Aura Kingdom 2 Review

It’s impressive how far the mobile gaming industry has come in the last few years. And with a host of high-end MMORPGs showing up on mobile lately, I’ve been itching to find one that would satisfy my craving. With these thoughts in mind I happily downloaded Aura Kingdom 2 by X-Legend Entertainment. The original Aura Kingdom for PC was a prime MMO back in its day. Sure, it’s a complete mess now, but I was hoping Aura Kingdom 2 would be a breath of fresh air for MMORPGs.

First Impressions

At first glance, Aura Kingdom 2 looks fantastic. The game offered a chapter-based storyline with fully animated cutscenes, which is duly impressive for a mobile MMO. The art style, animations, and graphics all look lovely. Even though the customization of characters isn’t anything to write home about, the anime aesthetics and costumes are on point. However, looks aren’t everything. The dubbed voice acting for the fully animated cutscenes was not on par with other competitor MMORPGs. What’s worse is the narrative fell into the basic cookie-cutter style that you can find in just about any other MMO.

Aura Kingdom 2 features four different classes to choose from, Shinobi, Dragoon, Elementalist, and Nymph. Two melees and two ranged classes, but what I found odd is that they were all basically DPS classes. Sure some did more damage, and some had higher evasion or defense. However, there weren’t any tank or support classes the game offered. I soon found out that the gameplay didn’t require it.

Gacha Game Meets MMORPG

Although not necessarily bad, the title’s combat system, in PvP and PvE gameplay, didn’t offer much spice. In fact, you can pretty much turn on auto-combat for the entire game and get through about 90% of the quests and boss fights without doing a single thing. I don’t mind this type of gameplay for fetch quests, gathering, and mob farming, because let’s be real, nobody enjoys grinding through that content. But other than that, what amounts to idle gameplay really takes away any incentive to play a game like this.

The one element Aura Kingdom 2 has that sets it apart from other MMOs is their Eidolon system. The Eidolon system is almost like a mini gacha game. It allows you to summon heroes and monsters to fight alongside you. Much like a gacha game, you must acquire tickets or gems to be able to acquire summons to customize your team to your liking. You can build a squad up to five different creatures or heroes. You can have one summon out that roams around the open world alongside you, and you can perform combo actions with this specific character. There are even instances where you can actually take control of your single Eidolon companion, but it’s rare and not nearly as fun as playing your own character. However, the rest of your squad is set on a timer during combat, which you have no control over. They will randomly pop out and attack enemies or throw out a buff or two.

Is Aura Kingdom 2 Worth it?

As far as the rest of the gameplay, it follows the traditional MMORPG layout. If you have ever played any PC or mobile MMORPG, you know what I’m talking about. You have party quests, dungeons, merc quests, and some PVP content. All of these give you a reward, whether it be gold or items, along with some EXP. For PvP style content, you can verse other players, or if PvP really isn’t your thing, you can also verse AI’s and still be able to reap sufficient rewards.

Aura Kingdom 2 is free to play. It has in-game purchases, but it’s mostly for cosmetics and style. However, even then, there were plenty of unique items that you can acquire within the game itself. I also didn’t experience any pay to win content, which is an MMO player’s worst nightmare, so that was definitely a plus.

All in all, Aura Kingdom 2 isn’t a bad game. Sure, it falls into the basic MMORPG format. But never once did it crash, and never did I have problems connecting to any of the servers. What’s more, the game’s visuals are top-notch, even if the gameplay sometimes falls a little flat. However, if you’re looking for an MMO with anime aesthetics to pass the time, you should check out this game.