Aura Kingdom in 2021: Is the Anime MMORPG Worth Starting?

I’ve always been a fan of Anime MMORPGs. I grew up on Tales of Pirates – which was my first introduction to the MMO genre, then moved on to other games like FlyFF, Fiesta, Florensia – Yes, a lot of MMOs beginning with F.
I never dedicated a whole lot of time to any of Aeria Games’ – or rather X-Legend’s Anime MMOs. Yes, I enjoyed Eden Eternal but Grand Fantasia, Dragomon Hunter, Twin Saga – even Aura Kingdom never really appealed to me.
Not because any of them were inherently bad games, but because I just found the games I was playing – or had played to be better.
Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe it was due to the fact that I’d played the exact same game earlier – but regardless, here we are, taking a look at Aura Kingdom in 2020. Almost 2021, actually.

Upon first inspection, Aura Kingdom is a pretty good looking Anime MMO.
Aesthetically, the world is large, colorful – vibrant, full of life. This is honestly something I miss in MMOs I see these days. Everyone tries so heavily to emulate the “few popular MMOs” that they’ve given up on crafting beautiful worlds like this.
I was surprised when beginning the game that there were a grand total of 17 unique playable classes.
Character creation was about what you’d expect out of an Anime MMO – you had a few different face types, hairstyles, hair colors and eye colors to choose from. There’s no body customization, control over facial features.
But that’s alright, there are plenty of outfits available in-game that provide you many an opportunity to customize your avatar’s appearance.

Then you’re greeted with an introductory tutorial to the game – I feel as though this is entirely unnecessary as not only is Aura Kingdom incredibly basic, but it’s also simultaneously an MMO.. and let’s be real here: Most MMO function more or less the same way.

And the rest is history. Aura Kingdom is an MMO – after logging in, you begin journeying across a large world filled with NPCs that need assisting, monsters that need murdering, and dungeons that need plundering.
The game features a tab-target combat system. It’s nothing special – it doesn’t compare to a tab-target combat system like ArcheAge, Aion or even World of Warcraft but at the same time it feels smooth enough to enjoy without issue.
The game functions much as every other MMO: There are quest-hubs that you take quests from, make progress through and ultimately move on to the next zone appropriate to your level.
There are dungeons and raids present in-game, but unfortunately since we only made it to level 20? Level 30? We didn’t get to experience any of the latter. The former? Totally. We did solo-instances, and then a friend of ours, PaperCat joined us to help us with a group-instance.
I wouldn’t call it a dungeon necessarily, as it lacked what would normally be considered traditional dungeon mechanics, but it felt like the end of one – with a large boss battle, or multiple consecutively, rather.
Speaking of, we actually had the pleasure of playing not only with, but also around some of you guys which was a lot of fun for us.
Getting together with the community we’ve built is an incredible experience. Seeing so many of you in a game this old – seeing so many of you in these grandiose outfits, maxed out in level, ready and willing to help us with whatever we needed was amazing.

Speaking of the combat, and grouping up with players.. one thing I found issue with was that the majority of our quests only counted kills or drops by participation. Meaning that if I killed a monster, Mrs Stix didn’t get credit for the kill. At all.
I’m not sure if this was merely a bug we were having or we had settings set up incorrectly, but if that’s how Aura Kingdom functions in terms of participating in group content, then.. yeah that’s a no go for me.

Aura Kingdom has some features that definitely make it stand out: You have an Eidolon that in essence acts as an additional member of your party. There’s a type of gliding – allowing you to cover large distances faster than even your mount can move.
It has some incredibly detailed mounts, some very appealing outfits and overall is about as fun as any Anime MMO can be to explore.
I’m not fond of how pay-to-win the costumes are though as they provide beneficial statistics like +damage, +HP, +crit and more which are detrimental to winning against another player in PvP, or even competitively raiding.
But other than that, honestly, I found my journey through the 1-30 zones to be kind of peaceful. It was a very traditional MMO experience and honestly, that wasn’t something Mrs Stix had ever really experienced before – an older, more traditional Anime MMO.
So this was good for both of us.

Would I play Aura Kingdom long-term? Probably not. Would I recommend it to other people, though? If they were interested in an older-school more traditional Anime MMO then totally.
We had some fun in it after all.