Many people remember watching Top Gun or Return of the Jedi, and thinking how awesome it would be to be strapped to the cockpit, dog-fighting it out with a handful of your trusted comrades, for the sake of your home nation. Such is the reason games like Ace Combat do well. But while Ace Combat is a nice game, it never gives you the feeling of large scale war. However, AirRivals does.

First off, let it be known, that AirRivals (formally known as Space Cowboys Online) is primarily a PvP MMORPG. It has all the normal RPG elements, leveling, star upgrading, quests, equipment upgrades, and even parties and guilds (known as ingame as Formations and Brigades respectively). Upon reaching level 10, the player will be forced to choose which Nation they want to side with, there is no real difference, aside from a possible location change. Now you won't be forced to pvp right away. Most areas offer two channels, a Safe and a Battle channel. Battle is, as you might guess the PvP channel, allowing you to fly into other enemy players, and allow you to fight it out, in what can get to be huge, full out wars. However, if you're lower leveled, and don't want to get caught up in any ongoing battles, then simply choose the Safe channel. However, remember that some higher up maps, only have Battle channels.

Players upon starting, will have the choice of piloting one of four different vehicles (known as ingame, Gears). Each one totally different from the others. There's the B Gear, that works as a bomber, and one of the best rounded gears. The I Gear, the Hit and Runner, known for incredible speed and attack. The A Gear, working as a tank, and known for it's Siege mode, which turns it into an Anti-Air battery. And finally the M Gear, which is the weakest of the three, but makes up for it's buffs, and the only gear able to heal.

The game itself is actually quite good looking, even for being fairly dated. It'll run well even on older computers, and will run pretty smooth the whole time. A personal favorite aspect of mine, is the actual loading screens, with have some absolute excellent artwork on display. Not to be outdone, even some of the special weapon effects can be quite dazzling as well, if not terrifying for a player, to see dozens of missiles flying in their direction.

The sound itself is also pretty good. Not amazing, and it doesn't have music that'll be stuck in your head for days, but it's tolerable. I'm not a high level player, but I can only imagine the sounds of hundreds of missiles flying through the air, and bullets upon bullets ripping through shields and armor.

Probably the most important aspect of any game to me, is gameplay, and AirRivals controls great. Gears handle very responsive, able to cut round, lock onto a target, then light it ablaze with guns and missiles a plenty. Even being on the opposite end of a gun, Gears handle great with barrel rolling, boosting, and quick turning.

However, there is a definite downside, and that is grinding. The game unfortunately is very grind heavy. Early levels have only one quest, per level. And if you've just reached that level, the quest won't give you another level. While there are Hunting missions, all it really is, is grinding the same monster over and over, and getting a cash bonus afterward. So no matter how much you enjoy the game, the grinding may ruin it for you.

All in all, even with the grinding, and the sometimes laggy start up and load times, the game can be an incredible ride, more so if you get to participate in some of the Mothership Raids. (Check youtube to see what I mean.)


Review by PLink, Freemmogamer.com - Posted April 05, 2009

Most often during my run with the free mmo games I've tried, I've had to keep myself going, find some type of goal, no matter how silly it is to keep playing. But then there are times, when I'll look at the time, and realize I've been playing the game for several hours. Lunia has fallen into that latter category.

Lunia: Record of the Lunia War, describes itself as a "Action-Arcade RPG". And once you get a feel for the controls, you'll understand and agree with that statement completely. Not once, do you feel like you aren't in control of your character. There's no auto-attacking and no computer automated movement. People familiar with Phantasy Star Online, will find the controls familiar, in which the player has full control of their character's movement, attacks, and magic spells. The similarities end there however, due to Lunia's combat system, having a much better Melee combo system, a large variety of spells and abilities, and sometimes, screen fulls of enemies bearing down on you and your allies.

The main story has the players following three young adventurers, who also serve as templates for the players themselves. There's Seig, the young, brash knight. Eir, the kind and gentle healer. And finally Dainn, the smart, responsible mage. Through out your travels in the stage, you're accompanied in the narration between the three, and helps keep the focus on what your goals are as you progress through the levels, even though you never actually see their presence, except for the viewable cutscenes.

However, these three humans won't be your only means of play. Along at the start up, is a half-elven thief, readily available for you to play. And even still, there are four other secret playable classes for you to find and play as, including a Fighting Slime character!

Questing follows a linear progression, with the player progressing multiple stages along their travels. The levels are divided into several Episodes, with the main stages in each episode, each episode ending with a powerful boss. However this isn't all you have in the Episodes. Often times you'll be alerted to special events happening in the world, such as a monster attack on certain location. Joining in on these events will instantly warp you a special event stage, where you and several other players will try to defend either a building or person from oncoming waves of monsters, ending with a boss encounter. These events are fun diversions and often include items that can help turn in special quests for items and tons of experience points.

Not only with these special random stages, there are also bonus stages on the Episode map, that upon reaching a certain point, will allow you to divert from the main path, and visit these bonus areas. Most of these include special area in where monsters continually spawn, and offer a higher amount of experiance points, useful for boosting up one's level. This is made quick with other players in the party, which will boost the strength and experiance value of the monsters, similar to Diablo's party system. Also you may find special quests which will allow you to divert even further, and unlock special stages to face hidden bosses. These how ever can be much tougher, forcing you to back track and replay stages a number of times, before you are finally able to unlock some of these said stages.

Now, PvP has never been that huge of a factor for me, but I did check it out, and was surprised. PvP is taken care of in a versus arena style. Different types include Free For All and Team Elimination to name a few. Wins all you to upgrade your PvP Rank, which in turn allow you to buy better weapons in the Town Square. It's totally optional, and even allows you to spectate on current matches, which I enjoyed.

Now with all of this said, is the game even worth looking at? Well..that might be up to taste. The game follows a very anime-style looking feel to it. Bright and vibrant coloers, cel-shaded character models, and
incredible spell effects, really do make it nice too look at. So it might depend on your own taste.

The music itself..well..to be honest there isn't too much of it that's memorable. The opening theme sounds as if it was taken right from an anime show, so if that typical, happy, overly cheery music isn't your thing, you might be wanting to try and getting right into the game, as quick as you can. The only other music I can think of is during one of the stages boss fights, where it turns heavier, into a rock mode, as really gets you into the mood for the fight. That said, one part of the game isn't much.

Speaking of wanting to get into the game quick brings me to another flaw, and that is the loading times. It isn't to say they are always bad, it just seems like you can be sitting, waiting for the main town to load
(which is the busiest and most crowded area). Other flaws that come to mind as actually the main hud itself. When you start up, it seems very crowded, and then you come to find there's very little you can do
about it. The fact that you can't go to the options tap in the menu (which is grayed out) and change the resolution to try and fix this, seems like something I shouldn't have to complain about in a game, but I do.

All this being said, it has taken me some time to get this review written, because I keep going back to play. It is a fun game, with a nice amount of challenge. Discovering all the hidden bosses and
characters, can be a great deal of fun.

The Good: Very responsive and rewarding Combat - Bosses are massive and challenging - Colorful and great looking settings and magic effects - Hidden Stages and Characters to unlock - Rarely feels like a grind to play

The Bad: Some might not care for the anime art style - Sound and music are pretty forgettable - Load times can vary from brief to quite long - Main hud can be cluttered - Lack of options


Review by PLink, Freemmogamer.com - Posted Mar 24, 2009