Fox's Review: Air Rivals\Ace Online (MMO, PC)

[Fusion]

It's the same game as This but with a more updated (and experienced) perspective.  Space Cowboy Online itself has long since shut down, and the latest updates to the series provoke a review of the new content.  It's still BCU (Bygeniou City United) vs. ANI (Arlington National Influence)

(Graphics 7/10):

The graphics have had time to wear on me a little, and while they looked good back then, now they look like somewhat late-era PS2 graphics.  The frame rate's still as smooth as ever.  A majority of the new content in the game seems to be decidedly one-tone.  It can look good, or bad, depending on your preference for how you think airplanes should look.  If you're a fan of the more modern look, then you should probably steer away because the jets are here anything but realistic.

Everything else that's new I treat with the same level of "meh".  There's lots of hiccups because the game never pre-loads anything, though these hiccups are only when something new is loaded, like a mob, a new missile, new armor, new skin, new explosion, new particle, new sound... You get the idea.  Nothing is preloaded, so beware of jitters.


(Sound 6/10):

The sound has not changed much.  Only the Bawoos have gotten a new firing sound (seprates them from hammerheads) and the sound bug with the A-Gear's land movement has not been fixed despite the fact the glitch has been around for a long time.

Nothing else I can say here, really.  Other than I hate the new town themes for BCU and ANI.  Thankfully I've still got the old themes around.


(Gameplay 3/10):

Gameplay has really taken a nosedive, but it's not because the gameplay is bad, it's because the experience is bad.

You start off grinding on mobs that are easy.   Easy as some of them don't even fight back and with abusive use of strafing, mobs that don't have instant-hit or AoE attacks won't be able to hit you period.  As always, the missiles always home in and will hit you, though they've mostly fixed the "roll and the alarm goes away though the lock doesn't" glitch.

If you don't like PvP, then don't play this game.  At about level 40, you start having to grind on maps which are only battle zones.  This wouldn't be so bad if everybody was at your level, but there are level 60-90 players looking to farm you so much you can't get EXP, so you have to learn the metagame and use "mission maps" to grind because if you play the game as it presents itself, you're going to be killed a lot and have one hell of a long grind no matter what Gear you're playing.

Worse yet, to participate in the PvP (at least meaningfully), you have to be at least level 65 or your weapons won't be able to do a damn thing.  Worse yet, the high level players often stack their weapons.  A-Gear users will most commonly have weapons that fire so fast and rob you of health so quickly that so much as even entering their sight is pointless.  I-Gears will usually have so much dumped into their agility stat that they are IMPOSSIBLE to hit even if you do land hits (always come up as misses).  B-Gears are almost always one hit kill, have chaffs to deflect damage, and dominate the Den maps as well as dominate spawn camping, and M-Gears usually have so much defense that it'd take you a good few minutes to kill one that's fully buffed, not even counting if they're using their skills and kits to heal theirselves!

The gameplay is brought down by the devs being complete retards, even when by Korean standards.  This is as bad as GunZ turned out with the majority of the player base using obscure tricks over actually playing the game and the devs just saying "Oh we made it like that" just to cover up the fact they were too lazy to fix it.  No, the devs for this game are even worse than that: They're deliberately adding things to ruin the game experience.  With the 3.2 patch, you're able to enchant certain effects of your armor and add defense and evasion... That's nice.  M-Gears that can be hit for all of 2-0s because of an ungodly defense build, I-Gears that can't be hit at all by anybody that's below level 70...  Why not just make it so PvP is only accessible at level 90, huh?  Enjoy playing this game for 5 months straight to reach level 90.


(Overall 5/10):

It's good... Until you start the PvP.  Then the crap starts because the community always knows something else or just has some piece of equipment that's flat out better than yours.  Player skill is thrown out the window and replaced with "I HAVE MISSILES THAT ATTACK FASTER THAN YOURS SO YOU SUCK".  The Grind is horribly long, the PvP is horribly laggy, the community mocks you for not getting one detail right, the devs are complete retards when it comes to game balance, and best of all there's still no private servers for this even though the game is supported world wide by a whole bunch of hosts.  Japan, Vietnam, China, US, UK... All of them have their own Ace Online.  (UK's is called "Air Rivals" FYI).

[UHMEEEEBA]

More like Air Retards.

[Fusion]

Little expansion here:

Why the A-Gear is unbalanced:

Most of the weapons are "Legend Big Smash", the term "Legend" here meaning that the weapon name is colored purple and it's level drastically reduced to a much, much lower level.  Think of it like this: You've got a level 90 weapon and you're level 50.  But one enchant away is your ability to use this weapon almost 2x your level.  This weapon as with all AG weapons is usually prob\RA (More chance to hit\Rapid Fire).  With Siege Mode, your typical Legend user will also have a godly radar range spanning up to 2000m if not more, which is 2\3rds more reach than any of the aerial Gears have with their advanced weapons.  Add to that the fact that Siege Mode, at higher levels, gives you a nice doubled rate of fire at level 38 and the power only goes up from.  Someone could hack their rate of fire and the players would never know since it's already like this.  Since the A-Gear's main weapon is it's standard, it's impossible to roll the damage, you just have to suck it all up.  A-Gears also rarely, rarely miss their targets.  More insult to injury is that they have the Barrier skill that nullifies any damage whatsoever from any missiles, rendering them invincible to anything but another A-Gear for 15 seconds.  Usually A-Gears are just camping the flyers, not shooting other ground units.

How come one out of the four Gears has to be superior to all of the other three?  There won't be any balance until these Gears can be killed a lot easier and their damage a lot easier.  You'd think having a fast engine would make it tough for an A-Gear to hit you, but the only way to lose an A-Gear's lock in Siege Mode is to just move to where he can't shoot you.  Depending on his position, this can range from easy to impossible.