We got the chance to meet up again with the folks over at En Masse Entertainment for an exclusive look at the up and coming Brawler class in fantasy MMORPG TERA, set to be released in December. Logging in through Skype to talk to the guys and gal we were greeted by Producer Patrick “Treeshark” Sun as our tank, TERA writer Scott James Magner joining us as a brawler, and Senior Producer Matt “Denommentor” Denomme who would be keeping us alive with his awesome priestly skills. In the channel we also met Donna Prior who is the newest edition to the En Masse crew being brought on as their new Community Manager handling the fans (a task we don’t envy!)
We’ve had a few chances to meet up with the En Masse guys for other updates over the years, TERA itself has been going since 2011 since its Korea launch and then hit western shores in 2012, however it wasn’t until 2013 that the game actually went free to play. It’s seen a lot of success over the years following, its arrival on the Steam platform saw the game finding itself as the number one played F2P MMORPG and has subsequently been on the top ten ever since. The games success owes a lot to its action combat system where players are denied a tab-targeting/auto attack combat and instead must time, aim and combine their attacks as well as dodging out of the way of any enemy attacks.
The Brawler is set to be coming in Decembers “Knockout” patch, which also introduces two new gear sets and two new dungeons, it’ll be the last big patch for 2015, though in all honesty TERA pushes out these big updates so often I’m sure they could squeeze on more in! Hot on the heels of the previous Gunner race earlier in the year and the Reaper a little before that, we see another female only class (locked to Castanics), which is sure to upset a few people. Asking the En Masse guys it quite simply comes down to developer resources, either they can be spent making the animations and graphics to make a class available for all races or genders, or they can focus on making more classes. For us we’d say they’re making the right choice, as for why it is female? Well simply speculating but the female playerbase in MMORPGs rarely want seem to want to play male characters, whereas male players will often happily choose a female character regardless of what is available.
This was our first look at the Brawler, but with the recent Extra Life gaming charity fundraiser any community members who donated or helper En Masse raise $50 or more to the cause got access to the test servers where they could play and even stream over Twitch the new class. At this point Donna mentioned her own new initiative where she will be streaming her own foray into The Exiled Realm of Arboria, as a novice to action MMORPGs and only recently joining the En Masse team, her self-deprecating stream will be called “Play With a Noob” featuring herself, so keep an eye out for it.
The class is a heavy hitting fighter meets tank equipped with two huge Power Fists, able to build up rage in a similar manner to the Gunners wisdom bar, attacks will build up the gauge and allow the player to unleash their more powerful attacks. Our go to was the Bulldozer which set us on fire as we ran around the screen at speed, anything we charged into was swept away with us giving us a great utility to rescue team mates, use it to get ourselves out of trouble. However, primarily we used it to YOLO into the middle of mobs without a care, get ourselves into too much trouble, and force Matt to work overtime on his healing.
As well as the rage bar Brawlers also have a unique Hit Counter mechanic, each strike that lands on any enemy increases the number of hits that are tracked next to the player in a similar fashion to a Beat ‘em Up, the higher the count the more powerful the “Counter” move that can be performed. Combined with a variety of skills that can be chained to make powerful combos, the Brawler excels at keeping enemies thrown up in the air and juggling them with uppercuts and kicks to keep them disabled.
We got to do a few test fights on some mobs before being transported to Kalivan’s Dreadnought, one of the new dungeons being added in the patch where players must stop the Giant Naga Pirate Kalivan from taking over the ship and repelling the boarders. A new resurrection feature has been added where players get the option to spend 50 gold to instantly resurrect instead of requiring a priest, though each player is limited to ten uses of the feature. It didn’t take long for us to spend our 500 gold as some of these bosses hurt, we were informed that the enemies in this dungeon were some of the heaviest hitters in the game and it definitely showed.
Aside from the general big battles we had to contend with huge barrel headed creatures that would explode, corridors and decks lined with proximity mines that could wreck us pretty quickly or be used to our advantage to kill enemies. The battles weren’t too difficult, the odd death here and there to the big guys or to us YOLOing into a crew of minions, though we did have max level, the best gear in the game, and three seasoned players on our side; we just needed to go over and punch stuff. Kalivan was a different story.
Turning up onto the Naga Pirate’s deck in the middle of a rainy lightning storm was pretty atmospheric, as he sauntered in the distance we were told what we could expect and his various attacks and abilities were rattled off, and the list went on and on and on. Ranging from huge ground smashes, summoning lightning or even flooding half the deck that suddenly became electrified due to the lightning storm gave this guy some incredibly deadly and tactical methods of controlling the battlefield. His range of attacks get the better of us more than once, a lot more, and the group nearly team wiped a few times (though we’re not sure whether Matt was in god mode as his health always seemed to be incredibly low). More than once we were resurrected only to be smashed back into the ground again; as a single boss mob with no additional minion spawns he was a pretty tough customer and took us 10 minutes to finally take down. Trinkets galore and parts of the Dreadnought set were up for grabs, which is the second best set now available in the game and apparently a must for anyone thinking of tackling the next Forsaken Island dungeon.
TERA is available to play for free and if you’ve not already checked it out then we definitely recommend it, if the Brawler sounds interesting to you then give it a look in December to see what the fuss is all about!
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