A good concept and feel wasted on bad effort.

User Rating: 4 | Mabinogi PC
Mabinogi is admittedly unlike many free to play Anime-Style MMO RPGs out there, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best. Character creation and remake has a nice tie-in with the game's story, in that you are really just a soul in a body of your choice. You can get started off as one of the four official classes available, which are the standard Fighter, Ranger, and Mage classes, with a sort of unique one named Alchemist, which is basically the only class that can use. Actually, that's not really true, because the classes aren't that solid. If you choose to be an Alchemist, you are given a starting "Cylinder" with newb-exclusive Water Crystals as ammo. But this, along with a " the Aspiring " title, is really the only thing that defines your role. Once you are in the game doing quests, you are free to do what you please, including mastering your skills specific to another class, such as magic. Being free to do what you want isn't a bad thing, however. You can choose to grind in dungeons or do part-time jobs for NPCs, and they pay reasonable amounts. If your impatient, you can also do advanced missions with the pros to super-level yourself real quick. It really gives you a nice feel of freedom, and that many things await.
As briefly mentioned before, the story is pretty interesting, if you're willing to actually do a bit of reading. Mabinogi is divided into "Generations", which are basically books of the whole series. I personally have only gotten so far into Generation 1, but you are given the option to also start from G9 and G13, specific breaks in the series of stories. G13 is undoubtedly the most interesting, since it's not only based off of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but also the actually game-play for that Generation is more involving. G1 (and G2 from what I heard) has a good enough story, but all you are told to do is run all around the world talking to NPCs and occasionally doing a dungeon to find an item, so that then you can go back to talking to NPCs. Again, I didn't play this Generation all the way through, but I wasn't sucked in well enough. The reward may be worth the trouble, a new title wit ha special skill to transform into a powerful form, but game-play needs to be motivating and enjoyable.
Speaking of game-play and mechanics, the fighting system is pretty nice, if not a bit annoying. You could say it's half-way between turn-based and real-time combat. When you hit an enemy a certain number of times (usually three), they are knocked back and a sort of "Cooldown" gauge appears. If you try attacking with most attacks and skills while this gauge is still at least a quarter full, the enemy will likely hit back harder before you can land more hits. The real-time part is that you can use skills when ever you want, like "Defense" and "Counter-attack", to block in-coming attacks from your opponent. Mabinogi heavily focuses on Skills, and you get special points to level them up with. You find these skills mostly by quests. However, you really have to decide what you want to first focus on when spending your skill points. You only get skill points by leveling up or exploring, which, at late-game, is pretty slow. You can rebirth your character to reset their level and age, and appearance if you pay for another character card, but even so, the game makes you starve for points later on when they start costing more than three. Mabinogi does do well with the concept, though, and it's one of those games where mashing the attack button just won't cut it, which is always worth something now a days. Even with NPC enemies, you have to decide, do you want to keep charging up your frost bolt, or do you want to take on a defensive stance? Aside from this, it's generally perhaps too bumpy, and will only really get interesting later in the game.
Mabinogi is free to play, and it shows. If you look closely at the game graphics and system, you'll see that the company that made this game is either on a tight budget or a huge cash-cow. Call me a pervert, but at one point, I looked up the skirt of my female character once, and what I saw wasn't very "pleasing". I saw thighs that were connected to what seemed like air. The animation for the 3D art is pretty sloppy over-all, to say the least. Terrain looks like it's painted tin-foil bent to look like hills and mountains and the graphics on the terrain are noticeably just colored square sections. The map for the game is also a bit inaccurate, which is annoying for travelling long distances. Everything is just low resolution and quality. The graphics aren't the only problem, however. The system is so slap-dash that it's not even funny. There is this one quest where you can learn the Counter-attack skill from the combat teacher, Randald, at the school if you deliver his armor. But then later on you get another skill from Trefor who guards the northern area, stating he'll teach you the Counter-attack skill if you guard the shepherd's sheep while he goes off to do poorly-elaborated errands. I played the game for a long time, or at least, remember it way back, and I know that before, only Trefor gave you Counter-attack. The GUI, however, is alright, with minimization buttons and not choppy. It's not the best, but you can tell what things are. Items in the inventory have a nice 32 bit feel to them and the windows' color can be changed to your appeal. Creativity should also be credited in this game, and it could be a lot better if the artists just put more work into the animation. It isn't one of those games where free to play actually means pay to win, but you do get a bit more stuff if you pay. Personally, I would say that you only really need to play for a pet that you can mount, to help travelling around Erinn, since you'll certainly be doing a lot of that. Other that that, and maybe a premium character card for more choices in looks, you won't need anything else. I do like how your free beginner card acts as a premium character card in terms of appearance choices, and it did give me a good push of motivation, but if you're into graphics quality in games, I don't recommend this game for you.
Actually, let's talk about motivation a bit more. You know how in most JRPGs you start off in a tiny town that sells low tier items and eventually gets destroyed in some way as a part of the story? Well, this certainly doesn't happen. The newbie town is actually the main area people hang around, which is nice for beginners who have trouble starting off. The story in Mabinogi constantly goes back to the beginning area, and, although lacks a few things the other big towns have, the NPCs at Tir Chonaill, specifically Duncan, are important characters in it. One major downside to this is that your look at the prices for some of the things in the shop and soon realize you're a long way from even being an official "Intermediate" player. Even simple shoes can cost up to 10,000 gold, and the prices get higher and higher as you look at the better stuff. Maybe it's a bit motivating to work hard for the better things in the Fantasy Life, but for many players I talked to weren't very enthusiastic about spending 10k gold on things that make you look a bit cooler. Although, making a girl character and doing a bit of flirting will surely get you something expensive from the male pros. All in all, I like how this game embraces everything being together, but as a result, because of how the game is, it's quite intimidating.
One more thing on the "Fantasy Life" in Mabinogi. When I say it's a sandbox RPG, I mean it's truly the sandbox RPG. Once you have gotten past all the grinding, leveling up, money making, and other sticky game goo, you are really free to do what you want. You can buy and rend a home in the country, spend some time with the other races, get married, and more. This is the best part about the otherwise sloppy game. DevCat really put a lot of work into giving you the freedom to live how you want, but again, you can't just jump into it as a newbie. One specific and common enjoyable element in this game is the ability to play- and even create –your own music. Sure Mandolins cost 20k gold which you should probably have kept for that armor at the mining outpost, but it's well worth it for playing songs with other players next to a campfire. Although, like all skills, the instrument and composition require ability points, and leveling up both of these takes an incredibly long time. Also, this may not matter to a lot of people, but you cannot marry another character of the same gender, which is a shame since 40%-50% of the Mabinogi community is homosexual. The game is a bit sexist also in aesthetics. Most cloths you buy are gender-specific, and I met a lot of girls, or at least I think they were girls, that didn't enjoy their character constantly wearing some type of skirt. The game doesn't know its community well, really.
To sum things up, Mabinogi is tolerable. If you like sandbox games and don't mind the flaws or the long journey to the actual sandbox part, Mabinogi is the game for you. If you have limits to what is acceptable to you as a game, then you'd better brace yourself for the low standards this game has to offer. It's a good construct of an open-ended adventure life, but seems like it could do so much more if actual work was put into it. I got into it for a while, but there are other games out there that are better than Mabinogi. Though no free game can match the Fantasy Life of this one.