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Tera Online, The Complete Review (Japanese)
Tera Online is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that was originally created by Bluehole Studio and released in South Korea by Hangame on January 25th, 2011. It is a highly acclaimed by the MMORPG community, but does it live up to the hype? I was able to play Tera Online during the Japanese beta between July 30th and August 16th and experience a whole new magical world. This review is specific to the Japanese version of Tera and there will be slight differences between the Korean, Japanese, and American / Europe versions. This game is not yet available in English and to obtain an account you must have a Japanese IP address as proof that you reside there. There is more information about this near the end of this review.

Story / Lore
A thousand years ago two omnipotent titans named Arun and Shara entered into voids and fell asleep. These titans started to dream, a dream world that took form on their backs known as Tera. The first beings known as Tera, were godlike, but not after the gods started to fight. Later, these dreams continued to new creatures called mortals, and they were less powerful but more populated. Arun dreamt of Elves, Humans, Amani, Devas and Poporis. Shara dreamt of Sikandari, Gulas, Vampirs, Wendigos, Faeries, and Nagas. These mortals were forced into divine wars of the gods, which eventually lead to the gods imprisonment, or their death. However, the mortals suffered a great loss including near extinction of the giants. They must now work together to fend off a new enemy, a metallic race from the underworld, the Argons. The Argon’s goal is to take over Tera and wake the titans to end their dream and in result destroy Tera.



The main story itself feels lacking, almost as if they just wanted to make something typical, however when you play the game you become instantly immersed within the game and begin to forget about the dull plotline. The story deepens as you progress through the game and learn more about what’s going on and your role in all of this.

From my experience I have noticed that you cannot proceed further no matter what your level is, until you have completed story quests. This obvious example is displayed when you fight your first dragon at level 10-12. Without fighting this dragon, you cannot proceed to the city, and thus make it clear that quests are very important in this game. I was personally attracted to the lore, and the story of the game, and wanted more. If you enjoy mystical stories then you will likely enjoy the story for what it is. It certainly isn’t the best but it’s not the worst -- if anything it is inviting for mindless storytelling.

Races / Classes / Character Creation
There are seven races to pick when creating a character. The first race is the Amani, they are a draconian humanoid. The Baraka is an intelligent and genderless race of giants; the Castanics is a demon-like race, and the Elin are a nature loving race. There’s also the High Elves, the humans, and the Popori whom are an intelligent bipedal animal race. Each race can be given a class between: Archer, Berserker, Lancer, Mystic, Priest, Slayer, Sorcerer, and Warrior. Each class has their own unique fighting style and abilities that transcends well into party battles. My primary character was an Elin Lancer, just because I couldn’t help myself. I have played with all classes using different genders and they were all fairly equal in their own fields. For example, while paying as a Mystic, I could battle against 30 enemies at a distance early in the game, while my Lancer had much more difficulty defending and attacking due to the medium/close range attacks. This made it more difficult to level, however I was stronger than my Mystic counterpart and could take more damage which is very good during party battles.

I mostly played with phr34k whom was a Mystic and we were able to combat difficult foes through skill, tactics, and front and back maneuvers. We complimented each other; however as a Mystic he was only able to heal himself, and not me at the levels that we were at. Statistically, because this is Japan, you will encounter more Erin cat-girls than any other race. This may be useful for those that like to be as unique as possible.



Creating your character is pretty flexible in this game because there are so many different ways to customize your character from head to toe. You can select the hair style, change its color, and even elect to have accessories depending on your race. It is also possible to change facial features, much like what you may have experienced with Dragon Age, and you may elect your selection from a few voices. While it may not allow you to specify height, weight, bust size, it is still very dynamic and I had a pleasant experience building various characters through their well created character creation system.

Character Customization
Tera Online offers a wide range of ways to customize a character outside the character creation tool. Rather, it’s so immense that it just about rivals Ultima Online. While in the beginning of the game, there’s not much to do with your character, it does allow you to learn how to play the games, questing, mining, and other things which will later be useful when forging, tailoring, and enhancing equipment.

Players can mine for ore, harvest flowers, collect monster skin and other things to create ignots, leather, alchemy materials and so on… When in the city, there is much to learn and one of the things that you must do is learn how to craft items. You have crafting levels and can only forge, sew, and so one based on your level of experience. The maximum experience per level is 50, so for example if you want to forge ignots, head over to the smith shop then purchase your first smithing scroll. These scroll vary by level and you can learn from them to unlock new smithing techniques. This stays true with any other skill that is available within the game. Once you have learned how to turn the first basic set of ore into ignots, you’ll need to purchase the item(s) needed to forge the ore into ignots and then head over to the giant anvil. If you create 50 ignots, you will have reached a higher level, and then you can unlock new things to build. Eventually you’ll be able to forge swords, shields, armor etc…



Being able to smith, tailor, and create potions and the like aren’t he only great things about this. In fact, it’s the ability to customize how you want your equipment to look like. You can purchase different handles, blades, and even dye things of different colors. Enhancing your equipment is a plus because there’s nothing like leveling up without killing a monster. Just enhance your equipment and become insanely stronger! There’s a wide variety of enhancement materials and once again, whatever you want to upgrade, you can upgrade.

Progressing Through The Game When you start the game after customizing your character, you are brought to the world of Tera and introduced with simple quests to learn your way around and also lead you to story quests. It’s easy to not understand what you need to do at first, considering one of the first quest is activated after killing a few monsters. At first these quests were interesting but after a while they become annoying. There are quests where you have to acquire certain item drops but these drops are random and instead of just killing 15 Centaurs, you end up killing 40, and a few hundred of his stupid Pixi Fairies. These drops also stop occurring once you are too high of a level and for people like me, which becomes a problem because I need to get everything 100% in games and it no longer becomes possible if you begin to fight mobs outside of questing.



I am thankful that it is possible to queue up as many quests as desired, make them active or inactive, and even delete them if you don’t want to do them (they can be done later if you return to the NPC that gave you the quest). They also separate quests into three categories; Story Quests, Active Quests, Guild Quests.

Questing doesn’t always work too well as a party because there are so many of them and most of them are easy to do alone. It’s possible to re-do quests but I haven’t figured out how to share quests with party members yet. If this option is available, then it would greatly increase the enjoyability of the game, considering that Tera is massively huge and it takes a very long time to get place to place, let alone find the NPC that gave the quest. Some quests are annoying because they require more than one person and sometimes 3 or more. While this isn’t that bad if you play an American MMO, it gets pretty rough in Japan since they seem to just party with people they know, at least from experience and testimonies I’ve received from others who’s played it.

Another interesting thing you will notice in Tera is Quest queuing. This is a concept that I don’t understand and I never will. Imagine if you will, your new quest says that you have to kill a mini-boss and this mini-boss spawns every 5-minutes. There are 6-12 channels per server and over a hundred thousand players. This could be an issue depending on when and where it is. There are literally lines of players one person behind another waiting for the next monster to spawn. They each take their turn to kill something that is relatively easy (mini-bosses are pretty easy in this game), and can take hours to a day in wait time. While I understand that this concept is about being polite, respectful about others, and so on… It really makes no sense to why they don’t just create a party of 5 and kill the mob. Instead of having a wait time of 9 hours to kill a mini-boss, you have a wait time of maybe 10 minutes. Personally, I’d just hit the boss once and get my quest done instead of waiting around for hours to days, but fortunately I never had to resort to this. This kind of thing is called Kill-Stealing (KS-ing) and I hate it with a passion but I’m furious at the idea that people don’t want to party and get the line moving even more.



Japan has a strong sense of socialism and nationalism, and so they respect each other often more than they would respect themselves. Most times, this is an envious behavior because it’s so respectful and peaceful, but at the same time it’s almost like clock-work / robotic and in the former, it makes no sense to spend so much time individually killing mini-bosses. It's not always killing something, like the above image displays a quest monster that you have to guide to a location. Unfortunately they only spawn one at a time.

Overall, questing is simple, straightforward, and if you’re willing to progress with a friend or two, the game will be a lot more enjoyable. MMORPG’s are meant to be played with others, not by themselves like most RPGs.

The Battle System
The battle system in this game is just about the same like any other game. You add macro’s to your numbers/Function keys and you just aim and attack. There are battle tactics that are involved, but most of it is because the AI is ridiculously stupid. Attack once, shield. Attack once more, shield. Repeat this step until the enemy is defeated and you’re good to kill just about most enemies before you hit level 25. This process is indeed boring so you’re practically forced to get hurt to avoid the boredom. Basically the battle system differs no more than from WoW and that says a lot (negatively).

The potion system is odd as well, because once you use a potion (regardless what kind) you cannot use another potion for another 2-minutes. This is annoying considering healing takes forever to use as well. If you plan on trying to defeat a level 30 monster when you’re only 16, good luck because this won’t work. The game is made specifically for level ranges where I believe it’s within about 2-5 levels, 5 requiring a party of 2 or more. Anything higher and you’ll spend a day fighting with your party, attacking a monster 1-3hp at a time. Enhancing your equipment will make it a lot easier, however don’t expect to be able to reap higher rewards for the time you have spent killing that monster. Believe me, we have done an excellent job slaying a Dragon at level 20. We had to battle for at least an hour and take turns dying and coming back. Eventually our health was diminished by -900 or so, thanks to our low stamina.

The stamina system is one feature that I really enjoy about this game. Basically you have a maximum of 120% stamina which gives you added bonuses, but when you reach less than 40% I believe, you start losing regular stats. In the earlier example, we have died countless amounts of times, and because of this our stamina has gone down to 0% and our HP was reduced significantly. To restore your stamina, you need to find a campfire (or bring your own portable one) and it slowly restores. This restoration process is great because it gives the player about 5-10 minutes to take a break, fuel up, and come back to Tera for some more action. It’s brilliant in my opinion.

Overall, I didn’t care much about the battle system; there was very little strategy involved, the AI was stupid, macroing is too repetitive, and having to kill the same monster at least 100 times within a few hours of time for quests is just silly.

PVP / Guilds
I haven’t had too much time exploring PVP and Guilds because of the small amount of time that was given to play the beta. However, from experience the PVP system felt unbalanced and there wasn’t much motivation to do it. Participating in Guild Quests was fun and it allowed achievement medals to be earned upon completion and they were used to buy even stronger equipment. I really wish I could add more to the PVP / Guilds system, however if you would like to know what others think about the PVP/Gulid system, please take a look at the comments bellow or in the forums.

The Visuals
This game is beautiful! It shines like a modern game with HDR effects, the characters are incredibly detailed, and the overall feel of the game feels like you are part of a different world. The water effects are brilliant, the sun rays are well rendered, and the shadows are dynamic. There’s a high-polygon count in this game and it shows through the vast landscapes that is seen in high detail. The characters themselves are beautifully rendered, and every part of the body is literally detailed, hence why the western editions will be censored (more on this later).



The physics in this game is so-so, after-all it’s built on Unreal 3 Engine and as you would expect there are many bugs to ensure. When I started looking for bugs it was easy to find and I found myself climbing walls, mountains, swimming a thousand feet in the air, walking through objects, and your personal equipment just floats behind your back. It’s not that this game is terribly glitchy, in fact it’s well polished now but it just has limitations from the game engine. They can be manually patched but I sincerely doubt that they will put in the time to fix these issues throughout the whole game.

Overall, the graphics of this game is beautiful, and it’s quite possibly the best eye-candy in any MMO available but it already feels like it’s out of date. The technology is currently available to have landmasses of grass dynamically flowing with the wind without using much of the GPU but in this game there’s nothing but patches of grass everywhere like you’d see in any MMO. This may not be Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3, however as far as online RPG’s go, this is probably the best and I enjoyed every minute of the visuals.

Voices / Sound / Music
There’s not much to say about the music in this game, considering that most of the time, there is none. However at the times where you do hear music, it blends well with the game and lightens or tightens the atmosphere as it should. The overall sound quality of the game itself is good quality, and I don’t really see how they could make many improvements with it. However the voice acting is pretty decent and it would have been nice that a 30gb game would have come with vocals of every quest in the game, though this isn’t so. I didn’t feel like they did a bad job with the voice overs however during character customization, there’s only one voice per gender and all you do is change the pitch. There are many other voice actors/actresses in this game, why not just have a few more contribute their voices for the playable character? Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Positive Impressions
What I really enjoyed about this game is how everything was well put together to invite me into their world. Even though the story lacked a little, I managed to see through this and enjoy it anyway because of the quest/leveling system, the graphics, and the transitions from A to B in this game. When you depart to the first city, you are introduce to the Pegasus where it rides you through the map for a few minutes where you can take a breath-taking view of the area that you’re in until it flies into a magical “stargate”. The transition is beautiful because you don’t go to a black screen ever in the game, you just transition. Once you arrive to your destination, you exit the “stargate” and fly through the map for another few minutes until you arrive to the landing point. Personally, I really enjoyed this part but after a while it can get repetitive and so warp scrolls were invented to speed up the process.



This world is vast but with it comes long, long, loooooong walks. This time is later cut in half when you receive your horse summon. Basically you can summon a steed wherever you are and the speed difference is more than double of that of your running speed. You can also talk to magical people whom will warp you for a minimal fee across the lands at places that you have visited as an added bonus to long-distance transportation.

During the battles I just wanted to fight stronger monsters, and because of this I would constantly mine and create new equipment and complete quests. I desperately wanted to fight bigger and badder monsters, the ones where they take hours to kill as a party and I had my time to do this. It was enjoyable, but for those who don’t care much about mindless button mashing then this battle system may not be right for you. There’s little tactics involved unless you fight hard mobs that are way beyond your level.

Negative Impressions
I didn’t like how questing for items would take forever in this game, and if you level up while questing you may not get the chance to finish the quest which is a waste of time. I also didn’t like how obvious the monsters were when they attacked. My last gripe about this game is that after level 20 the excitement starts to decline, and then you start getting creative in your own way to make the game more exciting.

Censorship Inside and Outside of Asia & the Controversy that Surrounds it
There’s censorship, and there’s plenty of it coming overseas in 2012 when Tera Online becomes international. What En Masse Entertainment (North America) and Frogster Interactive Pictures (Europe) wants to do is censor the Elin classe which shows a little too much leg in their perspective. Basically, instead of seeing hips, skirts, or panties, you’ll see overdressed armor.

The reason why this is so controversial is because in Asia, seeing animated little girls in panties, or revealing outfits, or cute attires isn’t really considered pedophilia. Rather, this is part of the 2D vs 3D phenomenon where 2D becomes more attractive than 3D. Over in Japan, a little animated girl wearing a skirt and showing a lot of skin isn’t considered wrong, however if a real girl were to do that, it would be wrong. It’s hard to explain the difference between the two, but basically it comes down to cultural mindsets. This doesn’t stay true for everyone, but there is a large acceptance of this in the anime, manga, and gaming culture.

What happens with this is that there’s culture clash and Westerners believe that if you find an animated girl attractive, you must find a real girl of the same age attractive as well. This is what terrifies En Masse Entertainment and Frogster Interactive Pictures, because they don’t want to enter gray area and publish something that would tarnish their image. As it turns out, there’s a backlash at this and people angry at both publishers for censoring Tera Online and are going to the extent of registering for the Japanese / Korean versions even though they may not know the language, or play on illegal private servers.

However, censoring does not only occur in the international versions. In various Asian countries, there’s a general rule to block outsiders from registering or utilizing their online services because of the political differences between the two. It also lightens the load on in-game spamming where shady companies will buy and sell in-game items / gold for real money.

In the end, you’ll need a Japanese proxy to play on their servers, and possibly a Japanese friend to help you register or pay for it. There’s nothing illegal about using proxies, although it’s against their terms of use to try and bypass their natural systems. The hassle for most people isn’t worth it especially if they can’t fully enjoy the game due to language barrier.

Pricing
This is by far the worst thing about this game, how expensive it is.

[Automatic renewal plan] renews your account every 30-days with unlimited play time during that time. This method costs 2,700Yen or $35.28USD.

[Subscription Plan] come in two varieties. 30-days or 90-days. This game could be available to you for a limited time of 30-days (unlimited play-time minutes) for 3,000Yen. That’s right, that’s $39.20USD. If you plan on subscribing for 90-days (3-months), it costs 7,500yen or $97.99. This translates to $32.66/mo.

[Determination Plan] If you plan on only playing at most 30-hours, you can pay 900Yen ($11.76USD)/mo. which isn’t terribly bad however 30-hours in an MMO goes by quickly unless you can only play for an hour every day.

There is an upside to this, and that’s how players don’t need to pay for the game’s client (installer) and you can download it directly from their website. You can create up to 8 characters per server per account, and there’s about a dozen severs, so it’s not a bad deal at all. If you play outside of Japan, you’ll have to rent a proxy which will cost roughly $10/mo. USD and so I pose the question; is it worth the money?

Overall / is it Worth the Expense?
Tera Online is an excellent MMORPG that will captivate users worldwide in its addicting fantasy world. I have suffered withdrawal symptoms after the beta has ended and wanted to subscribe to another month or two, and maybe even forever because it was the most addicting game I have ever played. The production cost was over $24million and believe me, they have made every penny count. The maximum level right now is 70 and there are many expansions yet to come. This game is good but let’s be honest, it’s severely overpriced in Japan.

My recommendation is to wait a year and hope the prices are slashed in Japan, or just play on the international servers (North American / European) when available and by then, it will likely be less than $20/mo. The Korean subscription is $18/mo. USD and this makes me and thousands of others question the reasons why the Japanese version is so high. Western censorship aside, I believe it will be just as fun of a game in other regions so look forward to it!

2011-09-12 13:55:08

2011-08-27 17:12:40

2011-08-24 17:56:05

2011-08-24 17:08:33

2011-08-22 12:26:52

2011-08-22 04:00:59

2011-08-22 03:39:20

2011-08-21 18:51:49



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