Okay, I find it weird that I haven’t done a review for a game which I have been playing since October 2005 (that’s 19 months). So, here it is.
Rakion is an action game with a pretty new twist. You don’t fight by clicking something, neither do you fight like in Street Fighter. Like a medieval-fantasy FPS, you click. In fact, a medieval-fantasy third-person shooter game is the best name to call it. You arm yourself with swords, hammers, daggers, bows and staffs, and you go to battle. You also have cells, which are like pets you can bring into battle. You need cell points gained from attacking to summon them. These cells can level up at their own pace.
You fight by clicking, and clicking in different patterns and methods with the keyboard will result in different kinds of attacks. Almost like the way you fight in Oblivion, if you ask me.
There are five different classes. Swordsman, blacksmith, archer, mage and ninja. The swordsman is a balanced class with a good amount of speed and damage. The blacksmith is the tank of the game. Powerful and hard to kill, but it lacks a lot of speed. The archer is a pretty boring class, all you do is really just hide in a corner and that shooting arrows, pissing people off. Of course the archer can also use her dagger, but its really crap. The mage is a support character which is cause lots of chaos and devastation, but its really fragile and can’t really hold in a melee battle. The ninja is weak in her basic attacks, but using speed and manoeuvrability, this makes one of the bast 1v1 characters out there.
There are also many different modes of battle, Stage, golem, deathmatch, team deathmatch and boss mode. Stages are like quests, where you go on a route, killing monsters and doing other stuff. Experience for stages is given out depending on how fast you complete it, and experience is given only once, so doing it multiple times won’t result in anything good.
Golem battles is like a modified version of capture the flag (CTF). Each team has a master golem. In the middle of the map, a golden golem bearing the golden sword awaits. The person who kills the golden golem gains the golden sword and with this golden sword, you are able to attack the opposing team’s master golem. Then you have to protect the master golem or the golden sword bearer, depending on which team you are in. You’ll only respawn the next round if you die, so killing the whole enemy team is another way to win.
Deathmatches, team or not, are really simple. The person or team who kills the most people win. There are health boosters and cell boosters to take here.
Boss mode is different. There’ll be two teams, and the highest level player in each team will be the boss. The boss must not die, or you lose. The enemy has to kill your boss. Other players in the team will respawn when you die.
There are many issues in this game too. Lag is one issue, and many noobs whine about it. As you proceed in the game you’ll get used to the lag, and you’ll eventually be able to play with the lag undisturbed. I’m talking about the natural lag, not those really laggers. (Natural lag, you click on a link in a website and it takes about 1-2 seconds to load, that’s natural lag. Real lagger = you click on a link and it takes a whole minute to load.)
There’s also an overpowered cell running out there, called the soul cannon. This cell just stands around, and shoots semi-HOMING cannonballs at you. The damage is crazy, and the area of effect (AoE) is bigger than the bombs of a mage. A high level soul cannon can kill players in 1 shot. Its a cash item, and it costs about 23 bucks each. People buy it. Softnyx, the company running Rakion, is happy. Players are not.
This game is a lot different from all the other free games you get out there, but after some time, you’ll start to realise that this game doesn’t really have much substance. Its just killing other players, actually something you’ll get in a multiplayer FPS game, just that this is the melee way of doing it.
Rakion Gameplay Movie (1:36)
Graphics: 7.5
Sound: 7.3
Gameplay: 8.3
Lasting appeal: 7.4
Overall: 7.7
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