So Tera, well, for those of us who preordered the game it is up and available since Sunday April the 29th. And I must say, so far I’m impressed, I love the graphic details, I love the characters, I love the character design and I can’t complain about the quests, they’re quite standard. I’ve only played for around 8 hours so I can’t really judge anything yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, the world is magnificent.

Considering the game is Korean, the characters are rather manga inspired, but interesting, I fell in love with the Elin and the High elves straight away. Especially the Elin are adorable, they’re small fairies, but although they may look small and helpless, they pack quite a punch just like any other race in the game. As far as racial abilities go, I must say, they’re not that balanced, although it’s not too bad. Some races got incredibly good racials though, like the High elves who can replenish their full mana pool instantly.

As there are 8 races and 7 classes to chose from, and every class is available to every race you may just pick the race you like best regardless of what class you wish to play. Most races allow you to play both as a male or female character, although there are some exceptions, like the Elin who can only be played as a female character and the Popori who can only be played as male characters. Currently there is only one single pure healing class in the game, Priest, and one tank class, Lancer, so I asume they will add at least one more of each quite quickly.

Compared to any other MMO out there, Tera is completely set to hardmode by default, you need to aim your attacks yourself and your attacks can be dodged by mobs or players, also, dodging attacks is a manual skill. There is no such thing as damage avoidance except for shields, which in Tera blocks all the damage, not just a small portion of it, although it only blocks frontal damage so there is not foul logic there.

Appart from all this, you have fully customizable characters, you may even turn your character into a digital copy of yourself if you spend enough time on it. There are some truly beautiful preset models, but feel free to pick one and edit it to your liking, there are no real limits to your character’s apperance. I am not entierly sure about if you can create your own custom hairstyles, but I think it is possible, although I know for a fact that almost everything except for your character’s weight is fully customizeable.

I’m not yet sure of how many professions you may have at one point, but as far as I’ve seen you may have all gathering professions at once at least. And all gear seem to be class specific, so there is no such thing as cross class gear, and no fighting over loot between different classes, although there may be some cases of it later on. The only thing I’ve found so far that I do not like about the game is how you talk to NPCs, there is no such thing as click targeting, so instead you have to go up close to them and press F, if there is another NPC nearby this means that you may target the wrong NPC over and over again.

Minor flaws aside, Tera could be a truly entertaining game once one begins to reach the higher levels and endgame content, and even leveling is rather interesting.

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