选择我的冒险：慢慢揭开 Aion 2 的多重奇怪层次

Well. This one is… interesting, I will say. Aion 2 both has met some of my initial expectations, surprised me in some ways, and made me scratch my head in a few ways as well. In short, it’s basically got me a bit confused, but not the sort of confusion that makes me want to bounce off of it.

The past 17 or so levels’ worth of progress I’ve made have showcased a variety of layers that are both distinctly K-MMORPG but also mobile game-adjacent, and despite feeling like I’m starting to understand how things are meant to interplay, I can’t help but also admit that it feels just odd. That’s the single word I can use. Y’know what, let me just explain.

Aion 2, for better or for worse, most definitely starts out astonishingly simple. You control an overpowered Daeva known as Nemon (at least on the Asmodian side, since that’s what the polls decreed) to get the very basic tutorialization out of the way to the point when you make your character.

Incidentally, considering the comments on last week’s column were talking about leaning into the gothiness of faction and class choice, and I was making a reference to The Crow, I elected to go ahead and lean into that wholesale. Folks, let me introduce you to ErikDeCrow. RIP, Brandon Lee. You could’ve been the next John Wick, I bet.

Anyway, the opening beats through the very first part of the Asmodian region quest were really sub par. There was some suggestion of foul play happening in the extremely friendly village where I had ended up, which turned out to be true, all linked to some sort of Balaur villainy going about. Some of the lore beats going through the story almost feel as if I should have paid more attention to the first game. Perhaps that’s not the case, though. It’s genuinely hard to say.

The narrative isn’t where my confusion stems from, however; I can just ignore boring story easily enough even if I am waiting for the voice acting to complete or reading through the required diary entries along the way. Where some of the oddness begins is in Aion 2’s combat model.

The game defaults to a mouselook control scheme, where there’s a sort of soft lock targeting for enemies. I tried using this for the vast majority of the opening stint of the game, but by roughly level nine or so, I elected to use the ol’ tab target model. But then that also had some weirdness, with the primary weapon attack simply just auto-cycling along the way, while the Spiritmaster’s skills could be interspersed at will.

For a good while, this felt really, really boring, mainly because the Spiritmaster is a pet class, at least in the very early going. My 1-4 buttons were the ability to summon a different kind of elemental pet, each with specific attack effects like the earth spirit being a tank or the wind spirit healing my character. So for a good long while, most of my combat rotation was engaging my orb weapon’s primary skill, waiting for my spirit to leap in and hurt things, and occasionally engaging the column of fire ability.

Eventually, though, a little bit more interest started to unlock. There were skills that debuffed or applied DoTs to foes first. Then there was a button that would proc when my spirit engaged an ability. Over time, I’ve unlocked other skills that apply fear, build up a break gauge, and would also proc when a foe was broken. Most of this appears to be for bosses, though; basic enemies have been getting blown apart in about four standard strikes.

This was also blended with a few other discoveries I made along the way as fights unfurled, such as what I believe is a buff granted when you perfectly dodge an enemy’s strike, or the fact that boss fights have more interesting patterns that play out. A lot of this both granted some credence to accusations that combat is boring, but then I also found that, at least with the Spiritmaster,, patience is a virtue. Sure, it would have been nice for the game to show its hand a bit earlier here, but I think I’m beginning to see the vision. Sort of.

But then a splash of cold water arrived with some of Aion 2’s more mobile MMO-like design choices. And no, I’m not referring to the auto-moving to a quest location feature. That’s completely optional and isn’t that big of a deal, people. Chill out.

No, what I’m referring to is the layers of character progression and the multitude of currencies, materials, and points that feed them along the way. There are trees that grants small passive buffs. There’s leveling up of skills. There’s item enhancement. There’s stat rerolls. There are titles that can apply a total of three different categories of passive benefits. And all along the way, you’re made aware of this by that most annoying of methods: the UI notification dot.

And that’s not just for character progression, but also for when you’re pushing through the two battle passes and the achievements screens, which also cough up more piles of crap. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that having to stop literally everything I’m trying to do so I can clear the pile of Big Red Notification Dots on my UI isn’t interesting design or a replacement for build complexity. It’s obnoxious.

So the UI nonsense, the piles of currencies, the initially boring combat, and the ability to auto-use consumables like potions and buff scrolls all seem designed towards the kinds of convenience features that make what’s supposed to be a PC game feel like a mobile port that came out before the mobile version’s launch. But then some of the layers of the Spiritmaster started to become a bit more clear, and the progression trees felt like worthwhile chases, and the management of some of those materials started to make a bit of sense. Or I beat up enemies enough to make them pets and mounts because I could let Erik ride a creepy mutant.

All of this is to say that I definitely need more time in Aion 2 to better pull together my feelings. But I will say that this MMO is definitely not something that needs be brushed off wholesale from the first couple of hours or so. There’s something here. I’m almost certain that there is.

Now obviously since this is a themepark MMORPG, my poll choices are kind of limited in scope here, as there’s very obviously a determined path to move through the levels and the zones. With that said, there are some rewards for actually fully clearing things, and I don’t mean just in bundles of glittering junk. Sometimes the rewards are actual pieces of gear, for example. That said, there is also the risk that I’m going to overlevel things a bit, which would in turn make moving through the normal story path a bit too easy. So let’s decide, shall we?

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Polling will close at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, October 16th. As usual, I’ll hold off on playing some more until I see how the results shape up, but I really cannot stress enough how much this MMO has me curious. At least curious enough to try to work out whether it’s fun or not, anyway.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.