The concept of an MMO getting a sequel is always a strange one to me, but nonetheless Aion 2 is here. Or at least it will be, sometime this year, as NCSoft have confirmed that “the only MMORPG built around a world where the sky is the battlefield” (perhaps an odd place to plant your flag) is getting a global release on PC later this year.
It’s been available in South Korea and Taiwan since last year, but with this upcoming release some of the rest of us can have a go. By some, I mean those that can speak English, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese, and have access to North and South American, European, and Japanese servers.
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Being a sequel, Aion 2 is apparently set 200 years after the original, essentially saying “don’t worry if you’ve not played that one, that was ages ago,” though you could if you wanted, as the first one’s on Steam too. The setup for the sequel is that there’s two groups of people who both believe they’re the chosen ones, and seemingly do all their fighting in the sky. Except for when they don’t, which seems to be often enough judging by the trailer.
The whole kind of gimmick here is that you can essentially fly anywhere, however. “Every region, every battlefield, every encounter was designed with verticality as its axis,” explains the game’s Steam page. The game certainly looks vertical, with lots of big sprawling vistas to romp around and mountains to flap towards, though whether I’m convinced being able to fly wherever I want is actually a good thing or not is up for debate.
Combat looks a bit faster paced than your usual tapping a button and waiting for a thing to happen kind of MMO, there’s dungeons and raids to take on, and, oh, oh I don’t like how the character customisation looks, why do all these fantasy people look like they’ve undergone a three year long skin care treatment? I suppose when you can fly anywhere, getting to the uncanny valley is easy enough.
In any case, no exact release date attached to this one just yet, but you can check it out on Steam in the meantime.
