Tera PlayStation 4 Impressions



This game was released on the PlayStation 4 consoles only for a short limited time from March 9- 11, 2018 for free through PlayStation Network.  This was the first open beta for the game  It first started out with two servers being OB-PSNA 1 and OB-PSNA-2 for Friday and then they started with the Velika Test on Saturday. So of course in Open Beta there will be some bugs. These bugs really screwed up the story for me since I would get disconnected from the game or it will just freeze up during cutscenes or important moments.  


Character creation

The Character creation has 7 different races only 3 races are gender locked which is the Elin (little girl character), Bakara (the big hulk like statue guy) and Popuri (Some fuzzy chubby panda?)  In the beta, there were two gender-specific classes which were the Brawler and the Reaper. The Brawler can only be played as a  Human Female and the Reaper is the Elin race and only if you have a level 40 character. To be honest that was a pretty strange requirement for the Reaper when the max cap was level 38. However, I did hear some players saw others who were level 40 and above. Don't ask me how since none of us could figure it out.

After some research about all the other classes, I created the Brawler since it's close to what I would like and I picked right!  The brawler is a blast. The only thing I didn't care much for was making a female character. It's a lot more work than making a male especially if you when it comes to accessories, highlights, dye, hairstyles, and makeup. That takes up so much time and it's a tragedy after you spend so much effort to only realize that you messed up somewhere in the character creation.

These are the available races in the Open Beta.



























Story

It's kinda hard for me to piece up the story the way it is due to glitches, crashes, and sometimes the script will just vanish  (Common for open beta) In the tutorial  your just a no-name person in this small village where children are special since they have ability called sight which lets them see the future.   The whole tutorial is reloved around you and a small girl who's the victim of being bullied named Anna.  You help Anna with her bully problems and she sticks to you like glue and apparently, she's the most gifted child.  Of course, you need a bad ending to this happy course to get the story moving along. So Anna village gets attacked by a power ranger reject that summons some big blue monster to wreck the village and kidnaps the children.  

Game crashed there so we skipping some parts. Later on, I find out there is some spy in the village and the captain says screw the kids I have to kill the spy! And then vanishes while I deal with saving kids.  Next, I fight the same big monster that the reject summoned.  And Anna somehow causes my screen to glitch out and the boss died of a heart attack?  I'm pretty sure that was a glitch.


So freaking cool that a peagsus is the only thing in this game that has a sci-fi feature.

Then the captain comes back from failing to capture the spy and my character gets a promotion and heads to the city of Velka aka Lag City.  In order to travel there, you must travel on pegasus which goes through hyperspace which would have been awesome if I didn't crash hyperspace all the time!  Then from there, you get to see the town for what it really is and how beautiful it is.  Through sideshow pictures... cause you know lag. After 8 or 9 crashes I made it to the NPC to move the quest along and got out of that horrible place.


Velka main office where you get quests from.  The city lags so hard here.


The game world map is pretty huge and you start off in countries depending on your characters level and each country have their own theme, story, characters, and problems to deal with. The first area was lame until you have to battle with a Norse God Loki which would have been cool if he wasn't so hard to find!  However, the other areas such as the undead theme with pirates and ghouls were awesome and the pirates who became cannibals was a great twist.


Gameplay

This game is an MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) Action RPG Every class has their own style and how they function so I can't go into detail about how every class plays. But I can discuss my class and what I've seen.  During the Open Beta players went on quests, able to make weapons, armor, and potions ( I haven't figured out how to do so).  Go mining, collecting some strange crystals using spirit magic, collecting flowers.  On the action part of the game you beat up monsters for exp and items, go out on quests and once completed you get exp, money and sometimes gear.   There are three types of quests.  Red marker quests are to progress the storyline of that country, yellow markers are just regular quests that are just open and ended. Then they have vanguard quests which I have no idea how to activate but they show up out of nowhere and gives the player massive experience points (Used to level up)  In most cases with these vanguards they just tell you to go hunt down X amount of that monster.  



This is the vanguard quest I was talking about.

Sometimes monsters drop some special relics for your respected character class. If the player picks up enough of those relics it would create a very powerful weapon for that class.  These things are awesome and they have different ones for every 10 levels. The areas in the game are quite large like Skyrim large (HUGE FREAKING GAME MAP) Where it's just better to obtain a mount in Velka City which is a horse. Mounts moves a lot faster than the player so it's a great way to move a lot of distance in a short amount of time.

Dungeons

The game has dungeon called instances where the player can either go alone or team up with five other players. During the Beta, every party will always have some type of tank and a healer. Mystics and Priests cannot coexist together in a dungeon instance it's just a rule for some reason. The dungeons are normally long and have tons of small monsters. Each instanced dungeon has a number of bosses and these guys have multiple health bars and they take a good while to take down.  Monsters in this game have telegraphic attacks where you can see where they are going to attack,  whether if it's going to be a straight line, a cone formation, a huge area and so on. However, keep in mind small monsters and bosses have attacks that are not telegraph.


An annoying boss in the final dungeon in the Open Beta.


A cone shapped attack the monster will do. You can dodge out the way or block it.


Just one of the many bosses in an instanced dungeon and she is a pain to deal with!

Once the dungeon is completed you can pick up loot and some reason the loot is randomly divided into party members on roll bases. Which a person can roll on an equipment with a number from 0 - 100 whoever gets the highest number gets that item. Oddly enough in some parties, you can just walk over to an item and pick it up and it's yours. There was a ton of disconnected players in dungeons. However, you can always join back in the dungeon if you get disconnected which is a great thing cause it happens often.

Online store

This is a free to play MMO and of course, it's going to have a store. Being an Open Beta the store only contain weapon skins which cover over your existing weapon with some fashion and make it look nice,  Cool looking mounts like the Bejeweled lion and the Horse that's so awesome it's on fire! Some outfits like Steampunk, pirate and some Las Vegas Magician assistant outfits.  Accessories such as cute cat ears, sunglasses, some weird crown and ugly pets.  They were giving out free premium cash for everyone if they logged in a certain time period for one hour.  None of these items was game breaking or made it pay to win.













PVP (Player Vs Player)

There was two was of pvp. The first way is that you go to a person you want to fight hit the options button on the controller and select duel.  The player and other person will fight until they have only 1% of health left.  And you can fight almost anywhere except for major cities. The second way is an instance pvp room and this is very strange...  It's an 8 vs 8 pvp match where your character looks like an overweight derby baby with bloomers and full diaper and each team has some sort of giant like a parent or guardian. The main objective is to protect your team guardian while you beat up the other player's guardian whichever team guardian has the most health wins.

In order to fight is so strange. R2 is sumo slaps, Triangle is to throw an acorn bomb, square is to burb ice, Circle is to do a barrel roll,  There were many other strange abilities but most people used a gatling gun attack which does a lot of damage in a short period of time. If you are defeated you will respawn back at your base within a few seconds. This will continue until time runs out or the enemy guardian is defeated. It's very hard to play this mode with a straight face.





Classes that I have seen.

Brawlers

The Brawlers are a up close in your face type of playstyle. They use huge gauntlets on their hands,  R2 is their basic attacks and you have to press R2 each time to attack you can not hold it to continue attacking. L2 is their counter move which is interesting, how this works depends on how many times you press R2 before you press L2 you will do a different type of counter from uppercuts, spinning around with arms out,  a hard backhand attack to a heavy right hook that looks like it just breaks jaws all day.  If the monsters hit you during counter the Brawler will take some damage up to no damage depending on the counter was an okay or a perfect counter which is the result on the timing of the attack to the counter.  At later levels things get way more cooler and  more complex such as punching so fast that it looks like you hit the enemy fifty times, Focus up all your energy into one hit that's so strong monsters just look at you and then die or knock a group of enemies into the air have your character vanish only to reappear as 15 clones to beat helpless airborne enemies  in a magnificent fashion.

Mystics

From what I've seen of this class is that they can heal and use special summons to help tank (Role of asorbing damage and getting the enemies attention)  or some lightning bolt looking monsters to shoot bolts at enemies.  They also drop two different colored orbs, red ones restore health and the blue ones restore mana.  They are quite handy and it seems like every race can be a Mystic.

Slayer

These guys are fast. They have lightning fast attacks and use a two-handed sword. I've only partied with one Slayer and their damage output is okay and they have no mana for some strange reason when they are not in battle. But once they start fighting they gain mana and they are a hurricane on the battlefield. I have trouble keeping up with a Slayer during fights they are just way too fast! From the looks of it, any race can play as a Slayer.


Lancers

I've only partied with two lancers and that was in the same party in a dungeon. One was clearly more skilled while the other died constantly. Anyway, Lancers uses lances and attack from close to medium range distance. From their playstyle, these guys are very hard to kill and have a lot of defensive moves.  During my time in the Vampire dungeon instance, the lancer was the only one who was able to take on the boss and keep that boss focus on her while the rest of us attack.  This is a tank class and it seems like any race can play as a Lancer.


Graphics

Simply Amazing!


Soundtrack

I can't really comment on the music since I don't remember it. None of the tracks were standout or anything. The music did fit with the game and got the job done.



Frequently Asked Questions


Is this game free to play when it comes out?

Yes.

What was the most overpowered class?

No idea as far as the beta gameplay everything seemed balanced. However, people in chat were talking about Valkyrie being super powerful when she becomes released.


Will this game have a pay to win feature?

Possibly. They did have some feature in the Tera Store called Tera Elite players.  It could be something similar to Skyforge system that is on PlayStation 4 and that game is all paid to win. But I am not sure if this will be similar or not.


Was the Beta Fun?

Yes.


What was the class I saw the most?

Brawler hands down.


What was the most popular race?

Between the Ellins and the people with horns


How many times did I disconnect?

Easily over 40 times. I lost count.


Did I reach max level during the Beta?

Yes, I have reached max level thanks to some friends and that final dungeon with exp boosters that lasted for 1 hour.

Did the Beta have events?

Yes, it had three events. The events are the Stress Test,  The stress test was only available through peak hours on Saturday and Sunday. The main objective was to stay online during the time period for two hours.  Depending on how long you stayed you will get items that are bound to your account which can also be used when the full game comes out. Here is the catch staying online for 2 full hours during peak time is a  full commitment of will and patience due to the fact you can get easily disconnected, the game froze, error codes and just shenanigans.  The rewards were weapon skins, outfits, pets that have auto loot (Picks up stuff on the ground automatically) and mounts that are faster than the starter mount by more than double the speed and comparable to the mounts in the Tera Store.


Overall I enjoyed the game immensely.  The game did have a lot of problems but of course, it's a Beta which is expected to happen. When the full game comes out they will fully introduce more characters and more content.  Apparently, they will be releasing Tera again for players sometime this week or next week.