Being the cheap person I am, I rarely play anything P2P, no matter what the cost.  Mabinogi, however, is an exception.  I hope this Mabinogi review will prove to be insightful for you before you being playing.  The following game is claimed to be free forever, but I would disagree.  While it is true that one could play for free forever, the development of ones character would be quite limited.  I currently spend this much: $7.90 every 2-3 months, which comes out to about 2-4 dollars a month, depending on how fast I want my character to grow.  Despite the cost, I love this game since it has a twist in its combat system quite unlike any other MMORPG, relying on the player's skill more so than that of his character's.  The following review will score from 1-10 on the following categories:  Sound, Graphics, Gameplay (Combat), Gameplay(Else), storyline, community.  I shall start from what I believe to be the least important continuing to more important factors.

Sound:   Well, like almost every MMORPG, the soundtrack isn't particularly impressing.  Every area has a song, and combat has a tune as well.  However, where the interesting sounds come from are the human composed songs.  That's right, you can play your own music.  Using a form of Music Markup Language (MML), you can write up your own tunes with up to 3 harmony parts.  However, the (character) length of your song is limited by the in-game skill "Composing."  Monster/striking sounds are okay; they're not annoying nor are they outstanding.  Warning:  If you're playing during a thunderstorm (Weather affects crafting rates and stuff), they do go overboard on their sound effects there.  (Note: you can mod your own soundtrack in, but it is "illegal"...will get back to mods later)  8/10

Graphics:  As of now, the NA version of mabinogi has already received they higher poly models for the game, not that they're all that impressive.  The style of graphics is an anime-ish style for humans (think...Flyff or ROSE online...I guess?  Take a look if you're confused).  The actualy human characters in 3d aren't all that impressive, but the 2d depictions of NPCs are quite good.  The landscaping isn't all that great; sometimes you can obviously see seams in the land, and the trees and bushes aren't very pretty.  The graphics don't bother me at all.  Oh yeah, you can mod the graphics as well (to a degree). 4/10

Community :  You know how most people on the official forums aren't the brightest?  Well take that x10.  I'd suggest staying off of official forums and going to mabinogiworld or mabinogiplayer instead.  Lots of grief about the Mari server (that's what I play on) cause of some trolls (I'm related to one...It's pretty funny, though...pm me about it) -2/10 (catch the negative?)

Storyline:  Alright, I can't rightly review this section, but here's a shot.  To access the storyline (known as mainstream), one must be a p2p player, subscribing to one of the $10/mo services (or all 3 for 15/mo).  As far as I've heard, the mainstream is quite good, though the G2 plot is all solo, so you can't rely on friends.  The G3 plot (which should come out in ~1 month) features a dragon at the end, which will be insanely difficult.  From what I've heard I'd give a 9/10.

 Gameplay (Non-combat):  The game divides all skills into 3 categories: Life, Magic, and Combat.  This section focuses on the Life skills.  Current life skills include: Blacksmithing, Refining, Weaving, Tailoring, Composition, Music Theory, Instrument Playing, Cooking, Resting, First Aid, Herbalism, Potion making, Camp Fire, and Making Mastery.  Handicraft is due to be released soon as well.  Many of these skills here are great money makers...if you train them up enough.  For example:  Blacksmithing requires many, many ingots (refined ore).  Refining takes 5 ores per ingot, and the success rate can be as low as 33% (without actually having the skill..50 some percent at rank F) for iron, the most basic ingot.  Ingots come from Barri Dungeon, and the first floor has 8 ore stacks, with 5 ores each.  That means a maximum of 8 ingots per run.  Very painstaking, but pays off in the end.  In my opinion, raising life skills can be rather tedious, but well worth it in the end.  For more information on life skills go to http://mabinogiworld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Life.  I give these skills 9/10 due to their tediousness, but also their great payoff.

Gameplay (Combat) :  There are 3 categories of combat skills: Magic, Ranged, and Melee.  The game is classless, so hybrids are possible (and recommended).  To give an example of how combat works, we shall walk through a fight with a gray wolf.  One would run up to the wolf and strike it until it is knocked back, which depends on the weapon (it is possible to get one more hit than the weapon states).  After one knocks the wolf back, he/she must quickly decide which skill to use next, as wolves are very fast enemies.  Say the player decides to activate the defense skill, but does so after the wolf has already recovered.  The skill fails to load as the wolf strikes the player doing ~20 damage, roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of a new player's HP.  The player loads defense while falling back and is smashed and dies.

Okay, lesson is this: Lag can make a difference between life and death, as can reaction time.  In general, melee combat is like rock paper scissors.  The defense skill beats a normal attack, the smash skill beats defense, and a normal hit beats smash.  Quite simple at the most basic level, more complicated when more skills are added.  This is my favorie part of the games, since I can be just as effective as someone who pays much, much more than me because I am used to the combat system.  10/10

If you have a spare couple of minutes, here's an official video which kind of goes over what I'm talking about, and shows about every way to get killed by a bear :>. http://mabifiles.nexon.net/movies/openbeta/lorna_embed/embed_lorna02.swf

Unscored: Mods

Okay, so I mentioned mods earlier.  There are a variety of mods out, such as utilities to detect mimics (trap treasure chests), superzoom, ability to view true durability and powerlevel (OVER 9000!!!!), interchange item models (eg to make a broadsword look like a sw8 claymore), and play custom soundtracks.  All of these are of course "illegal" in the eyes of nexon, but I'm pretty sure there's almost no chance of being caught and even less of a chance of being punished, for many of the people who exploited the bug involving paladin transformation didn't get banned, and only one that I know of was temp banned...

 Overall, I think this is worth a try, even if you don't want to pay anything.  There are ways to get NX cash (*cough* prizerebel *cough*) that are somewhat shady (people report that prizerebel works, dunno, though).  Also, they don't really limit how many accounts you have, so you can make new characters when you're bored.