TERA has been out worldwide on PC for over five years now. Boasting a player count of over 26 million, it is one of the world?s most popular games, period. The free-to-play MMORPG is finally being ported over to the PlayStation 4, and is close enough to this goal that the game was playable at Sony?s PlayStation Experience 2017 expo. We went hands-on with the game in its early state, and have our impressions ready for you below.
MMORPG Elements, Action RPG Controls
During our demo, we ran through a brief scenario involving taking down a couple of basic enemies, followed by a boss encounter. There were three classes shown, out of the game?s 14 currently available. I played the Slayer class, a quick character able to dive in to combat, deal high damage, and then dodge out of the way. I was grouped with a ranged character and a tank. After learning the ropes of the control scheme with the smaller enemies, we were tasked with working together to take down the area?s boss. MMORPGs don?t usually translate very well to consoles, mostly because of the control scheme. Their user interfaces are also usually designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, and translating all user input possibilities to a gamepad almost always involves major compromises. But TERA is a bit different. It?s an action-oriented MMORPG, to the point that its targeting system is more akin to a third-person action game than a regular RPG.
What this means is that TERA is one MMORPG that had some built-in features t...