August 28, 2008

Shaiya

Shaiya is an online MMORPG that is part of Aeria Games. That means, it is free to play – unless you want to use the good stuff which costs you Aeria Points. I found this game from when I last reviewed Last Chaos which is also an Aeria game. I have been playing it off and on ever since.

Online gaming isn’t new to me, so I understood many things about it. However, if you aren’t so inclined in the online gaming community, Shaiya offers newbie classes. I found this to be a cute and helpful thing for players, if they utilize it.
Character creation was actually quite nice. It allows you to zoom in on the character and rotate – great for checking out hairstyles! Shaiya only allows your account to play on the Alliance of Light or the Alliance of Fury though. This means that you can only create characters on one side. I decided to go with the Fury (also known as the dark side). They have hotter armor and I liked the characters more.

Once inside the world, I found that how the characters run is a little funny looking. The game loading music and music in some areas reminds me of Harry Potter. However, overall the graphics are great! Perhaps even better than some monthly subscription ones.

Questing was often dull, and I didn’t find a real storyline in the game. Don't expect to find any cutscenes or anything here. That was a bit disappointing because I like storylines in games. Nevertheless, grinding and killing stuff in a party was often fun. I actually made it to level 51 on my normal mode Pagan. I’m working on getting that to level 53 so I match. Hey, looking cute is a part of gaming too! I'm also working on a normal mode Assassin and a hard mode Oracle and hard mode Pagan.


Once a player reaches 50 in normal mode, hard mode is unlocked. Once a player reaches 50 hard mode, ultimate mode is unlocked. Only think I really dislike (and do NOT approve of) about this is that if a character dies in ultimate mode and either isn’t raised by a person or a resurrection rune (bought with AP of course) – they lose that character completely! As in, character is no longer there at login screen and everything on your character is gone too. That is just crap if you ask me.

PvP is not my thing in any game. Shaiya made no exception on this matter. Their PvP area is all about Light vs. Fury. The towers controlled equals which side has blessing and how much. I really did not enjoy PvP at all in this game. Perhaps it is because I am not good at it; perhaps it is because I had bad luck. I’m not sure, nor do I care. It just wasn’t my thing. I prefer to go kill monsters than people.

Monsters in this game were well designed. They were well detailed and interesting. There were even partially nude ones that were half-female half-snake or horse. Oh, I forgot to mention you have to be 18+ years old to play this game.

Overall, I enjoyed playing this game. There are many bugs they should fix and upgrades they should make. However, if or when they ever will, I do not know. As in most games, if your friends don’t play or play as often, it gets boring. It is a game I’d suggest giving a shot because it is free and will guarantee to take up many hours of your boredom. Happy Gaming!



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