn't something found in the majority of other games in Aion's league, having to always worry about your timing with your flight time and its limitations can be a little off putting though. You'll also come across the dreaded invisible walls during flight, these walls when hit simply tell you that flight in that area is impossible, yet there seems to be no difference from where you are before the warning and what lies beyond. Of course there should be some limitations on where you can and cannot go but for the majority of time, it feels like the areas were designed with ground players in mind and only after was flight added in as an after thought.