Tera Review: Cross-Hair Combat That Still Holds Up

Tera arrived in South Korea on 25 January 2011, reached North America on 1 May 2012 and Europe two days later. Bluehole Studio built the game around a combat system that asked for aim, timing and movement. The pitch worked often enough to draw a crowd. It did not always hold one.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

Cross-Hair Combat and the Non-Target Battle System

Tera’s central idea is simple to state and hard to copy. The player points a cross-hair cursor at an enemy instead of clicking or tabbing a target, a design Bluehole called the “Non-Target battle system.” Attacks land where you aim them. Enemy attacks must be actively dodged rather than absorbed by a stat check.

That single decision changes how the game feels minute to minute. A keyboard and mouse or a control pad both work, and the third-person camera keeps the action readable. Questing, crafting and player versus player action sit on top of that foundation, but the combat is what players remember.

Seven races allied with the Valkyon Federation, each with unique racial skills that grant minor advantages and their own animations for class-specific skills. Thirteen classes existed as of October 2017, each with distinct abilities and attributes.

Arun, Shara and the World on Their Backs

About a millennia ago, two omnipotent titans named Arun and Shara entered formless voids and fell asleep. They dreamed, and the dream took form on their backs. That world is Tera.

The first beings in it were twelve godlike figures dreamt up by the titans, and they quickly started fighting. Mortals came later, less powerful but far more numerous. Arun dreamed Elves, Humans, Amani, Giants, Devas and Poporis. Shara dreamed Sikandari, Gulas, Vampires, Wendigos, Faeries and Nagas.

The mortals were dragged into divine wars that left the gods dead, imprisoned or diminished. Some races were wiped out, including the Sikandari and most of the Giants. Others rose from the wreckage, such as the Barakas and Castanics.

Now seven races — Amani, Barakas, Castanics, Elin, High Elves, Humans and Poporis — must band together against the Argons, a metallic race from the underworld. The Argons want to take Tera and wake the titans, ending the dream and destroying the world.

Val Oriyn and a Decade of Renames

Tera changed shape repeatedly. In February 2013 it became Tera: Rising alongside the switch to free-to-play. September 2014 brought Tera: Fate of Arun, a patch that raised the level cap and added the continent of Northern Arun and its region Val Oriyn, described as “cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, Northern Arun is a land of savage jungles, colossal ruins, and the undiscovered homeland of the Barakas.” The patch reached America and Europe in December 2014.

The game has over 28 million players worldwide, as of 2018. It came to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in April 2018, published by En Masse Entertainment in North America, Europe and Japan. En Masse announced in September 2020 that it would be shutting down. Nexon, Krafton and Gameforge published the game in South Korea, North America and Europe respectively, and NHN PlayArt is also listed as a publisher.

One economy detail deserves attention. The developers studied CCP Games and its use of Plex in Eve Online as a way to deter gold farmers, then released Chronoscrolls, a currency that let game time be bought with real money and sold for in-game gold. Chronoscrolls were available only to users who had purchased the game digitally or physically. Anyone on the Discovery Edition was locked out.

What Tera Gets Right, and What It Doesn’t

The best things about Tera, ranked by how much they still matter:

1. The Non-Target battle system. Aiming and dodging make ordinary fights feel like fights.
2. Class variety. Thirteen classes with distinct abilities give the combat room to breathe.
3. The world of Arborea. Arun and Shara’s dream is the premise behind the scenery.
4. The race roster. Seven races with unique animations add texture, even if the racial skills are minor.

The weaker parts are just as clear. The racial advantages are too small to shape a build. The lore buries the Argons — the actual threat — under a genealogy of gods and mortals that a new player must absorb before anything makes sense. And the Chronoscroll compromise, however clever, locked out anyone on the Discovery Edition, which is a strange thing to do to people who already paid.

But the combat holds up. That is rarer than it sounds.

Arborea · Bluehole Studio · game review · MMORPG · Non-Target battle system · Tera