An impressive effort decorated with flaws, frustration and some old-school grinding.
The first thing to notice about the games is the impressive graphics. The characters models and animations are awesome, with minor, minor glitches. Most monsters are well designed, some are original and some are ... found in most RPGs. The maps are not that big, but allow for decent exploration and offer, from time to time, real eye candy locations.
There are 4 main classes, each with two sub-classes, but the game play is original with each one. I have played all classes and subclasses and they actually play different, not only in terms of gear and items, but as strategy, PVP, PVE etc.
After you choose a class there are six continents to explore, a abyss for PVPVE(or farming for abyss points) and some rare visits to the lands of the opposing faction.
As you get more levels you get skills, special skills and stigmas (which are just other skills),a large variety of beautiful and colorful armors and weapons and titles which offer various bonuses. The normal skills are bought from trainers in the main city, while stigmas are found as drop or bought from the in-game broker.
You can also gather materials and get crafting professions that go on for 399 levels each. The crafting system has been heavily criticized, but as you would expect from a 'craft' it takes a lot of time and resources to master. Crafting is not mandatory and you can very well play without it,but must of those that have patients can get great items and lots of gold from it.
There are also around 500 unique quest for each faction, some of which can be repeated 100 times.
This being said i can conclude that this game is just an impressive looking, normal game-play on-line game. But I have been playing for a long time now and i got to see many sides of the same story. Yes, the game has a grinding component that makes you have to hunt a lot just only to reach the next level, just to get more quests, but it is not all that bad and not that obvious. In fact most leveling is done by making quest solo or in groups so you might not feel the grinding part all that much.
I said i could conclude, but not before telling you about the wonderful (and i am being sincere) battles i took part in. Wars, sieges, raids and just plain old 'lets go to Asmodae and fight asmodians' are simply brilliant. Flying makes the game much more interesting, allowing for fast retreat and various strategies for ranged characters. It is true that higher level players can easily pound you, and that some times you get caught by a group of them, but it is very pleasant when the roles change.
Other great elements of the game are: efficient macros, resurrection kisks (portable resurrection places), siege weapons, gear styling, treasure boxes, some boss creatures and last but not least the flying transportation(which really looks great the first few times you see it.).
Of course I'm not going to criticize game elements like to many players messages, announcement for selling gold or leveling, bot usage or any stuff that depends on the users. I'm pretty sure all games have bad users.
To really conclude, Aion offers a awesome visual experience, some bothering grinding and a fun and challenging game-play.