Recent reviews by Addi

So I've been playing the Closed Beta and now launch and Elyon suffers from a problem that many other Korean MMORPGs do, it is bloated with systems designed to force you into mundane gameplay loops or make you spend money. With that said Elyon is not the biggest offender when it comes to pay for progression and only a handful of elements can be affected by in-game purchases. Another problem with the large amount of systems is that it overwhelms you, I am going to list below the many different systems crammed into the game. It feels like they grabbed every mechanic from every other MMO and just threw it into the game without much thought and the systems doesn't blend with each other at all.

Now I'm not going to completely trample on this game because the game is genuinely fun to play, the combat and game experience is fun, the classes feel good and it really does feel like an MMORPG. This game could have been great but was clearly hampered by the ambitious amounts of mechanics.

Systems in Elyon

Equipment Upgrades
Equipment Succession
Equipment Enhancement
Equipment Rerolls
Equipment Enchants
Item Fusions
Runestone Upgrades
Rune Attributes
Mana Awakening
Mana Imprints
Skill Attributes
Trade Skills
Trading System
Player Housing
Housing Material Farming
Luminus and Pet Systems
6(!) different instance types

Edit: Spelling and Grammar

Tales of Arise has improved on the series quite a lot, better models, improved animations and detailed expressions. The gameplay has been simplified but only for the better and the darker tone of the story is something I've been looking forward to, they have also added a lot more player agency when it comes to customizing character skills and abilities. It definitely feels like the Tales series have entered a new generation.

So why am I not recommending this game? The developers have tied skills to DLC costumes, essentially putting game content behind a paywall, so if you want these skills, which are really strong, you have to pay up. This is an incredibly idiotic decision to put it in the mildest terms possible, the Tales series has been a big part of my gaming history for over two decades and when they started porting games to PC I was really excited. I bought all the PC versions of the game even though I had every console version of the series because I really wanted to support Bandai-Namco's decision to open up to the PC market. I won't be buying another Tales title as of today unfortunately, I'm just incredibly disappointed. If Steam allowed it I would refund the game but I have already spent 8 hours on it and I didn't find out about the DLC skills until now.

Keep in mind that the game is in Early Access.

I have no complaints about the visuals, what the game lacks is focus. It is very ambitious and wants to emulate a lot of features however that makes the game feel thin and stretched in it's current version. What makes this a problem is that rather than to finish step 1 first, they seem to want to work on all features at all times, usually this is a sign that this game will be stuck in Early Access for quite some time.

Hopefully I am proven wrong but I can't help but to be pessimistic.