Aion, subtitled Tower of Eternity, is the crown jewel of NCsoft, their next big upcoming game. As any respectable, big MMORPG that wants a spot on the already competitive market, the game brings some cool new stuff that is worth taking a look at.

First of all, it's a fresh new perspective on the classic fantasy RPG world, combining more "traditional", fast-paced Western gameplay and quests with the details and art quality from Eastern games. All that based on the powerful CryTek engine licensed to NCSoft some time ago.

The results are remarkable, visuals are stunning as one would expect, but what's more to notice is that the game moves and feels incredibly fast on most systems, and the developing team did wonders to optimize everything, and make the game work "silky smooth".

But more to the point, let's review the story and lore of the game. Aion is a strange, alien world, where people live inside the earth as opposed to Earth. This "Tower of Eternity" is in fact a channel that brings light from the surface to both playable races in the game: the Elyos, and the Asmodians. People see this tunnel as a sign from the Gods, and worship it.

These two races are fighting each other like in every respectable MMORPG of course, and you have to pick one. The Elyos live on the Northern side of the world. As a result of more sun exposure, they have white skin; they tend to have a very pleasant physical aspect and their territory is beautiful and lush, with cool looking beaches, pure water, and all that you'd expect from the goodie goodies.

On the opposite side, both geographic and military, we find the Asmodians. They have dark skin, red eyes, and everything around them is burned and dry. They are of course Elyos' mortal enemies, and hate them because they act so superior.

From the beginning you'll notice the attention to details, and the large numbers of sliders that can be used at the character creation screen to customize your hero's appearance. Although the Asmodians are darker, they are equally cool looking and good fighters as their Elyos pars. Once that is done, you can even see how your character looks with no clothes on, regular clothes and high level tier armor.

There are of course several classes that can be picked, but I won't insist on that and I'll give you more details on a future review. Sufficient to say you will get the now standard damage dealers, tanks, healers and hybrids, all with pretty graphics and neat animations.

What's really different is the combat system, that NCsoft prays it's not as button mashing as you would expect from a standard MMORPG. Everything in Aion is based on chain attacks. You start with a few bases, class specific abilities, and then depending on what you do, you are offered more types of attacks on screen. You have a skills tree and some of them only have a certain chance to appear as available attacks, while some of them are more certain, making combat varied, and context and user sensitive.

The twist to the story comes with the introduction of the 3rd AI played race: The Balaur. Balaurs are Romanian mythic creatures, similar to dragons or hydras, as they sometimes have several heads. NCsoft calls this the PvPvE system. Imagine you are fighting another player to the death and suddenly, out of nowhere, a Balaur appears. He may attack you, or he may help you defeat your enemy. They are really unpredictable, and sometimes they may turn against you after they kill the other guy.

Besides that, Aion has all the small things that will get you excited about it: a stigma system, where players will be able to socket 5 abilities to their hero from any class in the game, making it more balanced in a lot of ways; a polymorph system where every player can transform into an animal, like the ranger for example into a wolf; hyperlinks and an easy map location system for NPCs and quests and much more.

Talking about quests, Aion is different as well. You don't have just quests, you also have missions that are essential for the story and let you experience the world. Quests are just there for fun and other money, and you don't have to do them if you don't feel like it.

Flight is an important part of the game, and once you've completed an ascension mission around level 10 you will be given your own wings. Flight is limited however and you'll have to think how to use it or if you should use other offensive abilities in a battle maybe instead.

Even crafting is fun and there are tons of quests for it. You even gain custom titles and not just for creating stuff, but for everything in the game. They've even added a personal store to the already popular Auction House and in-game e-mail system.

There is no release date announced yet for Aion: Tower of Eternity, but NCsoft is making every effort to bring it as fast and as good looking as possible. This should be a game for the books, with the quality we're used from them over the years.