REVIEW: ‘Aion 2’ Is A Flashy Grind-Fest Undone by Its Free-to-Play Model

During the 2000s, many companies tried to hop on the MMO train with innovative tweaks. Aion 2, the sequel to NCSoft’s 2008/2009 MMO Aion, tries to re-enter the market with modern graphics and a refined gameplay experience. Building on what made the original so unique (flying combat and a unique world to explore) Aion 2 also leans further into the free-to-play market, for better or worse.  

Many MMOs tend to base a lot of their core gameplay and tasks on their lore and world-building. But in Aion 2, the story is bland and flashy. The campaign is full of unremarkable and sometimes annoying characters. For a 10+ hour campaign to reach max level, the only memorable part was the beginning. And that’s because of how outrageous it was. 

You wake up in a facility, rescued by a swordmistress. After being freed, you’re whisked away to a small hidden island near the facility to recuperate. But this island’s inhabitants just hate some older woman who they think is a witch. They’ll continuously talk about how they aren’t normally violent but will do heinous things to this woman. After an hour, the whole schtick of something being off ends with a whimper and, as expected, the villagers are the true villains of this island, and you escape. Then your journey truly begins. 

What makes Aion 2 fun is its gameplay.

For the next 9 hours, it’s hard to tell exactly what happens from a story perspective. With an unlikeable cast, you mostly follow orders and serve as muscle for the resistance against a corruptible, dragon-like force. Ultimately, the main campaign is simply a means to an end. That end being max level and the intense grind. 

What makes Aion 2 fun is its gameplay. Each class’s rotations are flashy and surprisingly deep. Personally, my character is a sorcerer so I could have some range and see a lot of cool explosions on my screen while leveling.  What’s most shocking are the combo and macro systems. 

Through action bars, you can set up which attacks appear in which order. And in a genius addition, the prioritized attack will change depending on cooldowns. So for the Sorcerer, you can set up your stagger attack to get buffed by two cooldowns before unleashing it on the enemy.

To take it all a step further, you don’t have to click each button to cast it. Through macros, you can hold down specific buttons to cast a whole combo continuously. Any combo or ability’s limiting factor is just its cast animation, no global cooldowns. 

Everything has its own currency.

The fun of leveling comes from experimenting with the combo and macro systems, finding what abilities pair well together and trigger others’ unique effects. For the Sorcerer, that means building frost on an enemy to use a big stagger-gauge damage attack once they’re frozen. Yet each class gets a lot of abilities, and not all of them are completely useful. 

But it is also outweighed by how many different currencies and points there are to make your character more powerful. There are skill points, which unlock and level up base abilities. There are Stigma points that reward more powerful Stigma abilities (like finishers or bigger damaging attacks on longer cooldowns). Then the Daevanion points for the Daevanion system, a grid-based empowerment system that grants base stat boosts as well as levels to abilities. Lastly, there’s the equipment enhancement.

The game hands out Skill and Daevanian points like candy as you level and explore the world. In fact, they’re the main driver for doing the surplus of side quests, Sealed Dungeons (mini soloable dungeons), and Strongholds (harder Sealed Dungeons). Each world-based side activity rewards more skill and Daevanian points, letting you keep growing more powerful. As an additional bonus, it just makes doing anything you find worth it for increasing character power. 

The grind is a slog in Aion 2.

Yet the endgame is where the game’s classic Eastern free-to-play MMO roots break through. Many Eastern free-to-play MMOs are known for being grindy and full of pay-to-win mechanics. Aion 2 is no exception. Hitting max level and completing most of the main scenario will lead you right into an item level wall.

When my character hit level 45, the max level, she was about 850 item level. To progress to the end-game rifts, my character had to be 1000 item level. That’s only the beginning for end-game content. Most other activities require at least 1000, with some of the later challenges needing 1600 item level. 

To get remotely close, you need to complete a significant number of Strongholds for the belt-enhancement items needed to raise the belt’s item level, run Sealed Dungeons for additional enhancement resources, and grind lots of materials to craft better gear.

What makes the grind even worse is that crafting better gear comes with a chance of succeeding in the craft. So after grinding a lot of resources, or spending a significant amount of money on the in-game auction house (which is only accessible if you pay for the monthly “Quai Membership” subscription), you can still end up with nothing to show for it. 

Or, you can spend real-world money on in-game currency that you can spend at the auction house for better gear being sold by other players. Even after just hitting level 45, my character had about 100,000 Kina (the in-game currency). For even a slight item-level upgrade, the next-best items cost about 300,000 Kina or more, depending on the slot. 

The amount of time needed to circumvent the auction house, especially for free-to-play players, is disheartening and quickly takes the wind out of anyone’s sails who wants to play more. Thankfully, flying around the world, killing monsters, and doing side activities is enjoyable while you wait for the many different resources to recharge so you can do other max-level activities, like Exploration or Conquest dungeons. 

Just about every activity has its own related currency or resource that recharges over time. Paying players get more of the resource, like Odal energy, which unlocks the reward cube at the end of any dungeon. Or a festival key to participate in a festival game at the top of every hour. That’s where alts come into play. Alts each have individual resource regeneration for all of these activities. Balancing several alts can keep you playing much longer instead of waiting around. 

There’s a lot that Aion 2 doesn’t tell you, or expects you to learn by doing.

Not understanding all of these resources as a new player, or going into Aion 2 blind, can hamper your experience as well. Especially with enhancing gear. Don’t spend enhancing resources on level-up gear; it’s critical. You’ll have more than enough once you hit level 45 to push past that 1000 item-level hump, keep progressing the story, and unlock more things to do. Leveling up gathering and crafting professions, and not being limited to a set number of professions per character, makes the max-level grind much more digestible.  Plus, it can be done while exploring the world and running from quest to quest. 

There’s a lot that Aion 2 doesn’t tell you, or expects you to learn by doing. Crafting and enhancing are just two parts of a fairly enjoyable experience. But the significant amount of grinding, bland storytelling, and unremarkable encounters leaves you wanting something more. For the time invested so far, and the knowledge you can learn from YouTube videos or Aion 2 guides, it’s been enjoyable. Each new learning opportunity opens the game up further and further in its way of reinforcing character expression.

Transmog, mount collecting, all the different ways to level or power your character—there doesn’t feel like an exact right answer as to how you should spend your time with this game. But to get to that point, you’re going to have to wade and fight through a lot of blandness surrounded by flashy and eye-catching gameplay. 

Aion 2 is available now on PC.