Don't know if any of you played Gunbound... it's a pretty fun game if you enjoy games like Worms or, for the old-schoolers, Scorched Earth. The game is basically free to download and play. You can pay real cash in exchange for game cash, but it by no means forces you to pay to be able to have fun.

Well, the same company that made Gunbound (Softnyx) has come out with a new game called Rakion. It had been a while since I'd been on Gunbound and I got on the other day to have fun and noticed the link to it. I downloaded it (~250MB if memory serves) and installed it. Wow...

First of all, the company stuck with the same method for making money on it. Its free to download and you can earn everything you need playing the free version. There are pretty nice advantages to "paying" a monthly fee, though. I'll get into that.

What is Rakion? The best way I could describe it is a twitch based RPG-styled game where the combat is reminiscent of Soul Calibur, the PVP action is a lot like Guild Wars Arenas and the graphics look like Lineage II. Yes... twitch. In-fact, when you're getting into the games, it feels a lot like you're starting any typical FPS game, except this is in 3rd person.

As a Swordsman (I'll talk about classes in a second) I click my left mouse button and my character swings. Its just like fighting with a melee weapon in any FPS. And there are different combo's that can be executed depending on which of the mouse buttons are pressed and when.

The classes are Swordsman (Warrior), Blacksmith (Heavy Warrior), Mage, Archer and Ninja (Rogue). Ranged combat is twich just like everything else... you have a crosshair that you have to have the enemy in to hit them. Every class has a ranged attack, but the non-ranged classes' ranged weapons are typically slow and clumsy compared to the archer's bow.

As you fight, you gain exp and gold. The exp goes toward levels. There are 70 levels that can be achieved. As you level, you get atribute points that you can spend to give yourself more powerful attacks and such... and customize your character a bit.

The gold can be used in the shop. You can buy better armor, or stat jewelry, better weapons or pets. You have 3 pet slots, and can summon those pets multiple times durring the combat. Your pets gain levels as you use them.

When you buy cash online, you can use this cash to buy a "Powercard". When you buy the powercard (8000 cash... which is about $8) you are a poweruser for the month. As a poweruser you gain 50% more exp, and can Chaos transform faster (more on this in a bit) and stay transformed longer, plus other benefits. In Gunbound you cna use Cash to buy items too (as opposed to gold) and it costs less cash than gold. I assume it is the same in this game.

As an added bit of fun, you have 6 bubbles on the bottom right hand side of your screen. These fill slowly as you fight, and you get a full bubble if you score a killing blow. Once you've filled all 6, you can press C to chaos transform. The transformation lasts a certain duration (30 secs? I didn't time it). As your chaos form, you are incredibly powerful and rip through enemies. Kills while in Chaos form don't count toward your next chaos form, unfortunatly. When you're a power user, you only have to fill 5 bubbles and it lasts 5 more seconds.

I only started playing this last weekend, so I'm sure there's plenty I don't know. I experienced 3 different game types:

FFA
Team Deathmatch
Master Golem

FFA is just that.. a free for all. Very fun, but can be annoying having some random person come and take out the person you've been fighting for the last 2 min.

Team Deathmatch is a straight out fight to see which team can get to a certain number of kills first.

Master Golem is really fun. Both teams start with a Master Golem. In the middle, there's a Golden Golem with 2 health bars (Red / Blue for the two teams). The first team to take out their color health bar on the golden golem gets a "golden sword". Only the person who scored the killing blow gets the sword, as far as I can tell. It might be who did the most damage, though. That person will have a yellow glow around them. They are the only person who can attack the opposing team's Master Golem.

At this point, the team who killed the Golden Golem first heads toward the other team's master golem. The Sword bearer attacks the golem (which attacks back, BTW) while the rest of his team defends him from the other team who will be trying to kill him to prevent him from killing their golem. If the Sword bearer kills the golem, the round ends. If the sword bearer dies, a new Golden Golem spawns and can be killed for the golden sword again.

If you die in a master golem game, you are dead until the start of the next round. Thus, another way to win is to kill all of the members of the opposing team. A lot of times when the teams clash in the middle, you'll have a couple start fighting eachother and a few attacking the golem. Its very fun.

Anyway, now that you have a primer on it, you should check it out:

http://www.rakion.net (http://www.rakion.net/)

NOTE: It will probably ask you to install the Korean language pack. I did, but I don't think you have to to view the page.

If you see Akom(X), thats me.

So its a RPG where you fight PvE, or all PvP? Because would think twitch skills don't matter for shit when a level 1 fights a level 70?

It's essentially all PVP, and though you can expect to get reamed by a significantly higher level character it won't be as bad as a traditional RPG would lead you to expect.

I found the game amusing for about 25 minutes.

Yeah... not sure what the holding value will be... probably nil. But still, it something you can do if you're bored of you're other games.

Most of the games are limited by a level range. I'm level 5 and usually play in 1-10 rooms.

Well, Gunbound didn't really have all that much content, but that game somehow manages to keep alot of people playing it.

As for Rakion, I would love to try it but my graphics card isn't supported. It certainly looks interesting, and if they managed to keep the fun feeling that Gunbound has then it might be a great time killer.