TERA’s first closed beta session has ended, giving a lucky pool of players a first crack at 22 levels worth of PVE content. Keep in mind as we analyze things here that there were plenty of things missing from this early testing phase, including PVP and high texture graphics. That said; let’s take a look at TERA.
Let’s delve into the good stuff first shall we? TERA’s “hook” is the combat, and it’s fairly refreshing to get into some action-oriented responsive combat. The controls and actions are smooth and allow players to actively dodge and block incoming attacks and watch for monsters telegraphing their dangerous attacks through various behaviors and glinting red eyes. The combat is fairly repetitive in the early game as players only have a few skills to work with and the foes are trees, deer, and boars. I wasn’t expecting much in the area of epic encounters, but it definitely took a backseat to some of the battles I had a chance to experience last year.
I had a chance to tackle the first world boss, a spider monstrosity many times more difficult than any other denizen in his 15-20ish area of the world. This brutal webspinner wiped me and my allies quite a few times in our efforts to bring him down, and could kill players in just a few hits. Compared to other creatures in the zone that most classes could just attack down from a standing position due to their relative ease, this was a very welcome encounter and something I really hope to see moving forward with TERA in future beta builds and release.
While the combat is an exceptionally nice change from standing still and mashing damage rotations, the early game encounters do not have a lot of depth to them – and may turn players off to the game after slogging through three different versions of deer. Let’s hope that things get more interesting as dungeon content and more world encounters become available in the post 20 game.
Crafting can be a little intimidating. It costs quite a bit to get into and the early game gear offerings aren’t great. Players skill up by picking various nodes and collecting goods, nothing you haven’t seen before in other MMORPGS. Players get nice little buffs from grabbing the various rocks and floral tufts along with some experience, so there are incentives to stop butchering piglings for a few moments to collect nodes.
Inventory management is quite annoying in the early game, as you’ll collect plenty of things ranging from craft goods to unidentified drops in your travels and even after purchasing a few extra rows of slots with your hard earned coin, there are just so many different types of random scrolls, potions, and other assorted trinkets that your bags will be bulging.
Questing. Yeah, you won’t need to worry about missing the story here, as almost every quest is some variant of collect X or kill Y. There’s nothing wrong with these sort of traditional quests, but combine it with the “standardized” monsters milling about that are easily dispatched over and over (i.e. grinding) and you have a recipe that may turn players off before they have a chance to reach more difficult and interesting encounters.
Graphically things look fairly fluid but I’m withholding judgment there until the high texture models are in the game. While the action combat certainly separates it from a lot of other current MMORPG titles, we definitely need to take a look at the game post 20 to draw any real conclusions. Be sure to come back and take a look when we check out PVP and dungeons during CBT2!
Get the best news and spiciest editorials on online games - Subscribe to get updates and follow the action on Twitter! You can also follow updates on Facebook!
Comments