Tera Initial Impressions

The Exiled Realm of Arborea, or TERA, is the new MMO from En Masse Entertainment and Bluehole Studio. Ever since its release in Korea at the beginning of 2011, North American and European audiences have been intrigued by TERA's take on the genre, separating itself from the World of Warcraft clones that have flooded the market since 2004.

After spending a little over a week in Arborea, we have put together a list of the ways TERA has evolved from its predecessors, as well as which aspects of the title stay true to the genre roots.

How Things Have Changed

1. Combat

Active combat is almost unheard of in MMO gameplay. Battles have typically been determined based on armor sets and skill management, not dodging and aiming. It might be due to the fact that every attack actually connecting is a breath of fresh air, after years of clicking on enemies and standing in place, but each and every sword swing in TERA feels deliberate and satisfying.

I've spent a majority of my time as a slayer, a class that uses weapons slightly larger than they are. The swings are slow and the skills need a significant amount of time to warm up, but the force behind each major blow regularly knocks enemies over or, at the very least, stuns them before they can retaliate.

I've also spent a few hours with the archer class, and the difference between the ranged and melee classes is both stark and very welcome. Because each mouse click directly corresponds to an attack or a dodge, a player's tactics must completely change from one class to the next, as well as from a slow moving enemy to a speedy one. I plan on trying at least the mystic and the priest before my final review to see how much the play style can change when magic becomes the primary mode of attack.

2. Progression

Many MMO players resigned themselves to wandering aimlessly through forests or deserts in order to search for that last trinket long ago, but the pace in TERA makes even the most mundane quest (of which there are plenty) go by smoothly. Everything from the detailed maps to the quest tracking makes finding objectives and monster spawns as painless as possible.

If a respawning boss has been downed, clicking his name in the quest log will light up a semi-permanent indicator on the map, locating the boss' spawn within inches. That said, quest objectives are almost always easy to find by spending a few minutes searching the area. Bunching all the quest givers in one or two locations in every region, the completion of that region never takes very long.

This can be seen as both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, before any area of the game became tedious or my character was too overpowered for the enemies, I was already on my way to the next location. On the other hand, this constant forward momentum made the game, in a typically open world genre, feel very linear. There was no reason to stay in one quest hub after the quests had been completed. Perhaps the quests become more complex and the areas become larger later in the game, but the lack of incentive to explore an area after the quests have been completed is troubling.

3. Polish

Gamers have become accustomed to bugs in their games during the launch window, especially massive PC titles like TERA. They are expected to suffer through weeks, if not months, of constant bug fixes and balancing issues before the game might finally reach a finished state. It might be a little unfair, considering TERA has been out for over a year in Korea, but other than a single, minor sound glitch, I have yet to see a bug in the game.

The polish goes beyond a lack of bugs though. The UI, the character design, the animations, the controls, and even the translation from Korean to English are so perfectly implemented, never once did I feel removed from the experience of playing TERA in order to deal with an unwieldy menu or a confusing map. Looking back as far as the buggy launch of Vanguard, or as recently as the unplayable Diablo 3, TERA's polish is very impressive.

How Things Have Stayed the Same

1. Questing

After an hour in TERA, I realized I had not read a single quest description from start to finish. The writing is serviceable and the translation is second to none, but behind every yellow exclamation mark is a wall of text with no significance to the overarching story of the game. After Star Wars: The Old Republic showed that an involved, entertaining storyline was possible in an MMO, the storytelling in TERA definitely feels like a step back.

The quests are, to put it gently, repetitive. The "kill X monsters," "collect X items," and "escort a slow NPC" quests are not only present in each and every outpost, but 22 levels into the game, these are the only quests I have seen. Yes, there are instances with more variation and excitement, but if TERA had managed to include unique quests with memorable voice acting along with its fantastic combat, gamers would be hard pressed to find a better MMO this year.

2. Exploration

Moving around in Arborea, despite its inherent beauty, can be a bit of a chore. As discussed in the progression section, there is no reason to remain in an area after completing the quests relevant to that area. I did usually find myself reaching every corner of the map by the time the quests had been completed, but after several recent MMOs have introduced community events to get dozens of players involved with each other, it feels a little sparse in Arborea.

Thankfully, between speed potions and early access to mounts, the tedium of backtracking or trying to find the next group of quest givers is never enough to cause serious frustration. Again, there is a lot left for me to explore, but the relative emptiness of these enormous locales is beginning to wear on me.

3. Scenery

Vast, beautiful environments in massive RPGs are nothing new, but TERA is possibly the best looking MMO on the market today. Before playing this game, it might be worth investing in a mouth guard, because TERA is jaw-dropping. Terrible jokes aside, not one location in this game doesn't beg to have screenshots taken - and vistas stared at.

Each region transitions smoothly from one type of terrain to the next, giving the impression that Arborea is one, cohesive world, with dozens of races and fantastical beasts, each with their own homeland. The character and monster designs are also striking - each race looks drastically different, enough to warrant choosing a new one for each alternate character. Even if exploring Arborea is not always exhilarating, there is always something new to see.

Conclusion

There is a lot left to play before we will have our final review ready, but hopefully this primer will be enough to give anyone on the fence about TERA everything they need to decide if this is the MMO for them. A repetitive questing system is easy to overlook when the combat is this much fun, the environments are this attractive, and the bugs that normally accompany a new MMO are nowhere to be found.

Look for our final review of TERA in the coming weeks.