Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa

TR is a new Sci-Fi First Person Shooter-ish MMORPG from the Eastern MMO company NCSoft which has only resently caught attention in other markets with games like Guild Wars and City of Heroes / City of Villians.

Earth has been conquered by an alien race that the general population had no idea about, however our leaders were somewhat preparied and used on earth wormhole technology to move the best of the best to another planet to fight in a war that very well may be older than mankind itself.

The game is third person with an optional over the shoulder close up camera, and it is First Person Shooter LIKE, which is to say not really at all, other than the fact you want to aim in the general area of your target, and 70% of the weapons in game are ranged only.

The game handles most of the accuracy for you so you dont really need to have good "twitch" skills, but you do need to make sure your target is in line of sight and doesnt have excellent cover.

As you level up you gain skill points to "pump" up skills you already know or learn new skills or abilities. Probably the most unfortunate thing is that most abilities are really sub par to gun type weapons, so you'll be shooting a lot and not using abilities really all that much.

The game starts with one class which branches into two at level 5 then each of those into two again at 15 and then each into two again at 30, all in tree type progression.

You get free "clone" points at 5, 15, and 30 before you make your next choice and this helps to not have to repeat the low level content again and again, which is a good thing because its all the same everytime. However since leveling is very fast in this game and you dont need to redo it with each charaters you'll be wanting some End Game Content... well currently there is none, theres pvp, but its kind of an aquired taste.

The graphics are good but too demanding, and thats a common complaint game wide, most sound effects are good but not great, a lot of gun / ability sound effects are lacking, the music and voice acting is decent if not a little awkward.

The controls are standard MMORPG wasd + mouse style and feel generally pretty good except for the fact that the in game UI has a horrible Hot Key system with only one 5 slot bar at a time for Weapons and one 5 slot bar (changable but only one at time) for abilities and consumables.

A main failing of the game is that it just gets old really quickly, as most of your doing is pointing and shooting over and over, the same monsters just higher and higher levels and then before you know it your between the levels of 30 and 50 and you have access to every skill / weapon type you'll ever get and it really isnt very much at all as each class really only has about 5-6 different weapons and 5-6 different abilities. Realisitcally youll find and use your best 2 weapons and maybe 3 abilites over and over until you just dont want to use them anymore.

There is a crafting / customizing system in game but its generally unfriendly at first and once you understand it you realize its really not worth your time until getting to level 50.

There needs to be a lot more incentive to do ingame dungeons as currently you run them once and when its complete there is no point in going again, there needs to be a lot more end game content besides PvP, there needs to be more incentive to PvP, there need to be more incentive to capture control points (mini wars against NPCs). Even crafting needs to have a better risk to reward system.

Obviously there is a lot this game needs to help give it some varity. The story line also needs to be presented in an more immersing way rather than just text.

Its a fun game but the fun just doesnt last. Definatly a game to keep your eye on in the future as some serious patching / updates could help this game greatly.

If you really jones-ing for a new Sci-Fi MMORPG, pick this up, try it out, you get a month free with the game, but be careful about letting it get old or boring and be careful about holding your breath waiting for the next patch or update.