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
Not much has been revealed in terms of storyline 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 be used to summon ancient creatures from a war ages ago. Rakion takes place after this 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 a substance known as Alcon, which arrived on a meteorite a long time ago, which corrupts terrain and distorts the properties of many creatures, making them highly agressive and prone to attacking people.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Rakion is similar to a lot of 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 and the right mouse button. There are five different game modes in Rakion (Stage, Team Deathmatch, Solo Deathmatch, Boss War, and Golem War). A level limit may be selected when making a game. Players also have a "Basic Mode" option that does not take into account player statistic upgrades and most creatures, but includes armour bonuses.

Classes
In Rakion, any character is a member of one of the five classes. These classes are the Swordsman (sometimes called Warrior), Archer, Blacksmith, Ninja, and Mage. Each class has a melee and a ranged attack, and, under certain conditions, normally achieving a specified number of kills, can transform into "Chaos Mode". Players who have the ability to transform into Chaos Mode have a blue glow surrounding their body as a warning to others. While in chaos mode, players have more vitality, cannot be knocked down, and do a considerably increased amount of damage.

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 points acquired so far in that game to the other team. This switch will only occur if one team has less players than the other. In Deathteam, Boss War and Death Solo games, dead players respawn after a 7-second period and have four seconds of invincibilty when they respawn. The Deathteam modes have healing capsules and books that provide cell points; the other modes do not. These game tpyes include Solo Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Golem War and Boss War.

Solo Deathmatch

Players are pitted against each other in a no-holds barred, free-for-all, with the player who achieves the most kills in a round, crowned the champion. Unofficial alliances may be formed during the course of the game, but it should be noted that unlike in Team Deathmatch, attacks will harm all players, including those in your "team". These games award decent amounts of gold and experience points. It should alos be noted, that this is the one and only gametype where no one really wins or loses, the player with the most kills is crowned First in the Round, but there is no depressing large sign that screams LOSE! if you do not place first or seocnd in the round.

Team Deathmatch

Players are divided into Red and Blue teams, where they battle the opposite side to achieve the highest amount of overall kills in the round. These games are considerably more organizes and less messy than Solo Deathmatches, where blood is spilled in large quantities and anyone and everyone is fair game. Team Deathmatches require more strategic planning, as unlike Solo Deathmatches, teams win or lose rounds.

Boss War

Another popular game type, Boss War is essentially a large cat and mouse game. With swords. And big hammers. Players are once again divided into Red and Blue teams, where the highest level player in each team is crowned as being the Boss. The round is won when the other team suceeds in hunting down and defeating the opposing side's Boss. This allows for intensive running, jumping as your Boss tries to outrun the opposite team. Mages are highly valued in this round, since there are no health capsules, the mages, with their healing ability, are the only way of saving your boss's health.

Golem War

The most popular game type you will find, Golem War pays the best gold, the most experience points, and the most excitement. Players are divided into Red and Blue teams, with each team assigned a Master Golem. There are two ways to win a round. Either by destroying the opposing team's Master Golem, or to kill off all players on the other team. This is because unlike in other game types, players defeated in Golem Wars, do not respawn until the next round. The only way to actually defeat a Master Golem is to use a Golden Sword, which can only be obtained by defeating the Gold Golem in the center of the map. Once the Gold Golem is defeated, the player who destroyed it, is surrounded with a golden glow, indicating that they are in posession of the Golden Sword. Players with the Golden Sword do full damage to Master Golems, attacks by others not in possesion of the Golden Sword only do 1% of their attack's normal damage.

Should the Golden Sword player be defeated by the opposing team or their Master Golem, the Gold Golem is revived and another frantic race for the Golden Sword begins.

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".

Clans
There are many clans in this game. After joining a clan, you may earn bonus experience points. There is a clan tree which is sorted(in order from lowest to highest) as Nak, Panzer, Golem, and Dragon. Then Dragon is the highest rank in the clan. He or she is the clan master. Those in your clan tree are also your Uplinks or Downlinks. When your Uplink or Downlink is 'On', you may gain bonus experience.

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 his own server, a peer to peer network. Some critics have critcized Softnyx for this design decision since in places other than South Korea, the distance latency often creates unfair advantages over other players. Other concerns have been noted that it gives hackers more "tools" to cheat with. Softnyx only response to this is that Rakion is meant to be run as a LAN set up and not against far away players.