Aika Online

Flavor of the month for: Current Flavor of the Month
My Rating: 3/5 Tentative

I haven't had a flavor of the month in awhile, as I've been trying to get RL things in order, but I just couldn't resist!

So this tim'e flavor of the month is called Aika Online, which is run by gPotato, same company that ran Dofus Online from a previous flavor of the month. As usual they offer free to play with an optional cash shop. I'm not far enough into the game to form an opinion on whether the cash-items are game-breaking yet.

First impressions, wow this game has some very nice graphics for being a F2P! This game offers the standard classes you'll find in any generic mmorpg, the only exception being that the usual 'assassin' type of speed dps is replaced by the dual gunner, which is a nice change, and balances out the melee and ranged fighters.

So far I have created a Paladin, Dual Gunner, and Cleric, and all of their animations seem very fluid, and so far I've yet to see any clipping with equipments, good job! I'm enjoying the skill special effects as well, especially the Rifleman's countdown shot, that has a visible stopwatch graphic above the enemy's head that counts down to the extra hit.

The game includes instanced dungeons that you can select a difficulty on, which seems fun so far. There is also a built-in LFG assistant, although it seems it hasn't caught on yet as the world chat is still overflowed with the usual LFG shouts.

Character creation is extremely brief in this game however, especially after coming from Aion as my previous game. Classes are gender-locked, hairstyles limited to 4-5 per class, same with color and face. Also I'm not sure why, but both me and one of my mmo-hopping colleauges had problems in character creation where the model would face away the moment we clicked anything, and refuses to turn. Remedied by hitting cancel then reloading the char each time we changed something, but it was still pretty obnoxious. Each character is protected by a personal PIN which is a nice feature.

Loading times are all extremely painless so far.

Character progression: No control over status points is already a major minus for me, because that only leaves gear and skills to customize your build. From what I've read ahead, you do need to actually plan a skill build though, so that's some comfort from the threat of cookie-cutter characters.

Random Notes
-New quest, quest in progress, and quest turn-ins are all displayed on map. This is a 'lazy' feature, but it's still pretty nice.

Overall opinion so far: Seems like a good mmo to spend a month or two on, but so far shows no signs of being a long-lasting flavor.


If you'd like to find me in-game:
World - Arcan; Nation - Lenaria
Characters: Shiken, Taaka, Healgasm