Rakion: Chaos Force/Gameplay

Rakion is a free, three-dimensional, fantasy action online game developed by the South Korean company Softnyx. It was in a free "closed" beta testing from August 11 - 25 2005, in a limited group of countries (which included the United States, the UAE and at a later date, Europe).

It switched from development to open beta testing on October 13, 2005, which ended on December 1, 2005. At this point, the game began to follow a similar model to Softnyx's other MMOG, GunBound. Users may purchase "Softnyx Cash" with real-world currency and spend it on "Power User" status (which offers various benefits and unlocks further ingame purchases) or items that are often very powerful and not available to the non-paying public.

Story
Very little story has been released for Rakion, however what has been released indicates that the battles in the game are part of a wider series of conflicts over "cell" - a substance that can summon new life, focus energy and several other things. Rakion takes place after a large war - many of the ingame texts reference how things used to be in that war, or that an item is a remnant from that war. There is also Alcon (a place, person, or substance), which is believed to be a great evil which is mentioned as poisoning one map and distorting the properties of many creatures.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Rakion is similar to many third or first-person shooter games. One uses the WASD keys to move the character around, and the default camera is FPS style, though the player's character can be seen. A secondary console control camera is also available. Characters have a variety of combos and attacks, and all characters have both a ranged weapon and a melee weapon that can be switched between by pressing "Q". The camera is rotated by the mouse, and the attack buttons are the left mouse button (C1) and the right mouse button (C2, used most commonly for special attacks and special combos). There are six different game modes in Rakion (Stage, Team Deathmatch, Solo Deathmatch, Boss mode, and Golem). A level limit may be selected when making a game. Players also have a "basic mode" option that does not take into account statistics and creatures, making all players in the match equal.

Classes
In Rakion, a player is a member of any of the five classes. The choices are Swordsman (sometimes called Warrior), Archer, Blacksmith, Ninja, and Mage. Each class has a melee and a ranged attack, and, under certain conditions, can transform into "Chaos Disguise". Players who have the ability to transform into chaos disguise have a blue glow surrounding their body as a warning to others. While in chaos disguise, players have more vitality, cannot be knocked down, and do a lot more damage.

Swordsman
The Swordsman, a male knight in armor, uses a long sword for melee attacks and a throwing knife for ranged attacks. No natural ability is lacking for the Swordsman, but no particular skill stands out above the rest. Because of this technicality most players would agree that Swordsman are the most rounded class at the beginning of the game.

Archer
Archers are female characters that use a bow as a ranged weapon and a small knife as the melee. The arrow is one of the most versatile projectiles, moving faster and flying farther than the others. When an enemy gets close, the Archer can either use her bow point blank or her knife, depending on the Archer's preference. Although Archers move the second slowest in the beginning of the game (faster than Mages but slower than the rest), with precise timing and a steady hand, Archers can pick off enemies from a safe distance.

Blacksmith
Blacksmiths are bigger and more heavily armored than the other classes. The weapons that they use are a hammer and throwing axes, melee and ranged respectively. Blacksmiths are known for dealing significant amounts of damage, while sacrificing the speed of their attacks. Mostly all of the Blacksmith's attacks either take several seconds to wind up or have considerable delay. For instance, Blacksmith's axes are one of the most powerful projectiles in the game, but when using axes, Blacksmiths first must wait for the axe to pull back, and then must wait nearly a second after the axe is thrown. Because of this and other attacks, most players regard Blacksmiths as the slowest class.

Ninja
The Ninja, a lightly armored female, is the fastest moving class in the game. They use a dagger type weapon for melee and throwing stars for range. Contrary to the Blacksmith, Ninjas sacrifice power for speed. Although the power of their grip and special attacks rival the other classes, their other attacks are weaker than almost all of the other classes. Ninjas also have the least beginning health of all the classes. To make up for this, Ninjas are the only characters in the game who can "slide" (also called gliding), which is a technique that is a small dash that grants invincibility to the Ninja during the dash.

Mage
Mages are very short, masked individuals who are said to have no gender. They use a staff for melee and a small wand for range. Mages move the slowest of all the classes, and have around the same health points of a Ninja. Mages have several magic abilities that, though powerful, are slow to charge and have significant delay. For example, Mages can shoot fireballs from their wand, but they have to lock on for around a second and then are subject to attack for another second after firing. Mages are the only class that can use a technique to heal, creating up to four heal balls that recover some health points. Softnyx.net states that mages are merely support characters and are not able to fight alone because of their slow like qualities, but some players would disagree.

Creatures
There are several different creatures in Rakion. All of them appear in Stage Mode, and they can all be bought in the shop. Like other items, creatures have level requirements. Creatures gain experience and level too; a higher level creature costs more cell points to summon, but it has higher stats, and should one wish to re-sell it, it will fetch a higher price.

Game modes
Excluding Stage mode, which puts players on the same team, all of the game modes are PvP-based. A game can consist of anywhere from 1 to 21 rounds, and a round can last between five and twenty minutes. There are four types of PvP games in Rakion. The game will automatically balance the teams after a round by swapping the players with most experience to the other team. This switch will only occur if one team has less players than the other. In most types of deathmatch dead players respawn after a 7-second period and have four seconds of invincibilty when they respawn. The Deathmatch modes have healing capsules and books that provide cell points; the other modes do not.

Profanity filter
The in-game chat system automatically replaces most profanity with the word "LOVE", as in "You mother LOVEing LOVEer!" The filter isn't limited to whole words, so typing the word "class" will appear as "clLOVE". In the past, the filter could be bypassed by typing a ' in the middle of the word as an escape sequence. However, this bypass was patched.

Criticism
Rakion uses a similar online structure to another Korean based game, GunZ. Both games are not run on dedicated servers and instead make the client act as their own server, i.e. a peer to peer network. Some critics have critcized Softnyx for this design decision because of distance latency that may cause an unfair advantage against other players. Other concerns have been noted, namely that it gives hackers more "tools" to cheat with. Softnyx's only response to this is that Rakion is meant to be run with a LAN configuration and not against far away players.