Mabinogi

 PC
  • Publisher: Nexon
  • Release Date: Mar 1, 2008
User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 33 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 33
  3. Negative: 8 out of 33

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  1. jaga420
    Apr 21, 2011
    5
    Now, it's been a while since I've played so I can't give a fair score; hence the middle score. However, free to play games generally don't change much over the years.
    The game had its charms. I loved how you could create music and play it in front of crowds. The player character system was definitely interesting; over the time you play your character gradually gets older (you can get a    Now, it's been a while since I've played so I can't give a fair score; hence the middle score. However, free to play games generally don't change much over the years.
    The game had its charms. I loved how you could create music and play it in front of crowds. The player character system was definitely interesting; over the time you play your character gradually gets older (you can get a rebirth so you have the same skills but are younger, but that costs irl cash). Your skills are different too, you use them often in order to level them up instead of buying skills or something similar. I loved the graphics, I'm not one for "realistic" graphics because realism is something impossible to attain for gameplay graphics. So, I generally like more cartoonish graphics better because they can turn out exactly how the designers intended them to.
    Now for the bad side: the combat system was terrible. When every action, even defending yourself or attacking, has a cast time bar, you know something is wrong. I'm not saying it's unmanageable or impossible to get used to, but it's generally a bad idea. I'd rather have turn-based or active battles. Hell, even the ATB system from Final Fantasy is better.
    Keep in mind, I haven't played in a year or two, so I don't know if they've fixed the combat system or not. But hey, there's my thoughts on the game.    … Expand
  2. Herkras
    Apr 17, 2017
    6
    I recently gave this game another try and I've got to say that it's okay.

    It's aged. It looks and it feels that way. But it's still fun -like always- with friends. PvP is still broken and it goes this way: Do you have a ranged weapon? Then you're sure to win! To put an example of this, my newborn character was able to slap the **** out of my veteran friend mainly because I had range    I recently gave this game another try and I've got to say that it's okay.

    It's aged. It looks and it feels that way. But it's still fun -like always- with friends.

    PvP is still broken and it goes this way: Do you have a ranged weapon? Then you're sure to win! To put an example of this, my newborn character was able to slap the **** out of my veteran friend mainly because I had range and that the gunslinger had skills to re-take its distance. So I won, even against his fancy shmancy transformations.

    The levels are meaningless though. What it really matters is how high you upgrade your skills - Which you have to level up by use, then spending some Ability points to up them. And repeat.
    The game itself aknowledges the long-tedious grinding process of leveing up to a proper 1000 out of... 7000? levels so beginners have big big bonus in experience.

    Good thing is your character not being forever-bound to a class (or talent). It gives you that 'freedom'. But after you check all the skills you'll see why though. Some are so lackluster that binding a character only to them would be boring, like the Lancer, which only has 3-4 skills of its own aside from the basic set of skills.

    The world is big, but dead. There's no real reason to explore the thing aside from cities and dungeons. This is because there's this 'fast-travel-portals'. Self explainatory.

    I dont think I ever got to read the scaling of skills in-game. For that I had to check the wiki and discover that I was building wrong. This may be salt from me, but I usually like to know how things work in-game and then use the internet as a support-guide. Because of this my first character (a gunslinger) ended up doing tickles for damage and over-powered by the rest of the rest of my party. Then I was told the gunslinger was "And end-game character" And while yes, I won against my friend this was because of its 'Ultimate ability' which is like a +X damage to your basic attacks. But it has a duration of 15 seconds tops with a 400 seconds CD.

    There's plenty of events for you to have fun though! And those usually give good cosmetics and different kinds of weapons.

    Personal notes:
    Im a big big fan of nice stories and Mabinogi's story is just meh. It doesnt help that the 'in-game cinematics' are as expressive as a potato. So you'll have your happy-looking character smiling at some giant boss so... Yes. Kind of immersion breaking. That and that I couldn't really get to 'feel' a character. I ended up just shrugging and clicking to skip the dialogs all together. And the "Oh its beacuse its old" is bull****. There's a 'movie-mode' in which you can make your own shorts with the in-game assets. If the community can do it so the devs. - But this is me asking for a better delivery in the story.
    There were several times in which our party would have to sweep a city-sized area to find the last spawn of enemies so we could get to the bossfight. Frustrating as the game does not tell, show nor hint the location. And in these city-sized map-dungeon-quests you're not allowed to use flying pets. Which are perfect to do the thing. So you're forced to do it by foot or ground-mounts.
    Remember how I said the world was massive but dead? Well the most fun I had with the game was going merchant with a friend. We bought some random goods from NPC merchants and we were forced to go walking to the cities to sell them. Why was it so fun? For one he's the kind of person who you want if you want to laugh to the simplest of things, second we got to really appreciate the world and to be careful in which areas we went. Third we had a GOAL, an actual goal, along side with dangers of NPC bandits that would grow stronger after every encounter or how much we were carrying. And to have some level of interaction with strangers either by fooling around or just asking directions or stuff. - That's another point. People either ignore you completely or help you suddendly. Mostly the first one. But there's always that good soul~

    All in all. I could consider this as an Anime Mary-Sue life-simulator. It's not entirely bad but is not that good either. Or at least not for me as I'm not really an anime-boot-licker. So yes. While there's a good ammount of things fixed. The thing still kind of meh.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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No score yet - based on 2 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. PC Gamer
    73
    Mabinogi offers a lot of engaging play for a free game, but you'll quickly wish that its "free" price tag included WASD controls. [Aug 2008, p.74]
  2. GameZone
    70
    Mabinogi is a great MMO for gamers who aren't looking to grind levels or raid 20 man dungeons for epic loots, but rather enjoy a colorful, online world that gives the player a sense of freedom when it comes to developing their character.
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