I started playing Mabinogi back in 2009. This game is a husk of what it once was, most everything that was unique about it has been stripped down in favor of making it more like other mmo's. It was a game with a unique art style, combat system, soundtrack (Hanstone my goat), skill progression, and a surprisingly good story for a f2p mmo. Now the game's direction is all over the place from years of it being passed between different directors with different visions. The UE5 upgrade it's getting one day is desperately needed for consistency, right now it's such a mess of old and new graphics/systems clashing.
The combat used to be so unique, I can't think of another game that plays quite like pre-dynamic combat Mabi. Most skills had loading times instead of cooldowns and there was a rock-paper-scissors element to the skill system. Enemy ai was much more important in how you approached them, some mobs could fake you out as you couldn't see what skill they had loaded, you had to guess based on their movements. Combat was slower paced and engaging, dealing with groups was dangerous if alone due to a lack of accessible aoe dmg, party play was encouraged. Now most skills have cd's and it plays more similarly to a typical tab-target mmo with plenty of aoe and added jank.
The current Mabi's progression feels unfun, horribly unrewarding and soul sucking. They want you to constantly stay online for their log-in events that give out actually good items, some you may never be able to get again, run your daily Shineseekers, and Weeklies with abysmal drop rates. It suffers heavily from system bloat, they need to cut down on how many progression systems there are. The devs understand this to some degree, but they nerfed Skill Training, making skills significantly easier to train. This was the games primary progression system originally, and while not perfect, I loved it. It was the reason people would often compare Mabinogi to RuneScape, calling it 'Anime RuneScape'. One could argue Skill Training in Mabi was never quite engaging enough to justify how grindy and tedious some skills were, and I'd be inclined to agree, several skills were spam click heavy when they could've been a bit more automated. The Combat Power system in particular also became an issue as more and more skills were introduced.
However, they should have reworked Skill Training to be more rewarding and engaging, not gut the system across the board. They haven't introduced a single progression system into the game that's as simply enjoyable or rewarding as Skill Training used to feel. Only a bunch of convoluted, boring, motivationally draining new systems that will take up much more of your time, and are for the most part, significantly less engaging than Skill Training ever was. Nobody enjoys progressing these systems, Erg, Stardust, GM's, leveling Arcanas, it all sucks. I'd imagine any heavy system reworks like this will not happen until the UE5 Eternity Project, if at all.
People are quick to bring up how Skill Training needed to be gutted, as it was too much of a hurdle for new players trying to get into newer content. I wouldn't say this is necessarily wrong, but why do we need to rush new players into the newest content? Was how they handled Skill Training, and the introduction of the Blaanid's Brave Boost system, really the best possible solution? The early game should leave an impression, it should make new players want to continue playing. Most of Mabi's old/early game content has been left largely untouched, or been given slap-on updates where they just increase numbers. Even then it's still mostly unengaging and incredibly easy, as you're primarily steamrolling mobs that were created with the old combat system in mind. They want you to get into the newer content as quickly as possible. This is why, via the Blaanid's Brave Boost tutorial, you are given thousands of levels to catch you up as quickly as possible from doing as little as possible.
So, surely the newer content is actually fun? Right? The old content may be irrelevant, but at least everything new is a blast to play, right? Obviously this is subjective, but in my opinion, no absolutely not. For context, the hardest content I've ran is Crom Bas Normal, it's not the hardest content but it's pretty difficult, though I was only just beginning to be able to contribute to Crom Normal. Most of what I was running up until the point I quit was Rabbie Phant, Sidhe, Crom Bas, Avalon Missions, and a bit of Commerce on the side. I've looked into Glenn runs, and I'm just not seeing the appeal, I feel like I'm playing discount FFXIV in regards to newer content in general. No content I was running or had seen up until that point had me excited or made me want to keep going, Crom Bas was okay, but it's not blowing me away. I also hate most new content visually, it's super uninspired looking, a far cry from the visual design of old areas and dungeons in C1-2.
On top of that, as a new or returning player, boy you are going to feel absolutely useless for a while. The massive difference between a strong player and a weak player is staggering. I'm the type of player who hates feeling useless when running content. When whether or not I can contribute is largely based on my gear and levels, and not my skill or game knowledge, I'm miserable. In this case, that harder content is worth grinding out weekly, so I would just have to bare with getting carried. There is no level scaling/sync system, and the pace at which you get stronger, despite the dev's efforts, still feels unreasonable and demotivating. It's influenced heavily by whether or not your active during certain events, get super lucky with abysmal drops, or spend real money. In older versions of the game even if you were weaker, just having more people helped deal with multi-aggro, even better if you're decent at the combat. Most content felt accessible.
On the topic of a level sync system, I think the game would benefit from something like this. I mean it might as well, it seems to me like modern Mabi wants to be like Final Fantasy XIV, but at that point, just go play FFXIV. This game is not providing anything of value that it doesn't, f2p aside. It's old, the netcode makes it feel like dog water to play on even remotely high ping, people constantly recommend VPN's like ExitLag to make it playable. This has always been an issue, but I feel it's gotten worse as the combat got faster paced and more things are happening on-screen at any given time, or the NA servers suck 🤷
The story hasn't been good since the end of Chapter 3 (So 2010 in NA, imo maybe since the end of C1), and the parts of it that ARE good are so unimpactful because you steamroll all of the enemies and bosses. No story boss will ever hit as hard Generation 1's final boss did back in the day, old G1 Glas Ghaibleann was fantastic. The recent Gen story is loaded with so much dialogue you have to spam through if you're uninterested, and cutscenes you can't skip for some reason, even though you could skip cutscenes as far back as G1. It doesn't help that the game currently locks much more content behind finishing Gen quests than it used to.
The combat can be fun at times, combat skills and Arcanas are fun to use, but most encounters involve mowing down lots of mobs that can't fight back. The only way I can ever see Mabinogi being a game worth playing again, is if the Eternity Project actually delivers on reworking it into something fun. They really have to nail it though, no more bad netcode, if the game still feels bad to play for people outside of South Korea, it's doomed. Or maybe if MapleStory Classic World succeeds, Nexon will consider doing the same thing for their other games. But we're talking about Nexon here, so I don't have a lot of faith.
TLDR: If you're looking for a cute anime mmo to play super casually and dress your character up in, Mabinogi is okay, but don't take it too seriously. You'll be disappointed.
