So since everyone and their mother are making Tera reviews, I figured I would write one as well.
Background: I hit 38 on a Berserker during the CBT and 32 on a Lancer in the OBT, dabbled in many MMO overs the past 8 years, most significantly being a hardcore raider in WoW from vanilla through the start of WotLK.
Scale (1 - needs to die, 5 - average, 8 - good, 9- amazing, 10 - perfect) Questing and combat double weighted
Music 9/10: Overall a decent variety. At a few points I got some music that didn't seem to fit, but it was still well done.
Character Creation/Race Variety 8/10: I love how each race has its own silhouette, it gives a unique feel to each race unlike many games where it just seems to be different colored skin. While I would have preferred a bit more character customization options (like separating the Elin hair/ear options), I felt like I had enough sliders to tweak to make my character’s face unique. While body customization would be nice, I feel like it would lead to a bunch of very deformed characters running around which would clash with the “beautyâ€Â that everything in Tera seems to have.
Graphics 9/10: The graphics in this game are amazing for an MMO. All of the textures seem plenty detailed as well as having nice lighting. The choice of the Unreal Engine was a great decision. The score was knocked slightly due to not having any true AA options that I could find in the options menu. Lighting enrichment 2 just blurred the whole screen, which got rid of some jaggies but looked worse in other ways.
Art Design 9/10: The art design in this game is amazing. Starting with the characters, as above, and continuing on through all the monsters, everything looks unique (besides others of its species ofc). The world has this sense of “beautyâ€Â in everything besides the Argons/Lokians which are all consistently “uglyâ€Â. This fits in great with the lore that they are coming from another world/dimension and trying to destroy this one.
Character Customization 8/10: The main customization that I have found so far has just been the glyph system. While on my Berserker, I felt there were some useful abilities that I had to make choices between, but so far on my Lancer, the choices have seemed much more blah. Besides this, there doesn’t seem to be much outside gear. While this hurts the uniqueness of your character, it might make up for it by not needing to be a specific spec in the game endgame.
UI 8/10: Overall the interface for this game is very smooth. Most of the elements can be moved around or rescaled. I had a slight problem with the text not appearing very crisp, but this could be fixed easily with a font upgrade/change. Making clearer symbols on the radarÂ-map would be helpful as I could never remember which was ore and what was plants (that might just be me). The losing of the group status on quests with the OBT patch was a very annoying change and should be reverted as it saved the need to ask party members if they got enough kills or drops. I would also prefer an addon API, but I may be a bit biased as I have in the past written my own addons to help myself in WoW.
Questing 17/20: The quests were mostly just the standard kill/gather quests. I personally am very fine with this for a few reasons, the first being that it works great as the combat is so very fun. Being told to go kill some new mob might not sound good, but with the variety of enemies, it doesn’t seem like a chore, as you can learn their new attack patterns and such. The second reason is that it makes the unique quests more interesting. I may not remember the quest to kill the inky sabertooths in a month, but I will most likely remember the defend quests, or the quest where you had to pretend to be an enemy soldier and talk to people for information. Finally, I prefer this way because it is faster. Let’s be honest, many people’s goal is to reach the max level and do endgame things. Quests that require you to defend a cart for 7 minutes seem to take much longer than spending 7 minutes to kill 15 sabertooths (to me). If that isn’t the same for you, I guess our opinions differ, which is fine.
Combat 19/20: This is the highlight of the game. The system that Bluehole has in place feels amazing to play. Honestly, I would play a game with Tera’s combat system even if it was only single player or normal multiplayer. The need for combining aim, timing, and tactical decision making (i.e. "Do I have time to cast this ability and still block or will I have to cancel partway through and waste mana?") gives a great feel to the game. BAM fights are fun to do in a group and even better when you try to solo them. The fact that they are possibilities to solo shows how different the combat feels too many MMOs. The reason for the score of 19 is that nothing is perfect and that levels 1-25ish is very easy. Most of the time before 25, I never even had to worry about blocking on normal mobs. While I chain ran SM from 26-30, when I started questing again at 31 in the appropriate zones, mobs had started to hit harder. When I was filling my quest log at the end, I actually almost died when I wasn’t paying attention. If the difficulty keeps increasing like this, it will be a great improvement.
Overall 87/100: While it isn’t perfect, Tera is amazingly fun to play. While I haven’t seen the endgame yet, what I hear of it sounds like plenty to do. Also to be clear, this was just a low level review, if it was a full review, questing would have had to share points with the endgame and such.
Looking forward to seeing you all in game,
Illya, GM of League of Lolis, Frost Reach
Background: I hit 38 on a Berserker during the CBT and 32 on a Lancer in the OBT, dabbled in many MMO overs the past 8 years, most significantly being a hardcore raider in WoW from vanilla through the start of WotLK.
Scale (1 - needs to die, 5 - average, 8 - good, 9- amazing, 10 - perfect) Questing and combat double weighted
Music 9/10: Overall a decent variety. At a few points I got some music that didn't seem to fit, but it was still well done.
Character Creation/Race Variety 8/10: I love how each race has its own silhouette, it gives a unique feel to each race unlike many games where it just seems to be different colored skin. While I would have preferred a bit more character customization options (like separating the Elin hair/ear options), I felt like I had enough sliders to tweak to make my character’s face unique. While body customization would be nice, I feel like it would lead to a bunch of very deformed characters running around which would clash with the “beautyâ€Â that everything in Tera seems to have.
Graphics 9/10: The graphics in this game are amazing for an MMO. All of the textures seem plenty detailed as well as having nice lighting. The choice of the Unreal Engine was a great decision. The score was knocked slightly due to not having any true AA options that I could find in the options menu. Lighting enrichment 2 just blurred the whole screen, which got rid of some jaggies but looked worse in other ways.
Art Design 9/10: The art design in this game is amazing. Starting with the characters, as above, and continuing on through all the monsters, everything looks unique (besides others of its species ofc). The world has this sense of “beautyâ€Â in everything besides the Argons/Lokians which are all consistently “uglyâ€Â. This fits in great with the lore that they are coming from another world/dimension and trying to destroy this one.
Character Customization 8/10: The main customization that I have found so far has just been the glyph system. While on my Berserker, I felt there were some useful abilities that I had to make choices between, but so far on my Lancer, the choices have seemed much more blah. Besides this, there doesn’t seem to be much outside gear. While this hurts the uniqueness of your character, it might make up for it by not needing to be a specific spec in the game endgame.
UI 8/10: Overall the interface for this game is very smooth. Most of the elements can be moved around or rescaled. I had a slight problem with the text not appearing very crisp, but this could be fixed easily with a font upgrade/change. Making clearer symbols on the radarÂ-map would be helpful as I could never remember which was ore and what was plants (that might just be me). The losing of the group status on quests with the OBT patch was a very annoying change and should be reverted as it saved the need to ask party members if they got enough kills or drops. I would also prefer an addon API, but I may be a bit biased as I have in the past written my own addons to help myself in WoW.
Questing 17/20: The quests were mostly just the standard kill/gather quests. I personally am very fine with this for a few reasons, the first being that it works great as the combat is so very fun. Being told to go kill some new mob might not sound good, but with the variety of enemies, it doesn’t seem like a chore, as you can learn their new attack patterns and such. The second reason is that it makes the unique quests more interesting. I may not remember the quest to kill the inky sabertooths in a month, but I will most likely remember the defend quests, or the quest where you had to pretend to be an enemy soldier and talk to people for information. Finally, I prefer this way because it is faster. Let’s be honest, many people’s goal is to reach the max level and do endgame things. Quests that require you to defend a cart for 7 minutes seem to take much longer than spending 7 minutes to kill 15 sabertooths (to me). If that isn’t the same for you, I guess our opinions differ, which is fine.
Combat 19/20: This is the highlight of the game. The system that Bluehole has in place feels amazing to play. Honestly, I would play a game with Tera’s combat system even if it was only single player or normal multiplayer. The need for combining aim, timing, and tactical decision making (i.e. "Do I have time to cast this ability and still block or will I have to cancel partway through and waste mana?") gives a great feel to the game. BAM fights are fun to do in a group and even better when you try to solo them. The fact that they are possibilities to solo shows how different the combat feels too many MMOs. The reason for the score of 19 is that nothing is perfect and that levels 1-25ish is very easy. Most of the time before 25, I never even had to worry about blocking on normal mobs. While I chain ran SM from 26-30, when I started questing again at 31 in the appropriate zones, mobs had started to hit harder. When I was filling my quest log at the end, I actually almost died when I wasn’t paying attention. If the difficulty keeps increasing like this, it will be a great improvement.
Overall 87/100: While it isn’t perfect, Tera is amazingly fun to play. While I haven’t seen the endgame yet, what I hear of it sounds like plenty to do. Also to be clear, this was just a low level review, if it was a full review, questing would have had to share points with the endgame and such.
Looking forward to seeing you all in game,
Illya, GM of League of Lolis, Frost Reach
Edited by: Blazewardog
about 1 year ago
- Reason: Stupid angled brackets eating things