This is just getting stupid..
NFTs. Blockchain. Play to Earn. 3 terms you don’t want to associate with ANY MMORPG. Yet the undeniable truth is that more and more games – MMOs specifically, are beginning to implement them.
MIR4. ArcheWorld. Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds. Three games that immediately come to mind. And as of today, we can add 2 more to that list. 2 MMOs that have repeatedly shown that they have zero regards for their players.

First, we have KRITIKA. Kritika was a hub-MMO that I hyped up for over a year before it was confirmed to be coming Westward.
After launching, it amassed an incredible number of players – albeit, that surge in activity remained for maybe a month at most, and within 6 months the game had already passed into obscurity. Which is the fate most MMOs suffer.
It shut down due to poor reception and activity, briefly, before relaunching under a brand new moniker: KRITIKA: REBOOT. Again, a slew of new players immediately downloaded the game. And as fast as players arrived, players departed.
Within weeks – not months – the game had already dried up. Players were presented with the old game that they originally got bored with, so their disinterest was warranted.
It shut down recently as well. And then came this announcement – from ALLM. An announcement of yet another new moniker – KRITIKA GLOBAL – but this time, this time they’re introducing something new to the game.
This time they have a plan. This time, you can earn money while playing the game. Because play to earn is really the feature the game was missing – that was inhibiting it from KRITIKA achieving greatness, right?
ALLM are braindead and so out of touch with reality that it’s almost laughable. Well, it would be if players didn’t repeatedly fall for it.

Then, out of nowhere, VALOFE announced they were going the same route with Riders of Icarus – one of Mrs Stix’s very first MMOs – a game that was truly unique when it launched. It was gorgeous, allowed you to capture every Pokemon you saw and…. well, okay, that was all it really had going for it.
VALOFE acquired this from Nexon after Nexon gave up on it, and judging from the forum post – VALOFE have given up on it ever achieving any type of success as well.
Like always, VALOFE has no idea what their players want.

Although, if I’m being totally honest here, 150 concurrent players is why KRITIKA shut down. 120 concurrent players for Riders of Icarus. It’s no wonder these MMOs are trying to inject new life into their games.
They’re dead. People constantly claim “WoW is dead,” “Guild Wars 2 is dead,” Black Desert is dead.” Try averaging a hundred players playing your game. That is the definition of dead, not hundreds of thousands. Hundreds. And even that is being generous.

More and more MMOs are adopting blockchain, NFTs, play to earn, crypto crap. Even Square is considering implementing it into the Final Fantasy franchise.
Specifically pertaining to MMOs though, I get it. MIR4 is a play to earn MMO, averaging upwards of 50,000 players connected concurrently – likely hundreds of thousands of players log in every week to play this game.
And I use the term “play” very loosely here. I’ve given my thoughts on MIR4 repeatedly over time. It’s a trash, auto-play MMO designed to milk as much money as they can via a variety of nefarious practices. Yet it seems to be working well for them.
And other companies have taken note of this. Evidently. VALOFE, ALLM, Kakao with ArcheAge and the ArcheWorld NFT MMO – they would all love a piece of this pie, even if it comes at the expense of their players.

It’s sad to see more and more MMOs adopting this practice, and I have no doubt in my mind this is going to continue to become more and more prevalent over time.
Oh, what a time to be alive.

Riders of Icarus is what you’d get if you propositioned GameFreak with an idea for a Pokemon MMO and they decided to give complete creative control to a Korean game developer with a history of failed micro-transaction riddled mobile games.
Oh wait, I just described Nexon. Hahahah, ahhh. Nevermind.

Now welcome back to another episode of “Is it worth playing” – where we sift through every MMORPG available right now in an attempt to find the best MMORPG in 2021. Today, we’re taking a look at one of the more unique MMOs out there: Riders of Icarus.
This was an MMO with a lot of potential to bring something new and innovative to the market, but ultimately ended up failing due to the incompetence of Nexon and its developer. To the surprise of nobody.

Let me preface this by stating that Riders of Icarus isn’t a terrible game. It has many terrible aspects, but at the same time provides players some unique features that either aren’t present in other MMOs, or just aren’t nearly as fleshed out.

So, at its core this is your traditional MMORPG.
The game has a large world for players to explore, either on foot, via land mount or aerial mount.
As I noted, this is a very Pokemon-esque title. Its unique selling point was that you could capture, in essence, every monster you saw. Normal monsters, elite monsters, rare monsters. I mean I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch for you to be able to tame boss monsters at one point either.
These included land mounts like horses, wolves, tigers. Or flying mounts like gryphons, dragons and unicorns. Monsters you tame have individual stats, skills and levels. In essence, they act like a secondary player – a companion. Well, some of them do. Others are just.. there.
Riders of Icarus isn’t the first MMO to implement flying, but it’s rare to come across as a feature. What’s more, even MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV – the 2 largest MMOs that both have a functional flight system offer only the most basic of features.
Riders of Icarus allows for you to fully engage enemies while mounted in the air, providing the option for mounted combat. Mounted combat is something that I personally think is largely missing in the genre and a feature that should be present in most modern titles.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, and would provide for some much more interesting PvP skirmishes. Imagine being on a tiny little bunny and fighting someone on a massive dragon. Yeah, that’d be sick.
Zones are segregated, meaning that you’re required to move through loading screens to explore new areas.

Now I did mention aerial combat being a thing in-game, so I’d like to take a minute to discuss the combat specifically.
Interestingly, Riders of Icarus utilizes somewhat of a hybrid combat system. Note: “somewhat.” For the most part, this is a tab-target game. You require a target for 90% of your abilities, and for the most part are unable to freely aim.
There are exceptions: AoEs that allow for you to place down large telegraphed circles on the ground, abilities that propel you in a certain direction.
Special effects looked pretty good on the elemental mage that I opted to play. I’ve always been drawn to magic classes in games, mainly due to the fact that they’re annoying to deal with in PvP. Kiting, crowd control and the ability to fight on the fly makes for the perfect DPS.

Character creation was pretty detailed. There were an exorbitant number of sliders to utilize to create that image of perfection players so often seek. And then fail to achieve. And then delete their character and try again. At least, like, 20 times.
You know you do it, don’t act like you don’t. I can feel you nodding your head in disagreement.
I’m quite a large fan of customization in my games. I feel like offering players not only an extensive creator, but also a large number of costumes is key to a successful business model. Players will buy outfits. They’ll buy items to reset what they look like.

Although speaking of business model, that’s where this begins to fall apart as a game.
While Riders of Icarus is a free MMO, there are a number of pay to win items in the cash shop. What’s worse, there are a number of cosmetic items available that actually increase statistics across the board. Meaning that you can, in essence, pay to have a statistical advantage over other players.
Which is a detestable thing to do. Players should never be capable of purchasing actual advantages over players that can’t afford to. Every achievement, every upgrade should be earnable in-game. On your own merit.
Pay to win ruins games, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Look at Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, heck, even games like RuneScape. No pay to win present, and all averaging hundreds of thousands of players per month.
You can have a successful game that makes a butt-load of cash without resorting to pay to win. Pay to win will actually prevent you from ever having a successful game, which will damage your longevity as a title.

Now I played through… quite a few hours. And honestly, I was pretty bored. Sure, the Pokemon aspect of the game was pretty cool. In theory. Actually capturing monsters however was a tedious process that was entirely reliant on luck.
Some monsters required items to capture, items that were rare to come across and you could lose the battle to RNG. Which was disheartening, and ridiculous. This left me not wanting to attempt captures because I couldn’t be bothered investing time into farming the items required to even engage the monster.

✔️ Overall, Riders of Icarus is a pretty good looking game.

✔️ It has some decent combat, abilities and special effects.

✔️ Being able to engage enemies in the air – mounted combat, specifically, is sick.

✔️ The Pokemon aspect of the game – creature taming, leveling, collecting, was actually a very cool feature to have.

❎ But that was it. The story was poorly written and absolutely pointless.

❎ The world, while large and filled with monsters was often barren and didn’t provide much in terms of exploration or content.

❎ Dungeons were filled with ridiculous numbers of monsters, and given there’s almost no playerbase left, running dungeons by yourself, especially as a squishy mage clearing small groups at a time was a chore.

❎ The business model, pay to win cosmetics and items are an atrocious addition to the game.

❎ I hate stamina for my flying mounts, just FYI. I wanna fly without needing to land and rest for 30 minutes straight, man.

Ultimately, Riders of Icarus isn’t a terrible game. At its core, as an actual game. How it was handled by Nexon though? How it is currently handled by VALOFE? Yeah, it’s a bad game.
The few facets of the game that are legitimately interesting and innovative are drowned out by all the poor design choices they made.
I wouldn’t play this. Ever. Not unless drastic changes are made. And honestly? I don’t foresee this lasting much longer with how few people log in and play it.

You’ve all played Riders of Icarus, right? I’ve done multiple videos on the MMO over the years and it was actually one of Mrs Stix’s favorite games due to the unique monster-capture mechanics present.
Well, today we’re gonna be talking about the brand new Icarus M MMO: Riders of Icarus.. on mobile devices. This is based on the PC MMO, featuring a large world to explore with plenty of monsters to not only capture, but to also raise. Coupled with both land and aerial gameplay, this provides more than your average mobile MMO.

While downloading and updating, you’re given the option of practicing the monster-capture mechanics, and that’s where I started. Admittedly I was not very good at it though, as my hand-to-eye coordination on a screen as small as my mobile device definitely isn’t what it once was when I was younger.
After everything successfully updated, I got to see the selection of classes. Gladiator, Ranger, Assassin, Wizard and Artist. After selecting your class, you’re given the ability create your character.
You can change your face shape from a selection of different presets, your hairstyle, hair color, skin, eyebrow, lip and iris color. Honestly, the character models present in-game are very aesthetically appealing. So if anything – you have a damn good looking character to watch run around.

After you create your character, you’re thrown into the game with an introductory cutscene, then given the freedom to run around, kill monsters and begin your journey to become the very best like no-one ever was.
And let me tell you, much like its PC counterpart, Icarus M makes extensive use of its creature-taming system, having you tame a plethora of different monsters right from the beginning of the game.
Some of these monsters are mounts, that you can ride on – that you can fly on. Others are normal monster-pets that act as your familiar. These are capable of being leveled and powered up to become much more menacing partners.

Speaking of flying, though, yeah – no joke, not only can you fly around on the ground, increasing your movement speed exponentially, but you can also ascend into the skies as well, reaching new heights! Literally and figuratively!
This provides you a variety of different ways to not only explore the game world that you’re now existing in, but also another reason to go out and begin taming monsters.
You’re not just limited to flying though – you’re also capable of doing battle while riding your trusty steed. Yeah, no kidding. Take to the skies and begin assailing your enemies with a barrage of… whatever weapon you have equipped.
I don’t see aerial combat in very many games. I’m not sure why, honestly, as this is a feature I’ve always loved in my MMOs. I feel that restricting us to the ground is always a step backwards, and I’m glad both Riders of Icarus and Icarus M provide the ability to transcend those bonds.

But since we’re talking about flying and combat within the air.. how is the combat? Honestly, the special effects for your abilities look pretty flashy and the combat is about what you’d expect.
I didn’t play a melee class so I’m incapable of giving my input on that aspect of the gameplay, but I did play a mage and I can say that I definitely enjoyed keeping my distance and lighting my enemies up before they ever made it to me.
You have a selection of abilities to learn and you can bind them to your scroll-wheel, leveling and upgrading them to further increase the overall potency.

I played Icarus M until, what.. level 40 I think by the time I finished my recording for the game? And I got to experience quite a bit of what the game had to offer on the way there.
I played through some really beautiful areas. Both riding around on land or soaring through the skies – the environments I got to play through all looked fantastic.
I was surprised to see that the game looked as good as it did, actually. The combat – the skill effects specifically looked good and there was plenty to do.

Icarus M: Riders of Icarus is a brand new upcoming Mobile MMORPG set in the very same world of Riders of Icarus, the PC MMORPG you likely tried and quickly forgot about after realizing it was Nexon that published it and you remember Nexon’s business model for their games.

The developers behind Icarus M though are currently in the process of launching the MMO in the West, and as such, have begun their pre-registration event, with certain goodies being unlocked if different milestones are met.
If you’re looking to pre-register, then I recommend using the link below which will take you directly to the pre-retistration page on the official Icarus M: Riders of Icarus website.

Icarus M: Riders of Icarus takes players on a journey to save the world from impending doom, as you’d expect out of an MMO. With the very same “familiar” pet system that the games predecessor was widely known for and aerial combat, Icarus M looks like it’ll definitely be an MMO to be on the lookout for!

Alternate Title: Riders of Icarus
Developer: WeMade Entertainment
Publisher: Nexon
Type: MMORPG
Model: Free-to-play
Platform: PC
PvP: Real-time duels, open-world PvP zones, guild wars, arenas, and mounted PvP.
PvE: Dungeons, Raids, World Bosses

Riders Of Icarus Summer Giveaway Event!

Riders of Icarus is a free to play 3D Fantasy MMORPG published by Nexon. It offers some of the most unique Pokemon-style capture-and-battle combat systems in an MMO, and has some of the best aerial combat to date.