Game Review – TERA

TERA

TERA was originally launched on PC in 2011 by Bluehold Studios Inc. It’s now 2018 and the game is free to play on both Xbox One and PlayStation. As an average gamer you’d expect a seven year old 6.5/10 rated MMO to be fairly attractive off the bat, right? I hate to say it but that’s not one of the words I’d use to describe this game. The only real attractive elements are the race and class aesthetics when you create your character. What more could you want? Turns out, quite a lot.

The Good

Let’s start with the positives. Or rather – positive – singular. The biggest and ONLY sell for me was the fast-paced combat system. Contrary to most MMO’s, position and maneuverability in TERA turn out to be just as essential as maintaining a constant stream of DPS. The battle sequences themselves are definitely enjoyable. Despite slight dips in frame rate every now and then, you feel in control of the fight the majority of the time. The first character I created was an Archer class. My cool Legolas wannabe turned out to be quite the beast, cartwheeling, raining arrows and dodging around. Unlike a lot of other MMO’s, in TERA, I didn’t feel virtually chained to the ground during a fight.

The Bad

That’s where all the good things ended for me. While TERA gets an A+ in the “action department”, it just falls miserably short where basically everything else is concerned. The quests are pretty repetitive and boring overall. Simple and slight variations on prior missions with a higher level boss at the end is all you can look forward to. The story line was almost impossible to understand. Nothing really grabbed my attention or made me connect with the characters in a meaningful way. According to the lore of TERA, in the beginning of time, two super Titans that eventually became the two worlds of TERA “Met in a formless void and fell into a deep sleep”. After putting a few hours into the game, I wanted to do the exact same thing. Trying to understand the “why” behind the plots in TERA is like trying to understand the reason cement is rough. It just is.

The Really Ugly

I kept playing the game for a couple more days. I gave it a legitimate chance. In the end, all I was left doing was finding what little joy I could in the snazzy combat system. The only way I’d recommend TERA to a friend is if that friend had absolutely nothing else to play and a free 50GB on their hard drive. Sadly, it all boils down to the fact that there are just much better free games out there.