It has been over a year since The Exiled Realm of Arborea (TERA) was initially released in Korea to insatiable applause as well as scornful looks from the rest of the world. While the game featured an action-adventure style of gameplay instead of the traditional point and click scheme that had made Massively Multiplayer RPG’s one of the pinnacles of PC gaming, the game’s Korean roots were apparent and hard to ignore as the game was an incredibly grindy experience in almost every aspect of character development.

Now that the title has surfaced on distant shores in both North America and Europe, there is much to do for those who waited patiently. But, is this an MMO that is easily conquered, or will the erosion of interest in the game dwindle before the task is complete?

In the beginning, Arun and Shara, two titanic beings, fell asleep for some unknown reason and created the world of Arborea in the shape of their curled up, comatose bodies. As the two dreamt, 12 divine beings were born to the world, and with nothing much to do, started fighting with each other. As the titans’ dreams continued, mortal races like the Humans, Elves, Popori, Aman, and many others were willed into existence by the titans’ subconscious, and were subsequently drawn into the fray of the ongoing war between the deities.

In the end, the divine beings were either utterly destroyed, their essence consumed by other deities, imprisoned, or were lucky enough to flee and become gods to the mortal races. The mortals weren’t lucky as well, as some races like the Giants and the avian Sikandari were almost wrought to extinction, but some races rose to prosper in their place, the horned Castanics, the stout Barakans, and the whimsical Elin to name a few. As the fog of war lifted, the seven major races sought to work together as a federation of races, as one major threat to their existence still remained: The metallic Argon. Wrought seemingly by otherworldly means, this race of machine-like aliens seeks nothing but the extermination of all. As the threat of invasion grows ever larger from the Argon, a mysterious island appears between the two continents, drawing in the heroes from the Federation of Valkyon as well as zealots of a once powerful dead god.

Saleron, the face in the wall, was imprisoned under a mountain range for being a primadonna to the rest of the divine

As typical and straightforward as the presented back-story, the rest of the game’s plot fares no different. The story quests that guide you from location to location are fairly easy to figure out but are also the most rewarding campaigns in the game. While bits and pieces of voice acted cinematics are provided at certain key points, these instances lose their shine with the inclusion of the Korean lip syncing being out of rhythm with the VO.

TERA makes up for the poor showing in the story category with an impressive display in gameplay, bringing eight types of action RPG gameplay that are completely unique to each other. The MMO role trifecta (Tank, DPS, and Healer) still applies, but there are distinct differences on what each class can do. If you seek to be the immovable rock in battle, then the Lancer is the class for you, able to absorb obscene amounts of damage and keep the enemy facing away from the more fragile classes. The Warrior, on the other hand, is a dual blade master, able to either tank via dodge rolling away from enemy harm while still applying the pain or applying certain attacks when evasion is impossible to mitigate damage, or as a damage dealer, slicing away health with a unique resource bar that applies to all warrior skills.

Wait…when did the Scions of Lok employ Chaos Marines?

What is interestingly absent, and one of the more attractive features marketed about TERA, is the lack of being able to click-lock targets like in more traditional MMO’s like World of Warcraft and The Old Republic. This function is done by keeping the crosshairs in the middle of the screen on the target of choice, which will direct your blows or allow for lock on abilities for certain classes. This makes gameplay for healing classes like the priest and mystic all the more challenging, as it requires you to be a certain distance from your target and have him in your line of sight, most likely putting you in harm’s way when it comes to the large creatures, nicknamed Bad Ass Monsters that usually require 5 people to defeat.

TERA keeps the action adventure style gaming to heart, as the title can be played either with keyboard and mouse or with an Xbox 360 controller. The default user interface for hotkeys is fairly small, only allowing for 15 skills (1-6, F1-F6, LClick, RClick, and Tab) and allows for two extra hotbars, but the extras cannot be bound to any keys. Even more so, TERA will not allow you to customize key bindings, which severely hinders the game. What they offer in recompense is skill combos; a user interface that can bind a skill to be performed with the spacebar after a move is done. This can lead into very long strings of combos that only require the spacebar to execute and is in fact extremely helpful later on when players have 20+ skills.