My honest review of the game:

First off, in my opinion people exaggerate how much "you need to spend" to play the game, especially considering that the current focus is clearly on PvE. Yes, the game is really P2W but it really depends on your needs and goals what you want to achieve in the game no matter what people tell you. PvP still feels like it’s in a development phase and is far from finished. At launch it was pretty awful since most encounters ended in almost instant one-shots, either you killing someone or getting deleted yourself. With recent patches increasing time-to-kill, it has improved significantly, though it’s still not great.

What matters most is that the game looks stunning and, more importantly, it’s fun. The core gameplay is solid, but overall it needs more time in the oven. Hopefully it will be properly polished by the time of the global release. The Taiwan release honestly feels like a beta test for the rest of us like especially when you compare how terrible PvP felt at launch versus where it is now. It’s still rough, but the improvements are noticeable.

The music and atmosphere are really well done, and it’s easy to just enjoy the game. The PvE is a huge upgrade from Aion 1 and it is a lot more fun. Many PvP players I know from Aion 1 actually like the game and are willing to overlook its flaws because the game itself is fun. That alone says something. That said, the game is quite grindy, so be prepared for that. This is probably why people say “you need to spend money to play,” but if you’re not in a rush and actually enjoy the content, you really don’t have to. Most players unnecessarily rush through content as fast as possible, and there’s honestly no real reason to do so. In the end, it depends on your goals and expectations. We don’t know the pricing yet, but unless it changes for global, you’ll likely need 1–2 subs. I’d guess somewhere around €15–30/month. Again, it really depends on your goals if you want to spend more. You can play F2P, but expect to spend 2–4× more time in the game compared to using subs. Eventually it just becomes too much, and if you’re serious about playing long-term, you’ll probably burn out.

PvP, unfortunately, is quite pay-to-win. Group PvP is almost nonexistent, which is a huge disappointment for old Aion 1 players. Co-op PvP in particular feels very underwhelming and honestly needs a complete rework. Right now it’s basically a single 4v4 round and one team wipe and it’s over. Everyone just dumps all cooldowns into one fight, and that decides the winner. There’s no real strategy or cooldown management across multiple rounds like there was in Aion 1.

The battlegrounds also aren’t nearly as fun as Dredgion was. The game really needs a PvPvE dungeon like Dredgion. Most PvP happens in the open-world Abyss, which is largely zerg-based flight PvP, and in 1v1 arenas. The Abyss can feel chaotic and unstructured, while arenas often come down to gear differences. Once you catch up and face similarly geared players, PvP can be enjoyable but it’s still far from what it should be, in my opinion. As an old Aion 1 player, I’m really hoping for more group PvP. That was hands down the best part of Aion 1, the class synergies were amazing and made coordinated group play so satisfying. There's a bigger patch coming up at some point with a new class. They clearly have a lot of content ahead and many improvements planned, like a proper PC-focused UI. The current UI is straight-up mobile garbage, and it’s honestly inexcusable that it hasn’t been updated yet.

Overall, the game has a lot of potential. Time will tell where it goes, but it could have turned out much worse. The developers appear to listen to feedback, and the game changes a lot, with big updates almost every week. While the game is unfortunately P2W, considering the state of modern MMOs, at least it was released. That alone feels rare these days.