What i think so far: Tera Fate of Arun

What i think so far: Tera Fate of Arun

Tera is a free to play MMORPG, which takes place in a fantasy world. I have now played for about 26 hours or so and have hit level 42, so i thought i would share some thoughts.

Character creation:

Let’s begin with the character creation, which i think i at least decent. You can choose between 7 races and 9 classes. Afterwards you can customize how your character looks. The customization is good, not great but good. There are some presets for you to choose from, but you can also fine tune the looks. And at last, you of course have to name your character.

The world:

Up to this point i would say that the different zones has been quite varied in how they look (if only the enemy variety had been that good as well). But i would say that the beginning island is the most visually stunning zone so far, although several of the other zones look good as well. Some zones look more dull that others, but i don’t really mind that much as long as it’s varied. One thing i will say about the whole world is that it is quite bright and colorful, or at least colorful, it get’s a bit dark at times. So far i have also encountered two big cities, Velika and Allemantheia. The last one quite a lot bigger than the first. and both are quite fantastic to look at. I have posted some pictures from the cities and the different zones down below.

Questing:

The questing in Tera is not interesting in any way, i would say. They consist mostly of killing 10 of one creature, or collect 10 items from creatures that you have to kill (so these two are basically the same.), gather items laying on the ground, picking flowers/herbs, and killing some boss monsters which is fun at first, but for me it became boring quite fast (i will come back to this). There are also story quests, but there are for the most part nothing special with these either. You go talk to some NPC’s and kill some creatures and so on. But you do get some cutscenes every once in awhile, so at least you do get something. And of course you do get some gear and items from the quests.

Combat

In my opinion the combat is the strongest aspect of Tera, it has a combat system which is mixed between action based and hotkey based. You actively have to dodge away from attacks and you have to aim to hit with your abilities. At the same time you do end up with quite a lot of abilities your action bar, and then have to bind these to hotkeys, like in most MMO’s. But the nice thing is that even though you have to use hotkeys, you do have to aim for them to hit your target. This makes the combat, a lot more fun compared to WoW or Guild Wars or something along those lines.

But while the combat system is fun in the beginning of the game, i quickly found that it became quite repetitive after a while. This is because it takes so little time to find the most efficient order to execute your abilities in. There is little room for experimentation and you get a feeling of doing the exact same thing over and over.

Another feature of the combat system is the ability to chain abilities together. You do one ability, then press a button to do the next in the chain, and so on. This is an interesting mechanic, but i didn’t find it useful at all. The reason being that it’s just more efficient to use hotkeys and also because some abilities cannot be chained. One thing i found annoying was that some abilities were chained automatically, and could not be unchained.

Enemies:

The game starts out great when it comes to enemies, you get introduced to many different types in the first 10 levels, but then comes the big bugbear. from that point and until now at lvl 42, the enemies seems to be just minor reskins of the earlier ones. So basically you fight to same enemy from level 1 to 42, and i suspect this for the rest of the game too (but of course i don’t know if this is the case). But considering that Tera is a free to play game i would say that the enemy variety is at least decent. This i think bring me to the next topic, the free to play business model.

Business model:

Up to this point i would say that it has a fair business model, i have not found it necessary to use any real money. What i have seen that you can use real money on is faster mounts, and some boosters, there are probably quite a bit more, but i haven’t checked out the store that much because i have not found it necessary up to this point. But i did read i the chat that someone said that the game gets quite expensive beyond level 60, but i do not know if this is true or not.

Conclusion:

Considering that Tera is a free to play game it has a lot of content, and it looks quite beautiful. It do have some problems such as it gets repetitive and some optimization issues. And even though the questing is dull, i found it enjoyable enough to wander around the world doing them. But i feel that the combat system is what’s carrying the game.

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