Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Aika: Going In Blind

March 18, 2010 at 12:36 am | Posted in mmorpg | Comments Off
Tags: aika, MMO, mmorpg

On a whim, and a suggestion from a friend, I downloaded Aika, a game from the people who make (or at least import, translate, and operate) Allods, Rappelz, Flyff, and plenty of other games. It’s a micro-transaction game in beta, and from what little I had seen the artwork reminded me of Guild Wars. I didn’t really know much else about it, and I’ve decided I’m not exactly going to put a lot of work into it. After the cash shop shenanigans gpotato pulled with Allods I’m not about to throw myself into this game. Giving it a try, though, wasn’t out of the question.

I signed up, and was treated to a webpage that said “Download Aika Now!” so I clicked on the link and was told to download the Rappelz Client Downloader. Okay. It was a small download and completed itself while I was still confused as to what was going on. I knew something was wrong but decided to hit the Rappelz Client Downloader start button and low and behold, that version of its downloader is old and busted.

I’m loving this game all ready. Rappelz I mean, not Aika.

Clicking the download link from Aika’s website worked out much better, and it wasn’t too bad a download at all. I installed and proceeded through some confusing choices. Confusing because as I said, I know nothing about this game.

I’m asked to choose a world, which I presume is a server. There’s only one right now, Arcan. After logging in I’m asked to choose a Nation, one of 5. There’s no indication how this choice is important or any sign of what the choice means. After choosing, I’m presented with another choice, Faronir War (PvP) or Faronir Normal (PvE) for instance. Either way you’re now sent to a character creation screen that rivals (at least when I played it) Silkroad Online. In other words, it’s quite limited. It is in Beta, so I’m not judging, yet.

You have 6 choices in class, Warrior, Paladin, Rifleman, Dual Gunner, Warlock and Cleric. At the moment, Warrior, Rifleman and Warlock are all Male classes, while the others are Female. Doesn’t appear to be a way around that. There’s 6 choices in hair style, 4 choices in hair color, and 5 choices in face. Your choices are half typical Asian style archetypes and half western style typical archetypes. It’s beta, lets move on.

After completing your creation, you’re asked where you want to start, City or Fields. The fields appears to deposit you directly into the action, while the City is more for beginners, a tutorial area.

As you’re being sent to the game, a Star Wars style plot scroll rolls up your screen. There is no time to read it, you might get the first half of the paragraph read before it rolls off the screen, but good luck digesting what it’s just said.

In the city you’re given some typical beginners quests, showing you how to move, talking to people, visit a merchant. There’s actually some amount of humour to be found, but the quests are very typical.

Yet here’s where I first encountered disappointment. I think Aika is in it’s 2nd open beta right now, and the RMT scum have already infected it’s rather good looking setting. I’m not sure how RMT people intend to make money in a game where, ideally, you’re going to be buying everything you need directly from gpotato. Secondly, when I went to jump off a cliff, I failed. Not only are there invisible barriers, but using jump is apparently meaningless. I can jump, but I can’t jump on anything.

That’s when it hit me. The artwork reminded me of Guild Wars. The dungeons are instanced, like Guild Wars. I can’t jump on anything, just like Guild Wars. I can click to do just about anything, like Guild Wars, and there are 8 skill slots. Everyone’s wearing the same armour, a lot of people look alike. A lot of time is put into the art, and it looks pretty nice, like Guild Wars.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe you can increase the number of skill slots and customize things further than you can on your first day or a hundred other things that differentiate it, but if Allods is a World of Warcraft rip-off, then Aika is starting to look like a Guild Wars rip-off.

I’ll hold off judgment for now, an hour or two is far too little to base an opinion on.