That’s how forgettable and unmemorable the game that was originally known as Ascent: Infinite Realm (A:IR), has become for me. The original concept was something that I had been looking forward to. There were issues with the game (which I played during the SEA open beta); especially with the line-of-sight and aerial combat (it just did not feel natural). But you could see the potential; something that ended up not coming to fruition once the feedback for the Korean betas (and the issues in the SEA soft launch) were tabulated together. The end result was a design stripped of that aerial movement and combat, along with rejiggering the line-of-sight combat to something that is in between that and TERA’s action combat, along with a story line that has been neutered as well. To put it more simply, it’s a design that is a shell of its former self.
I had to
back check a prior post I made just to recall the date that it had been delayed to (October 20th). This also highlighted how little buzz there is for Elyon. And despite a lot of people referring to it as a TERA successor, it is anything but that. There’s a reason why a lot of TERA vets aren’t even playing Elyon. Sure, there’s a lot of asset reuse with monsters and cosmetics. But that is where it ends; the combat is still nowhere as fun as TERA (and the game play loop even worse than the “multitude of different design teams” mess that exists in TERA). TERA players have been witness to, and experienced Bluehole’s mutilation of that game. Why bother putting time into something that has already been mutilated (from the A:IR design to the uninspiring one in Elyon), to only see it get worse?
I’m pretty much close to clocking out of Bluehole’s IP’s because my playtime in TERA is close to zero now (I only login to collect my daily premium stuff since I had purchased one of those packages that gave an years worth of premium along with the laurel headwear cosmetic and Mystel wings; the latter which was the 5th anniversary reward when Enmasse was the publisher – I just wanted an extra for a newer character I had created). In hindsight, that turned out to be huge waste of money. Once that expires in February, I’ll likely stop logging in until there is an actual interesting update (which may be awhile).
Between Devilian and TERA, it proved to be an interesting run with Bluehole; games that ended up filling a hole when I stopped playing Diablo III and StarCraft II. Both Bluehole titles pushed me into the MMO space; a genre I originally did not care for but eventually embraced as a preference over the single player RPG’s that I had played for many years prior. And it looks that era of following Bluehole/Krafton games is about to end for me in 2022.
I waffled a bit on deciding whether or not to just try and give Elyon another shot (post closed betas). I finally decided to give it a chance and let it download overnight. Unsurprisingly, my desired character name was already taken with the game being two weeks out already. I really tried to go in with a “new game” mentality, but just found the entire experience underwhelming even compared to the CBT’s (where at least there was that initial “new car” feel). I managed to get to level 32 on my assassin before logging out permanently (since I knew the leveling grind would start increasing from this point).
I don’t know how either Bluehole/Krafton or Kakao Games will recoup their original investments in this game, and then get a reasonably decent return on top of it (without putting more p2w components into the cash shop; which is a speciality of Kakao). I guess I really should not care since I’m not going to be playing it going forward.
