Finial impressions: Tera E3 GamingWeez review

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Site also has reviews of Rift & Jumpgate. Well worth the read for those two also

http://www.gamingweez.com/

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We continue going through all the games we visited during E3 and tonight, it's TERA-Online's turn. Needless to say, we left the EnMasse Entertainment booth very excited for this game. As always, we'll take a look at everything we liked and one or two challenges that lay ahead in this author's opinion.



There's so much to like about TERA-Online that it's going to be tough to put it all in short. My goal is to not write a book on this, so I'll be brief with each thing and feel free to ask me to expand on our comment section if needbe.



The #1 aspect that all TERA fans are drooling over is the combat system. I have not tried Darkfall, which some people said is similar, but the action packed battles I experienced in TERA were incredible. I can safely say, those battles were something I had never experienced before. After the private demo was over, I was tired frankly because, in TERA, you need to be paying attention quite a bit. Maybe after you get the hang of it, it might not be so, but for a beginner, it was a challenge. I most likely looked like a newbie who had never played an MMO before while I was playing tERA for the first few minutes.



The controls are tough, yet very simple. Simple in the sense that your left click on the mouse used your bread and butter ability to regain mana and the right click used your most powerful ability. In between that, an individual must dodge, block, charge up abilities, use cooldowns and.. oh yes... AIM. I couldn't tell you the amount of times I missed and executed some kind of combo at a palm tree because I missed the gigantic crab that I was fighting. When people talk about "something" that a game brings that "changes the game", this is it. Even a healer (my usual class calling) has to aim to direct heal an ally. Rogues, no more jumping up and down when doing a raid because you are bored.



I wonder if this will make not only healing harder but range DPS harder as it's definitely harder to aim from a far than standing right next to the target. At least for newcomers, initially.



Graphics were beautiful as well and the movement and animations seemed fluid. Some of the usual races make an appearance, such as Elves but we also have a by-now-famous class, the Popori, servants of the animal kingdom, if I recall correctly which are "cute".



When looking at challenges, there's simply one important challenge for EnMasse Entertainment to focus on: Bringing an Asian insipired game to the West. We have witnessed time and time again the issues with such a feat and have to look for further than Aion to see what happened there. Will the developers be able to attract a wide audience with their action combat system and keep them hooked without players dying to the grind? That's the questions we want to ask, and from what we have seen in the Focus Group Tests, they know it's a challenge too and will be working towards providing the best experience possible in TERA-Online.