Complete and absolute garbage. Your time and money is better spent elsewhere.
First things first, there's a reason I put the word "free" in quotes because the game is not remotely free to play. This game should be called what it really is: a Trial version. Even then, it's a highly crippled trial version, which is ironic since its tagline states that it's an "MMORPG with no limits". In order to get anywhere in this game, you'd have to pay as much as $20 a month, and that's for the basics. And what you have to pay for includes any of the game's story and being able to acquire any skills beyond the initial set. In fact, so much of the game's content is locked away, available only to those who have actually spent money on this, that this game might as well be made as a subscription-based game like World of Warcraft. And how much you would have to pay each month is significantly more than World of Warcraft's $15 monthly fee. Even then you're dependent on Nexon on not screwing things up. At least with World of Warcraft, you have a staff that's at least competent... usually. But by judging by other players' accounts, the odds of Nexon not screwing up ranges from a coin flip to being less than the odds of a pothead showing up for work on time. Forget about customer support or in-game help as Nexon's entire PR staff apparently consists only of a syphilitic chimp.
Also, this game is very newbie unfriendly. For the "free" version you will be restricted to one character with very limited customization options. After you've realized just how badly you've screwed things up for yourself and have a better idea as to how to play the game, instead of allowing the player to junk their character quickly start a new game with a new character, the game will force the player to wait upwards of a whole day before allowing them to make a new character. And if you paid for your character, guess what, no refunds. You're either stuck with the character you got or you're forced to shell out even more money to make a new one. Furthermore, you also have to pay for your character's rebirth or otherwise your character's skill growth will slow to a crawl in less than a month of playing the game
Character customization is a farce. Only thing customizable is your head and your skin tone. At least in other games, you can make your character short or taller than many buildings and, in the case of female characters, you can adjust the size of her chest from deliciously small to big enough to have their own gravity pull. Maybe Nao, the aforementioned silver-haired girl from the ads, has a superiority complex and doesn't like the idea of competition in that department.
The game's sound and graphics would be impressive if the game came out eight years ago. Today, it looks awfully pixilated and dated and the sound is nothing at all to write home about. And I've heard Doom midi files that sound better than some of the music in the game. So it's got an anime theme... just like every other JMMORPG being imported over here.
Gameplay is sub-par is every way imaginable and they screw it up in a few unimaginable ways too. Movement is cumbersome and counter-intuitive, you'd end up using both mouse buttons to properly steer your character in the right direction since one button is to steer and the other is to move. What's so dangerous about being able to use WASD for movement? Forget about auto-path routing because, unless you babysit your character along the entire long journey, they'll promptly find themselves stuck behind a wall or a bush or a pebble (I wish I were kidding). Combat is nothing more than the usual click-fest and as basic as it could get. Sure there's a rock-paper-scissors element occasionally added to it, but it is poorly implemented and you'll find yourself rarely using it. And good luck aiming as you'll have more trouble actually clicking on your enemy to attack them than anything else. And to annoy you further, apparently the concept of persistently attacking an enemy until you or it is dead is a foreign concept much like sobriety is a foreign concept to a frat boy. And it seems the designers didn't put much into the game's bestiary. You'll face wolves, bears, spiders, variations on one of the three, and that's about it. But it gets worse as item gathering ranges from grabbing the tiny object at your feet to good luck clicking on the single pixel that represents the gold or item that was dropped. Furthermore, the inventory screen is blatantly ripped off from Diablo II right down to having "I" and "II" above your weapons to swap what you're holding. Dungeons consist of a linear set of boxy rooms with no differentiation in the textures employed into their design. If you seen one dungeon, you've seen them all... literally. To add to the many annoyances, everything is time based. So there are frequent periods you will end up standing around doing nothing.
Equipment is ridiculously overpriced in the NPC's stores (and making little difference overall). Apparently whoever was in charge of color coordination is color-blind as every character, despite what they're wearing, will be guaranteed look like a complete and utter dork unless they make it themselves. And attempting to craft your own equipment is like repeatedly playing craps with loaded dice. You'll often fail and end up with nothing for your hard work. To make matters worse, you could lose your hard-earned gear if you are killed in battle which is highly likely as many dungeons have monsters that can 1-hit kill even the strongest players. And NPCs are either prone to breaking your stuff if they so much as to think about fixing your gear, or so hideously expensive you'd have to take out a loan just to even breathe the same air as they do.
Thanks to the non-existent in-game moderation, bots have totally flooded the common area in the town you first arrive in. This, in turn, completely causes the game to lag. In fact, lag tends to be your worst enemy. And this is amazing because in Dream of Mirror Online with all the graphical settings cranked to the max, I could be in an area with three dozen players selling their wares in addition to an additional dozen other players scurrying about and I suffer from little to no lag. In Mabinogi, the game seems to choke when more than a dozen things are on the screen at the same time, which is even more amazing since visually Mabinogi is a far inferior game.
In conclusion:
Mabinogi is an extremely bad MMORPG that's not even worth your free time. As a free MMORPG, it is easily outclassed by other games like Dream of Mirror Online. And as a commercial MMORPG, it's not even qualified to be in World of Warcraft's league while being more expensive to play too. The only positive this game has is the vain hope you could get to play "squeeze the melons" with Nao, but that's what imageboards are for.