Here's a simple recipie for you.
Take the best/worst aspects of any mainstream MMO such as World of Warcraft and mix them in with the fast paced gameplay of a game like Ikaruga or Starfox (minus the furries). Next, throw in a heaping cup of Mech Warrior level customization, and a pinch of "All your base" quality translation. Place all these ingredients into a bowl and mix the fuck out of them, and what do you get!?
Air Rivals is a game that drops you into the midst of an everlasting, aka: perpetually static conflict between two nations. You have the Bygeniou City United (BCU) faction, which can only be described as something akin to a bipolar Empire that has severe self-worth issues and take out all their frustration and anger on the Anti National Influence United (ANI), a large group of rebels who turn out to be nothing more than a band of teenagers with what can be best described as daddy issues. The story is about as fucked as Hideo Kojima on acid so it's best to not wrap your head around it.
You start the game by choosing what kind of "Gear" you want to stick with for the rest of the game (you can have up to three different gears on one account). Let me tell you a bit about the gameplay. The sheer level of customization for your gear is incredible for a free to play MMO, although inevitably every high level turns out to have the same gear of their gear (yes, the planes are called Gear) which is where the skill aspect of the game comes in. I mentioned before that the game is essentially a Starfox MMO, so you can probably picture this easily. You are free to fly about wherever and he who can out turn/dodge/run his enemy (or his missiles, no I am NOT making this shit up), will emerge victorious. The nature of having full control over the outcome of battle like this makes grinding a fairly enjoyable experience, albeit a bit more tiring than your standard point and click grindfest.
Everything you put in your end game setup all boils down to personal preference, and once you have spend enough hours of your life on leveling, you can take part in one of the massive, and I do mean MASSIVE, faction wars, where literally hundreds of people fight over... whatever the hell they want. There are Strateic point Attack/Defense organized battles, small scirmishes that can escilate into all-out battles for controll of parts of the world that gain their side a small advantage over the enemy and granting better opprotunities for their newbies to level up, then the biggest brawls of all, the mothership wars, where pretty much every nerd online at the time battles to either defend or destroy a huge "mothership" that spawns once a week/month/whenever the elected leader at the time chooses.
In all, Air Rivals is a very enjoyable game whose only drawbacks is lack of visible support from Korean developer Yedang Online and poor translations in some versions of the game. You still have to grind up to a good level to be ANY use in PvP, but then again what self respecting MMO doesn't have grind? It is all in presentation. The graophics are a bit of a step above WoW quality, but the dated rendering engine could prove to cause some issues for the developers later on down the road (GPU support would be lovely. Make sure you at least have a Dual core.)
Don't let that stop you however, as the combat is intense, the spoils of victory are rewarding, and plenty of players await your fist to pound them back down to earth.
/review
If you decide to play it, I would recomend Air Rivals over its US counterpart Ace Online, as the support and community are miles above the Ace group of blowholes.
The compatibility bug is very easy to fix if you run Vista or 7. Just run it under compatibility mode for XP. Right click the shortcut, click properties, and look for the "Compatibility" tab.
Take the best/worst aspects of any mainstream MMO such as World of Warcraft and mix them in with the fast paced gameplay of a game like Ikaruga or Starfox (minus the furries). Next, throw in a heaping cup of Mech Warrior level customization, and a pinch of "All your base" quality translation. Place all these ingredients into a bowl and mix the fuck out of them, and what do you get!?
Air Rivals is a game that drops you into the midst of an everlasting, aka: perpetually static conflict between two nations. You have the Bygeniou City United (BCU) faction, which can only be described as something akin to a bipolar Empire that has severe self-worth issues and take out all their frustration and anger on the Anti National Influence United (ANI), a large group of rebels who turn out to be nothing more than a band of teenagers with what can be best described as daddy issues. The story is about as fucked as Hideo Kojima on acid so it's best to not wrap your head around it.
You start the game by choosing what kind of "Gear" you want to stick with for the rest of the game (you can have up to three different gears on one account). Let me tell you a bit about the gameplay. The sheer level of customization for your gear is incredible for a free to play MMO, although inevitably every high level turns out to have the same gear of their gear (yes, the planes are called Gear) which is where the skill aspect of the game comes in. I mentioned before that the game is essentially a Starfox MMO, so you can probably picture this easily. You are free to fly about wherever and he who can out turn/dodge/run his enemy (or his missiles, no I am NOT making this shit up), will emerge victorious. The nature of having full control over the outcome of battle like this makes grinding a fairly enjoyable experience, albeit a bit more tiring than your standard point and click grindfest.
Everything you put in your end game setup all boils down to personal preference, and once you have spend enough hours of your life on leveling, you can take part in one of the massive, and I do mean MASSIVE, faction wars, where literally hundreds of people fight over... whatever the hell they want. There are Strateic point Attack/Defense organized battles, small scirmishes that can escilate into all-out battles for controll of parts of the world that gain their side a small advantage over the enemy and granting better opprotunities for their newbies to level up, then the biggest brawls of all, the mothership wars, where pretty much every nerd online at the time battles to either defend or destroy a huge "mothership" that spawns once a week/month/whenever the elected leader at the time chooses.
In all, Air Rivals is a very enjoyable game whose only drawbacks is lack of visible support from Korean developer Yedang Online and poor translations in some versions of the game. You still have to grind up to a good level to be ANY use in PvP, but then again what self respecting MMO doesn't have grind? It is all in presentation. The graophics are a bit of a step above WoW quality, but the dated rendering engine could prove to cause some issues for the developers later on down the road (GPU support would be lovely. Make sure you at least have a Dual core.)
Don't let that stop you however, as the combat is intense, the spoils of victory are rewarding, and plenty of players await your fist to pound them back down to earth.
/review
If you decide to play it, I would recomend Air Rivals over its US counterpart Ace Online, as the support and community are miles above the Ace group of blowholes.
The compatibility bug is very easy to fix if you run Vista or 7. Just run it under compatibility mode for XP. Right click the shortcut, click properties, and look for the "Compatibility" tab.
