Lunia

http://lunia.ijji.com/

It's a fun game I used to break up the tedious grind of Maplestory. What I love about this game is that it's faster paced and more cooperation is needed. Basically the game is like an arcade dungeon crawler, but an MMO. There's 6 episodes, each split into 10 parts. There is a story linking everything together, but I skip the cinemas. After the 6 episodes, there is a "hard mode" you can go through.

The action is based off of combos and skills. It's quite different than the Maple setup, so it takes time to get used to. Attacks are on "A" and "S", and skills are the numbers keys at the top. I'm still really bad at it lol.

Leveling isn't as much of a pain, nor is it really needed, especially if you play with others. But if you really wanna be overleveled and plow through stages, there's an area where you get boatloads of EXP.

The only problem with this game is that the presentation isn't as good as Maplestory, plus it lags a bit more because it is in 3D. The sprites aren't too bad, though. I'm pretty sure some guys have oggled the Thief girl at least once lol.

There are cash shop items, but you can easily have a good time without them, unlike MS. As far as I know, you don't have to worry much about money and merchanting since you get good gear and money by completing stages.

There's also a PvP section, but if you don't know what you're doing, you'll just get owned, even on the beginner channel >.<

For now, once you download the installer, you start the client directly from the site, as opposed to your desktop. I think they're planning on changing that, though.

Basically I play Lunia if I know I won't be on the computer long or if the long grind from MS bores me out. you might not spend as long on Lunia than MS, but it is a decent substitute when you're sick of Maple lol.

Ok, my confidence in Maplestory has gone down the toilet. I'll probably be on this game more often. My character is still nightclawz there, and there's only one server, so there shouldn't be too much of a problem if you need to find me.

have fun kev.

Played it for the closed/open beta, played for the release of it, got to lvl 60 or something, ijji added cash items which ruined the game and the economy giving the players that bought ijji coins a huge advantage, stopped playing.

You see, ijji is a horrible gaming company because they have rigged items that you can buy with the ijji coins. Sad thing is they do that for every game, so if you find an ijji prostitute, you're screwed. I've played every game that ijji has bought a liscence for except Soldier Front (Sucks big time for an FPS), and the driving game. Another thing that sucks about them is that they don't have Gunbound anymore. Their liscence on it expired and they didn't bother to renew it.

isn't there a huge advantage for maplestory as well?

2x exp and drop, gach only items.

I'm going to try lunia for a bit now.
My friend told me how good this game was, but back then it was in beta, and beta just closed when I wanted to try.