[Game o/t Month] Tera

As Tera Rising is our game of the month (December '13 - Januari '14) I decided to write a review about it.
Before this, I've never played Tera, I've only read about it before it came out in a game magazine which I receive every month. I wanted to play this game quite a long time ago, but I didn't know it was going to be a free to play, so the payment/month was the part that wasn't appealing to me, which made me 'forget' the game.

Just a last warning; this review was written by me, it's about my opinion and view upon the game and may not contain everything as I'm still playing it and haven't discovered everything so far. Also, the screenshots you see are mostly taken from my own progress; this means it doesn't show all areas or such, but where I'm currently playing. Keep this in mind.

Alright, time to start the review!

MMORPG
The Exiled Realm of Arborea. Now you know what Tera stands for. This game was released in 2011 in Japan and Korea. In 2012, the game came to Europe and North America. It's a Free To Play game, with the chance of subscriptions and membership to get premium items and more, though it already contains a lot of content for players who want to discover it.


Story
Tera follows the known standard cliché about you being the only one who's able to save the world. Though the idea behind it is just becoming really boring after continuously seeing this re-appear, the game's still really interesting and fun to discover. As you enter Tera, you start off on the Island of Dawn, which is designed for new players to get used to the whole idea of an MMORPG. Those who've played MMORPG's before, are used to the whole system behind it and pretty much 'already know' how to play and can move through this area really quick, while new MMORPG-players are given all the time of the world to get used to the gameplay.

This first area is pretty much a boring one, I'm not going to lie, but it's a matter of pulling through.
If you check the world map (by pressing M) you can see that every area has written a pair of numbers around it. If we take a look at Island of Dawn, we see that it has 1 - 11 written underneath. This means that for this area you need a minimum level of 1 to survive and that about level 11 you should move onto the next one.



Classes
Before you start playing, you get to choose what class you want to play as. Every class has attacking and defending skills, of which there's a few without any cooldown period. These are skills you can continuously use without having to wait for a cooldown period. Together with the basic attacks, you can upgrade and buy more skills, but those do have the cooldown period. These basic attacks are mostly used for making combo's. The monsters throughout the game all got a certain level (depending on the area you're in (see the world map)) and all have 1 thing in common; they cannot walk/run through you. Though this might sound 'logical', this isn't always the case, yet this feature is pretty crucial for Tera, as BAMS (Big Ass Monsters) can act like tank walls for example, running forward against you, doing quite some damage.



Graphicwise
As always, games are not just about the story, options and gameplay. Graphics are always a big factor. In this case, Tera doesn't disappoint that much. Thus far I haven't noticed any problems with graphics, no graphical bugs or anything and it looks really good, especially when you're in more busy places. The further you progress, the more you see and graphicwise this is all working out really nice. Really nice graphics, yet the game isn't that hard on your hardware, which works out fine. To give you a nice idea; My settings are almost on the highest settings, except for the few options about 'drawing in the distance' which is a little less to ease the pain for my PC. I'm running the game across 3 monitors and have around 40/50 fps in most areas, some even higher. The lowest I had so far was 27, which is in really busy places (like Velika) but it's not that much of a pain in the ass (for me) as it never takes that long to play there. Here's a few screenshots I made for you so you have an idea; FPS is shown next to the life bar (together with the clock).




My Opinion/view upon Tera
So now I've taken you through an information-tour of Tera, here's what I think of the game.

I've played an MMORPG before this one (The Secret World) but in the beginning Tera wasn't really that clear to me. I felt like you just get dropped into the game and have to start playing, which was a little awkward. Once I was able to follow a bit, the game started to make more sense and was more enjoyable. Some aspects are a little unclear when you progress, but you just kind of adapt them and in the end it all works out fine.

I have no graphic complaints and have barely seen any bugs, except the XP-bar is on my left monitor instead of my middle, which I cannot move, and that with dungeons your life may be almost fully drained on entry, but you can still rest a while before you actually get into the dungeon fights. It also took me a while to get used to the quest-system, as in The Secret World you have to use the internet to search real things and such and have to read the whole quest properly (and sometimes even more than once) while in Tera you barely have to read them and can just use the 'quick' quest tracker. It won't instantly show you all the time where you have to go at some things (e.g. kill a few monsters) but if you click onto the quest in the questtracker you can click upon the name of the monsters/characters/spots and it'll show you on your minimap where you have to go. It won't give you an actual direction-arrow where you have to run to, but the minimap shows it quite nicely how you can get there.

The gameplay can be a little bit boring from time to time, as you need to be a certain level to continue the main storyquest, which is a little sad. Nonetheless, you can always earn a lot of XP with sidequests, as some offer a lot of XP, while others barely give you XP. The whole clansystem works out nice I think, though there's more than this, but I haven't really figured that out yet (I read about a political system, no idea what it is/how that works).
The game is fun, can actually amuse you for a nice amount of time and when playing with more people it's always a little more fun ofcourse.

I was annoyed by a few things at some points, where e.g. I had to escort and protect a guy for 10 minutes to go somewhere while after 5 minutes the quest apparently reset itself and the guy started running back to his spawn. Another point where I'm a little annoyed is that some things should've been done differently. Some actions are just.. Gay.. I'm Mystic and thus have the ability of using magic and healing players. I can heal myself too. When I want to heal myself, I have to drop 'a health ball' but it feels like I'm just laying chicken eggs which give me health. A little sad, as it's a little gay to see this in my eyes, I would've liked seeing a different way on healing myself and such. But oh well, it's happening, so chicken eggs it is. I was also a little disappointed as I'm not able to pin a window on my screen, even while moving around and playing. What I mean is e.g. the inventory; in The Secret World I could have my bag 'pinned' on my screen so I didn't continuously have to press a button before it opened, I continuously had a few slots which I used often pinned on my screen. That should be an option here too.

I always play most games with music in the background, which is what I do now. Audiowise the game sounds good, but I've muted the music of the game fully (the music, not the sfx) and play my own, as this is my preference, though the music isn't horribly bad or anything, it fits nice with the game.

+ Loads of content for the F2P part
+ The graphics are really nice
+ Not too heavy for PC's
+ Fighting system works out really good
+ Lots of places to discover
+ Barely any bugs

Cliché mainstory -
Character levels up way too quick -
Not much of a challenge -
Easy enemies, even bosses -