A "Good" MMO, but is that enough?
So after a month a few days I've hit 60 with my Slayer and my wife's Sorceress so I figured I can now properly review Tera. For those who dislike reading walls of text lets just get this out of the way:
Outside of combat there's nothing new to see here.
That said since combat is a big deal in MMO's and is the most touted part of Tera you'd think that would be enough right? Well that depends on the player. My wife and I are old hands at World of Warcraft and we had gone deep down that rabbit whole doing the whole raiding guild and rep grinds. On the one hand she enjoyed being able to play with our friends and most importantly myself, eventually it got into the whole "been there done that" feel.
Well if you're at that point Tera will hit the "been there done that" feel REAL fast. Unlike Star Wars The Old Republic, Tera doesn't have fancy voice acted cut scenes with every quest, nor does it's main storyline (which has those cut scenes) give a feeling of being a key part of the story. So you literally run up, get your kill or collect quests, and go out and do more combat. Lots and lots of combat.
Though as the saying goes you play to your strengths and Tera's biggest strength is the combat. Which is really involving and fun especially when you get into the dungeons and BAM (Big Arse Monsters) quests. The combat system makes you dodge and react to the attack "tells" of the various monsters in the game. Even healing requires actively aiming at the players and landing spells either on them or "locking on" to get the spells to land. I have never been this actively involved in MMO combat as I was in Tera.
In fact my wife and I 3 manned many of the BAM's in the later stages with a slightly higher level berserker player because the combat system allowed you to get past the "holy trinity" of most MMO's. If you're good enough as a player you can dodge/negate pretty much all the damage of most open world monsters allowing you to do some crazy stuff you'd never think of in any other MMO. Normally if something is two or three levels higher than you they are "stay away or die" but not in Tera. I regularly took on monsters higher level than me just because I could and because I could dodge and negate their damage as I went.
So as I said besides combat what's left? The art design is very pretty in a lot of ways. In fact my wife wanted to play specifically because of the art design. While a lot has been said about the "loli" looking characters (there's even a guild on my Server called the Loli Brigade) as well as the slutty looking characters that all pretty much ends up in the background. That said if you don't want to see mostly naked women in "armor" than I suggest you go elsewhere as you will see that a LOT. In fact the metal wearers seem to show MORE skin than the clothies!
In the end the game barely held our attention to level 60, much less past it. Leveling up an alt seems painful as it's all the same quests in the exact same lands (unlike in Wow where you could try out different leveling areas to at least try something else). Sure the combat would be slightly different but again you hit that "been there done that" wall REALLY fast. Did we like the game? Sure. Did we get our money's worth? Absolutely. In the end though unless you want to grind a whole lot and do a lot of the same things over and over again (even more so than MMO standards) you really shouldn't play for much longer than it takes you to get to 60. Is there stuff to do in the "endgame?" Oh yeah, but nothing I want to grind away at for months.
