Vindictus is an MMO that does what most MMOs don't: Provide immersion. The game's combat style is hack n' slash, which certainly does its job for immersion. In most MMOs, you smack an enemy with a giant sword, they flinch a little and can still attack. In Vindictus, you hit an enemy with a giant sword, they're going to react in a way anything normally would, and that's getting knocked backwards or off their feet. The hack n' slash genre is a fantastic and enjoyable genre and it's nice to see it in an MMO.
The soundtrack to the game is beautiful, it creates a sense that you are, in fact, fighting a god or incredibly powerful creature. I don't know much about music, but it sounds incredible.

Here come the cons. What would be the perfect MMO is published by none other than Nexon. Nexon is notorious for bad customer service, inefficient servers, and buggy games. Some bugs that started way back when still exist to this day. Pray that you do not get hacked or any situation occurs, or you'll be waiting for months before you get a response. Hell, you may not even get one. With this company controlling the hosting of Vindictus, it really cripples what the game can really do.
There are some game-based cons as well. As you progress you will end up finding it harder and harder to level and get better gear. Once you get to the level 60-80 range, it becomes an endless grindfest to get the materials you need for a single piece of armor or a weapon you need. That and the need to add enchant scrolls or enhance a weapon/armor piece does not help due to the high chance of failure and destruction of a weapon you worked so hard to get.
The economy is heavily inflated due to influxes of next-to-impossible to obtain items required for crafting, making it hard for newcomers to properly purchase things they may need. Not only that, gold bots and hackers infest the market with extortionate prices on items, which can't be averted due to the need for these items.
The playerbase is... debateable. On one hand, there are some players that will help and enjoy your company. On the other, there's people who set up raid boats with attack requirements and will insult you on the smallest mistake you, or they, make. "18k ATT, 20k MATT ONLY" is a title I see on a lot of boats, making it difficult to access raids that I need materials from. The only way to get such stats is risk destroying your equipment with enchant scrolls and enhancements, with a likely chance of never getting to such stats anyway.
The enchantment/refinement system is incredibly hard to work with and incredibly "pay2win". Let's start with the refinement system.
You can refine your weapon/armor piece 3 times without fail and then the next set of 3 has a chance of lowering your refinement level if it fails. If you're lucky enough to get through this, the next set of 2 has a chance to reset your refinement entirely. Lucky enough to get past that? Any more up to 15 max refinements can destroy your item, leaving you without that equipment you grinded so hard for. The chances of success are unbearably low. You can purchase consumable refinement stones for about, if I remember correctly, $5 each that let you complete a refinement without failure, but that's it. That's incredibly unbalanced.
Enchantment is not much easier. You have to find specific "enchantment scrolls" in Hero mode dungeons, which significantly make the battle harder. When you find them, you need to craft or find elixirs which increase your chances of success on enchantment. However, there's a maximum amount of elixirs that you can add before it significantly decreases your success chance, and it's difficult to tell whether or not you're going overboard. Even if you get just the right amount, you may only have a 40% or less chance of success depending on what scroll you're trying to enchant with. If you fail, it can break or damage the durability on your weapon. You can purchase enchantment runes for the same price as refinement stones, but they only ensure you don't break your weapon or lose durability.
Boats are hosted in a Peer-to-Peer connection, making it so the boat host's connection is the one everyone else deals with, which can lead to problems. If someone has a crappy internet connection, the other players will feel its wrath. This cripples some players, which rely on pinpoint timing in order to survive a fight. And with player progression, lower level areas tend to be deserted for boats, making it harder for newer players to get fights in they can't solo.
All in all, Vindictus has a lot of ups and downs. Because of its immense cons, I would not recommend it. However, it does have a sort of enjoyableness with its genre of gameplay. So take it as you will.

I decided to come back to this review to note on some things I've thought about. I've made some changes around and added some new pros and cons. Feel free to leave feedback.

When it comes to MMO games, it's really damn hard to find an actually decent one. Thankfully, Vindictus is one of the few that may be worth playing.
Pros:
-A lot of action and a pretty decent amount of customization.
-Nice looking armors, weapons, and characters.
-Fun and (sometimes) challenging enemies.
-Pretty fluid and fast-paced combat.
-Moderately decent storyline (In comparison to other MMOs)
Cons:
-A decent amount of the REALLY good items you need to buy with actual money, which kind of sucks.
-Can occasionally be repetitive or boring at times depending on where you are in levels/story.

Personally, I think this is one of the few moderately enjoyable MMOs I've played. If you want something that's more fast-paced and has a great amount of action compared to the usual MMO, this is the game for you.
If you've checked the game out and don't like it, but still want a fast-paced action MMO, another game I can point you toward is Warframe, though that has some major differences in comparison to Vindictus.

It's alright

First off, this game is great with friends. Level 1-50 is easy. At level 50, you unlock "Hero" mode which makes the game harder and much more fun (if you have the gear). This game has its flaws but I don't know a game that doesn't. If you want to give this game a fair shot level to 50 and play a couple of the battles on "Hero" and join some raids. This will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect for end-game content.

I recommend finding a good guild through the Vindictus website or in-game using the "Search Guild" function. You can also see if any guild is advertising with the !megaphone (purple font) as well.

One of the biggest strengths of this game is the story. At first, it begins kind of slow but it really picks up towards the end. If anything, get through all of that and if you STILL don't like the game then quit. It's relatively easy to solo all the missions because of different settings. Or better yet, grab a few friends or find people in-game to complete the story together.

The flaws or drawbacks is random lag spikes/fps drops, not a very vocal community (there are some bots wandering around), and high level end game content requires a lot of rare gear to participate in. Money shop is a little on the expensive side but it doesn't necessarily unbalance the game to my knowledge.

Love it or hate it. Just give it a try and if you need help, message me. My IGN's Hamboree or message me through the Steam client.

Vindictus is a very unique different type of MMO, considering how much i love MMO's now since i started playing this game, however only thing that buggs me is the system, Like Nexon probably one of the worst,their servers suck so bad. And the fact that stupid mail box crash glitch is still in place after a year or more is rediculous and shows how much they don't give 2 ♥♥♥♥♥ about this community and the performance but just want your money. Game sometimes crashes when i hit random reids and it's annoying because i can't get that huge xp, and having to restart my game is to uttering.

But the game itself is amazing, the combat is really the best i seen on any mmo, the way they flinch after every attack and having to calculate how a boss moves or attacks. Defenitly a recommended game despite those negative features i listed above. However it is a pay2win game so you better get ready to spend some $$$. Maybe not pay 2 win in performance but defenitly pay 2 win in Appearance. But get the game and you'll be able to judge the game yourself or love it. Try it out!