Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Jumping in Aika

I can jump in Aika, but it’s no better than an emote. There are no cliffs to jump off, thanks to invisible barriers, and nothing to jump on. You can only jump where you can walk. If you can jump on that rock that’s jutting out of the road, you can walk on top of it too. There’s no real jumping, and no z-axis. I find that disappointing.

Maybe I’m drawing too close a comparison between Aika and Guild Wars, because there are plenty of things that differentiate the two. Like the Pram for instance. It’s some form of mystical being raised to serve you. A fairy pet, at least in my case.

Today I got the quest to collect my Pram and went about getting the materials I need, and for the first time felt real purpose in the game. I wanted one. One of the first things you’ll notice walking around in Aika is all the pets following people around, everyone gets one. The vast majority of these pets appear as little girls holding teddy bears. I don’t know whether it’s adorably cute or frighteningly creepy. It’s possible that the fairy that floats around me evolves into these little girls at some point, I’ll have to investigate that in the future.

To get your Pram, the Fire Pram in my case, you need various random drops that start appearing as soon as you start killing. These are Water, Fire, and Air essences. Hold on to your essences until you get your Pram, it’ll save you a lot of trouble. Turn them in, and you get a choice of 3 different types of Pram. Do you get to know which Pram does what before hand? No. You do get to collect all 3 though, so go farm up those essences.

My fairy gives me a passive attack bonus, a passive defense to fire damage, and a skill that ups my magic attack, but only lasts 20 seconds or so. Not particularly great, but, she also talks to me, and I got to name her. Cringer. The ultimate sidekick. Strangely my fairy is naked, it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Each quest I do with my Pram now has my Pram interacting with the quest giver, and giving dialogue. We’re more of a pair than I had anticipated.

One of the other differences I noticed was the looting system. Unlike virtually every other MMO I’ve ever played, my loot is deposited into my backpack. It’s convenient, but it makes me wonder. Is there any joy in picking up loot? I can’t quite decide if there is. I know there’s a sense of curiosity, and a tiny thrill when you get something good or something you’re looking for. I think I miss it. I think I want my loot to drop. Is picking loot up off a kill worth it? It says in text, exactly what I get when I make a kill in Aika. I wonder if that dilutes any joy in what loot I get. I don’t even have to look in my pack often.

Other than that, I spent my time in Aika questing, looking for a particular boss, and exploring new areas. I’ve got quests to check out the first dungeon, not sure if I want to do that yet. I’m about level 10 and to be honest the difficulty is pretty easy.

I still haven’t decided if Aika is worth my time. MMO Gamer Chick (I like your blog title, but I think you need a catchier authorial nickname ) asked in the comments on the last post whether she should bother, and I said no. I can’t honestly recommend it. If something in my posts stands out, like the fact that it’s free-to-play, kind of good looking, light-hearted quest dialogue, or maybe the Prams, then I would say to my 3 readers, I’m not holding a gun to your head, check it out for yourself.

I’ve still got things I want to do in this game before I leave it completely. I think I’ll keep playing until at least level 20. I’d also like to check out the instances, see what the PvP is like, group up with some people, maybe even join a guild for a half second, and gosh golly maybe even speak to a real live person at some point. I haven’t done that yet. And you know what, playing around with this Pram isn’t so bad, it’s half a reason to keep at it anyway. After years of not jumping in Guild Wars though, you’d think I wouldn’t feel the need to jump. I need it though. I need it.

Aika: Going In Blind

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.