After Pirates of the Burning Sea I played the 6 day Trial for Tabula Rasa and will now rant about my experiences.
What is Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa is one of the few Sci-Fi MMOs out there which means that instead killing orcs with swords or spells you kill Thrax with machine guns or spells. It takes place on two alien worlds. One is a lush forest world the other one a inhospitable prison planet. Earth itself has already been overrun by the enemy and does not appear in the game.
The gameplay is very similar to Hellgate London, especially when playing a evoker class. You control your character from 3rd person view and you have auto aiming. Point at something you want dead and hold the mouse button till it is, OK, its a bit more complicated than that but lets start at the beginning.
Character Generation
The Character Generation is pretty short. You can select gender, race (although at the beginning only pure humans are selectable), name and appearance.
There are four different races in the game. Pure Humans and Human-Alien hybrids which first have to be unlocked with a quest in the game. Each hybrid race has a slightly different stat progression and resistances.
The name has to consist of a fore- and surname. Only the latter has to be unique in the game and the surname is also the same for every character you can make on the server, so choose wisely.
The appearance can be modelled fairly extensive, although at the later stages of the game you will be encased in full body power armour and nothing of your appearance will be visible.
Character Progression
You might have noticed that you don't choose a class at character creation. That's because everyone starts as recruit and selects one of two different classes at certain key levels (5, 15 and 30) which decides in which direction of the class tree you go. You first choice at level 5 will be between soldier and support classes and the level 15 and 30 choices further specialize your character. Technically there are 15 different classes, but in the end there are really only 8 classes at level 30 as you retain all the abilities of previews classes and the path you take to a certain level 30 class is always the same.
At each level up you automatically get a few points in the three different stats, Body, Spirit and Mind and a few points you can invest into these stats yourself. The stats mainly influence your maximum health, maximum power and regeneration rate. Each stats affects two of those attributes in a different proportion. In addition Spirit affects you chance for a critical hit and Mind the damage you do with abilities.
Which abilities you can use depends on your class choice. There are two different kinds of abilities. Passive, like weapon and armour abilities or active abilities like a lightning bolt or teleporting bombs onto the battlefield. Each ability can be upgraded 5 times, either becoming stronger or unlocking a new effect.
As soon as you enter a new class you can start to spend points to get or improve this classes abilities, so you don't have to wait till a certain level to use a ability from your class as long as you found all the necessary logos for this ability in shrines on the battlefield which most of the time is fairly easy.
How to fight
Most of the time you will fight with ranged weapons. Every character has access to the basic guns. Pistols, rifles and shotguns. Advanced weapons like machine guns or injectors are only available to certain classes. In addition there are 8 different damage types in the game ranging from normal physical damage over lasers to EMP damage which only harms robots and the armour of biological enemies. Some enemies are resistant or even immune against certain kinds of damage. So besides a damage type each weapon also has a effective range. When the target is further away than the effective range you do less damage and some guns can't fire further than their effective range at all.
The damage you do depends on the gun, your passive ability with this gun, cover and precision.
Cover is a pretty neat concept and so far unseen in MMOs to my knowledge. TR doesn't only check if you have a line of sight to an enemy to how much exposed the enemy is. The less exposed the enemy is the less damage he receives. This also works the other way around. When you hide behind some sandbags the enemy will deal less damage. Sadly the AI doesn't seem to be able to utilize this concept and it is also never really clear how much cover you or the enemy has. A symbol showing the cover status of you and your target would be a great addition.
Precision determines how good you aim at an enemy. As soon as you select an enemy you start to aim at him. When you fire before you aimed at the enemy completely you do less damage. You also can't get a perfect aim unless you crouch which also makes aiming faster. But when you move you loose aiming.
Lastly, some enemies are very vulnerable when attacked from certain directions. More than in any other MMO I have seen Tabula Rasa checks from which direction you are approaching an enemy. When you approach the enemy from behind you can get a lot closer before they aggro you, sometimes even within melee range. And some enemies receive double or more damage when attacked from behind or can't shoot in certain directions and have to turn around first (which can take a bit when you deal with bigger war machines).
Instead of weapons you can also use abilities to attack enemies. The abilities range from direct damage to area attacks and use power which, like health, regenerates fast and sometimes adrenalin which is build up by dealing damage.
As you can see combat in TR is a lot more interactive than in other MMOs where you simply auto attack and press a button now and then.
What you do
Here is one of the problems of TR. The game is very repetitive. You go into an area, activate all teleporter waypoints and collect the quests, grind them, then you do the 3 instances in the area and move on to the next area to repeat all this stuff.
Strangely this repetitive grind was more enjoyable than in most other MMOs, maybe because of the fighting system but maybe because of the quests. Many quests involve the usual Kill X, Collect Y and go to Z stuff, sometimes with a timer, but some quests also include a moral decision which leads to different quest lines. DO you interrogate a prisoner Guantanamo style or try to be nice to him? Especially later when you meet Penumbra, the secret ops which uses rather questionable methods for great effects.
The instances are closed complexes which can be done solo or in groups where enemies don't respawn and you have to follow a series of quests.
The other big thing to do are base defences/attacks. Most areas have two captureable bases where the enemy periodically launches massive attacks on and without player support they will likely succeed. Those battles can feature 30 or more enemies trying to bring down the force field of the entrance and capture the point. Defending the base is important because doing so gives prestige which can be used as currency for special items and there are quest givers in those bases which disappear when the enemy captures it. If the enemy succeeds you have to recapture the base. This can almost be done solo or with 1-2 other players, especially when you time the moment of attack right so that NPC support appears.
How Tabula Rasa feels
I don't want to talk about graphic as I am more a substance over style guy who isn't proficient what is considered good graphics and what is just average. Lets only say that I can watch this game without getting the urge to puke.
What's more important is how the game feels. The backdrop is a interstellar war in a futuristic scenario, With that in mind I was quite surprised when entering the first area as it didn't look like a futuristic war zone but a lush garden coming straight from an elven realm of some fantasy game. It makes sense that the planet looks like this, considering its inhabitants destroyed their old home planet with industry and mining and now turned eco friendly to preserve their new planet, but still it is not what I expected. But there are some areas which are really well done, for example there is a huge tree which the the inhabitant venerate which stands alone in the middle of a bombed wasteland surrounded by bunkers and trenches.
Later on the second world the atmosphere gets much better. Its a inhospitable world and just past the main gate to the base a big battle is going on. Artillery shells regularly strike the area, troops land with drop ships and huge stalkers battle with mechs. This is war!
The bad things
So far Tabula Rasa sounds like a very good game. Sadly it has some rather big problems.
- Bugs
TR is sadly full of bugs. Most of them are not even real engine bugs but rather script bugs. Still they can be really unnerving. The real bugs I have have observed is the locker bug, where your items don't show up when you open your storage. If that happens you simply have to relog. The worse bug is the zombie bug which happens only in instances. The game fails to recognize that you or a monster is dead. Monsters still drop but continue to follow you and enemies attack them and when you die you can't respawn and have to relog which is very bad as this will reset all mission in the instance you haven't solved. This is the worst bug in TR.
The other bugs are scripting bugs. it can happen quite often that you break a quest by doing something you are not supposed to do. This can be solved by restarting the quest and doesn't happen often if you are careful but it is still a bug.
- Balance
The balance of TR is not perfect especially concerning weapons. The weapon you will hate most (when you are at the receiving end) are injectors as they can bypass armour and kill you very fast when attacked by 3-4 injector wielding enemies. The other weapon you will hate are sonic weapons as they have a big chance of knock-down and you will likely be thrown around constantly in the battle.
The difficulty of boss enemies is also very inconsistent. Sometimes the bosses are very very hard. I had a 30 minutes fight with a mini boss because this guy has high HP and reflected damage. I only managed to win with NPC support and lots and lots of healing items. Other bosses are pitifully easy, for example technicians which attack with a EMP weapon which can't kill you as it only damages your armour
- Content
I am not sure if TR can hold players for long. Even in the 6 day trial I advanced quite far and hardcore gamers will reach the max level (50) within their free month. After that I have no idea what there is to do. Sadly I couldn't ask other players as trial accounts were locked out of the normal chat (fear of spammers). But as this game is extremely solo friendly (everything can be done solo. You might die more often but there isn't really a penalty for that) I can't imagine that there are many raids in the game.
Cloning
Cloning is a very interesting feature of Tabula Rasa. At any time you can create a exact copy of your character. This character retains all class choices, xp and quests of your main character but gets a free respect in everything. That way you can choose a new race after you unlocked it and don't have to start from the beginning. The usual technique is to make a clone just before you reach one of the branch levels where you have to select a new class. This way you can skip all the previous grinding and simply play your clone if you want to try out the other class. Imo this is a very nice feature as it reduces senseless grinding.
Crafting
There is a crafting system in TR, but it is not very complex. You buy or find schematics, then buy or find the components for this schematic, put them into a crafting station and you get a new weapon or item. You can also modify existing items, but the more you modify them the higher is the chance that the item breaks.
The downside is that you need to have to invest points into crafting abilities, the same points you can also invest in combat related abilities. That means all crafting will likely be done on a crafting alt which gets cloned at level 31 as you can max all the crafting abilities at that point.
Conclusion
Tabula Rasa is by no means bad. I would even say it is rather good, simply because it is different from most other MMOs. Sadly it doesn't offer enough to be a full fledged MMO, rather it is a 3D Diablo in a Sci-Fi scenario. If it would use the Guild Wars billing system, meaning financing itself through add-ons I would recommend this game to anyone who likes Hellgate London or was disappointed by the amount of bugs in it. But with a monthly subscription its more of a "maybe" game for people who like the concept.
You should defiantly try out the trial (keys are still available at certain sites, just google them) and keep an eye on this game. Many of its issues can be resolved by an expansion so maybe Tabula Rasa will become a really good game in the future.
What is Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa is one of the few Sci-Fi MMOs out there which means that instead killing orcs with swords or spells you kill Thrax with machine guns or spells. It takes place on two alien worlds. One is a lush forest world the other one a inhospitable prison planet. Earth itself has already been overrun by the enemy and does not appear in the game.
The gameplay is very similar to Hellgate London, especially when playing a evoker class. You control your character from 3rd person view and you have auto aiming. Point at something you want dead and hold the mouse button till it is, OK, its a bit more complicated than that but lets start at the beginning.
Character Generation
The Character Generation is pretty short. You can select gender, race (although at the beginning only pure humans are selectable), name and appearance.
There are four different races in the game. Pure Humans and Human-Alien hybrids which first have to be unlocked with a quest in the game. Each hybrid race has a slightly different stat progression and resistances.
The name has to consist of a fore- and surname. Only the latter has to be unique in the game and the surname is also the same for every character you can make on the server, so choose wisely.
The appearance can be modelled fairly extensive, although at the later stages of the game you will be encased in full body power armour and nothing of your appearance will be visible.
Character Progression
You might have noticed that you don't choose a class at character creation. That's because everyone starts as recruit and selects one of two different classes at certain key levels (5, 15 and 30) which decides in which direction of the class tree you go. You first choice at level 5 will be between soldier and support classes and the level 15 and 30 choices further specialize your character. Technically there are 15 different classes, but in the end there are really only 8 classes at level 30 as you retain all the abilities of previews classes and the path you take to a certain level 30 class is always the same.
At each level up you automatically get a few points in the three different stats, Body, Spirit and Mind and a few points you can invest into these stats yourself. The stats mainly influence your maximum health, maximum power and regeneration rate. Each stats affects two of those attributes in a different proportion. In addition Spirit affects you chance for a critical hit and Mind the damage you do with abilities.
Which abilities you can use depends on your class choice. There are two different kinds of abilities. Passive, like weapon and armour abilities or active abilities like a lightning bolt or teleporting bombs onto the battlefield. Each ability can be upgraded 5 times, either becoming stronger or unlocking a new effect.
As soon as you enter a new class you can start to spend points to get or improve this classes abilities, so you don't have to wait till a certain level to use a ability from your class as long as you found all the necessary logos for this ability in shrines on the battlefield which most of the time is fairly easy.
How to fight
Most of the time you will fight with ranged weapons. Every character has access to the basic guns. Pistols, rifles and shotguns. Advanced weapons like machine guns or injectors are only available to certain classes. In addition there are 8 different damage types in the game ranging from normal physical damage over lasers to EMP damage which only harms robots and the armour of biological enemies. Some enemies are resistant or even immune against certain kinds of damage. So besides a damage type each weapon also has a effective range. When the target is further away than the effective range you do less damage and some guns can't fire further than their effective range at all.
The damage you do depends on the gun, your passive ability with this gun, cover and precision.
Cover is a pretty neat concept and so far unseen in MMOs to my knowledge. TR doesn't only check if you have a line of sight to an enemy to how much exposed the enemy is. The less exposed the enemy is the less damage he receives. This also works the other way around. When you hide behind some sandbags the enemy will deal less damage. Sadly the AI doesn't seem to be able to utilize this concept and it is also never really clear how much cover you or the enemy has. A symbol showing the cover status of you and your target would be a great addition.
Precision determines how good you aim at an enemy. As soon as you select an enemy you start to aim at him. When you fire before you aimed at the enemy completely you do less damage. You also can't get a perfect aim unless you crouch which also makes aiming faster. But when you move you loose aiming.
Lastly, some enemies are very vulnerable when attacked from certain directions. More than in any other MMO I have seen Tabula Rasa checks from which direction you are approaching an enemy. When you approach the enemy from behind you can get a lot closer before they aggro you, sometimes even within melee range. And some enemies receive double or more damage when attacked from behind or can't shoot in certain directions and have to turn around first (which can take a bit when you deal with bigger war machines).
Instead of weapons you can also use abilities to attack enemies. The abilities range from direct damage to area attacks and use power which, like health, regenerates fast and sometimes adrenalin which is build up by dealing damage.
As you can see combat in TR is a lot more interactive than in other MMOs where you simply auto attack and press a button now and then.
What you do
Here is one of the problems of TR. The game is very repetitive. You go into an area, activate all teleporter waypoints and collect the quests, grind them, then you do the 3 instances in the area and move on to the next area to repeat all this stuff.
Strangely this repetitive grind was more enjoyable than in most other MMOs, maybe because of the fighting system but maybe because of the quests. Many quests involve the usual Kill X, Collect Y and go to Z stuff, sometimes with a timer, but some quests also include a moral decision which leads to different quest lines. DO you interrogate a prisoner Guantanamo style or try to be nice to him? Especially later when you meet Penumbra, the secret ops which uses rather questionable methods for great effects.
The instances are closed complexes which can be done solo or in groups where enemies don't respawn and you have to follow a series of quests.
The other big thing to do are base defences/attacks. Most areas have two captureable bases where the enemy periodically launches massive attacks on and without player support they will likely succeed. Those battles can feature 30 or more enemies trying to bring down the force field of the entrance and capture the point. Defending the base is important because doing so gives prestige which can be used as currency for special items and there are quest givers in those bases which disappear when the enemy captures it. If the enemy succeeds you have to recapture the base. This can almost be done solo or with 1-2 other players, especially when you time the moment of attack right so that NPC support appears.
How Tabula Rasa feels
I don't want to talk about graphic as I am more a substance over style guy who isn't proficient what is considered good graphics and what is just average. Lets only say that I can watch this game without getting the urge to puke.
What's more important is how the game feels. The backdrop is a interstellar war in a futuristic scenario, With that in mind I was quite surprised when entering the first area as it didn't look like a futuristic war zone but a lush garden coming straight from an elven realm of some fantasy game. It makes sense that the planet looks like this, considering its inhabitants destroyed their old home planet with industry and mining and now turned eco friendly to preserve their new planet, but still it is not what I expected. But there are some areas which are really well done, for example there is a huge tree which the the inhabitant venerate which stands alone in the middle of a bombed wasteland surrounded by bunkers and trenches.
Later on the second world the atmosphere gets much better. Its a inhospitable world and just past the main gate to the base a big battle is going on. Artillery shells regularly strike the area, troops land with drop ships and huge stalkers battle with mechs. This is war!
The bad things
So far Tabula Rasa sounds like a very good game. Sadly it has some rather big problems.
- Bugs
TR is sadly full of bugs. Most of them are not even real engine bugs but rather script bugs. Still they can be really unnerving. The real bugs I have have observed is the locker bug, where your items don't show up when you open your storage. If that happens you simply have to relog. The worse bug is the zombie bug which happens only in instances. The game fails to recognize that you or a monster is dead. Monsters still drop but continue to follow you and enemies attack them and when you die you can't respawn and have to relog which is very bad as this will reset all mission in the instance you haven't solved. This is the worst bug in TR.
The other bugs are scripting bugs. it can happen quite often that you break a quest by doing something you are not supposed to do. This can be solved by restarting the quest and doesn't happen often if you are careful but it is still a bug.
- Balance
The balance of TR is not perfect especially concerning weapons. The weapon you will hate most (when you are at the receiving end) are injectors as they can bypass armour and kill you very fast when attacked by 3-4 injector wielding enemies. The other weapon you will hate are sonic weapons as they have a big chance of knock-down and you will likely be thrown around constantly in the battle.
The difficulty of boss enemies is also very inconsistent. Sometimes the bosses are very very hard. I had a 30 minutes fight with a mini boss because this guy has high HP and reflected damage. I only managed to win with NPC support and lots and lots of healing items. Other bosses are pitifully easy, for example technicians which attack with a EMP weapon which can't kill you as it only damages your armour
- Content
I am not sure if TR can hold players for long. Even in the 6 day trial I advanced quite far and hardcore gamers will reach the max level (50) within their free month. After that I have no idea what there is to do. Sadly I couldn't ask other players as trial accounts were locked out of the normal chat (fear of spammers). But as this game is extremely solo friendly (everything can be done solo. You might die more often but there isn't really a penalty for that) I can't imagine that there are many raids in the game.
Cloning
Cloning is a very interesting feature of Tabula Rasa. At any time you can create a exact copy of your character. This character retains all class choices, xp and quests of your main character but gets a free respect in everything. That way you can choose a new race after you unlocked it and don't have to start from the beginning. The usual technique is to make a clone just before you reach one of the branch levels where you have to select a new class. This way you can skip all the previous grinding and simply play your clone if you want to try out the other class. Imo this is a very nice feature as it reduces senseless grinding.
Crafting
There is a crafting system in TR, but it is not very complex. You buy or find schematics, then buy or find the components for this schematic, put them into a crafting station and you get a new weapon or item. You can also modify existing items, but the more you modify them the higher is the chance that the item breaks.
The downside is that you need to have to invest points into crafting abilities, the same points you can also invest in combat related abilities. That means all crafting will likely be done on a crafting alt which gets cloned at level 31 as you can max all the crafting abilities at that point.
Conclusion
Tabula Rasa is by no means bad. I would even say it is rather good, simply because it is different from most other MMOs. Sadly it doesn't offer enough to be a full fledged MMO, rather it is a 3D Diablo in a Sci-Fi scenario. If it would use the Guild Wars billing system, meaning financing itself through add-ons I would recommend this game to anyone who likes Hellgate London or was disappointed by the amount of bugs in it. But with a monthly subscription its more of a "maybe" game for people who like the concept.
You should defiantly try out the trial (keys are still available at certain sites, just google them) and keep an eye on this game. Many of its issues can be resolved by an expansion so maybe Tabula Rasa will become a really good game in the future.
