First impression: Tarisland has some shaky bones but solid muscles
I admit it can be a little difficult to process Tarisland without immediately comparing it to a specific title. I haven’t had an emotional or mental connection to anything that’s come out of Blizzard for a very, very long time, so when I came into it TarislandI did this as a generally blank slate, freed from any bias that I felt would influence my guesses about the game in one way or another.
That’s not to say that I am entirely ignorant of what this MMORPG is trying to achieve – I’ve spent my time in these salt mines, like most genre fans – and I don’t claim that my impressions are somehow purer than others. My main point is that I’m not really the one who can answer the question of whether Tencent is trying to steal lunch money from the big boy, although I suspect you can guess my answer.
No, I’ll focus on that instead Tarisland from the perspective of someone as far away from these links as possible. And despite that big, long caveat, I can safely say that this game has some strong ideas for building its house, but needs a sturdier foundation.
I want to get the inconspicuous things out of the way first: the game’s story is bad at best. I still remember the characters of the NPCs somewhat, which is a plus point in my opinion, but the story that I’ve experienced over several hours and about 23 levels so far hasn’t impressed me. This is mainly due to a pacing issue Tarisland somehow rips through some loosely connected disasters that don’t really seem to fit together at the moment. Unless there is a greater evil that will reveal itself later.
Another point that definitely puts things off is the localization of the game. This feels about as rushed and machine-translated as most of the dialogue Black desertalthough it’s only slightly better than what I experienced in Perfect new world. Neither is a reason Tarislands The upside is, by the way, and honestly this extremely sloppy attempt at presenting this game in English is probably one of the biggest hits in terms of story issues I have overall; I wouldn’t necessarily think that this game’s main story would suddenly be great with a real localization team taking care of things, but it would at least be a little more palatable.
As big as these two problems are, they ultimately weren’t the biggest deterrent to my enjoyment that I had feared. That’s because despite the rush that this game exudes, the actual gameplay feels – dare I say it – extremely solid Fun.
Of course, when I talk about gameplay, I don’t necessarily mean the content of the story quests, but rather the combat itself. I rolled a Phantom Necro class and overall found it to be a solid and surprisingly mobile wizard class that can dish out some pretty tasty damage. Everything was done with a strong sense of style that, for once, didn’t look like something out of the Blizzard playbook. It’s a testament to the possible originality that exists Tarisland is capable of.
This originality is also generally felt in some of the places I visited throughout my leveling journey. Sure, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn in terms of some character and race designs, but on the whole things were true pretty and pleasant to look at. This extended to the few dungeons I also explored, particularly the library dungeon.
Speaking of dungeons: These are solid and fun too. In terms of their mechanical requirements, they’re hardly what you’d call overwhelming, but they were far more engaging and active than I would have expected from opening dungeons for an MMORPG. There are the usual dance moves out of the fire and targeted mob phases in certain boss fights, but then there were moments where, for example, we turned into sheep and hopped away from hungry wolves, or focused on breaking ammo boxes or distracting with bombs loaded minecarts from a railway line. Here too, hardly remarkable – but entertaining.
Progression also had enough hooks to keep me interested, with the twin specialization trees allowing for some fun interplay to immerse myself in when creating group content. Unlocking the healer specialization for my Phantom Necro meant that I had to spend points on both the healer tree and the DPS tree, but improving the skill levels for the class affected the abilities of both specializations and had the open flexibility to me Being able to slot in as a healer or as a DPS (or both!) at will was handy.
Finally, there are the other little things that can be done outside of the main quests and dungeon runs, such as the reputation events that you can click to switch to and the single boss challenge tower. Ultimately it feels like it’s all about fun. At least for the activities I enjoyed; I never touched a PvP instance and found the mere taste of crafting and gathering incredibly boring and forgettable.
Of course, there are still some potholes on the road Tarisland. My time in the library dungeon on the so-called “Elite” difficulty didn’t really increase the challenge, but rather caused the bosses’ HP pools to increase to absurd levels and forced my team to stop what we were doing to gain MP -Buy potions via a pop-up marketplace. On the one hand, the ability to do this with the base currency of silver meant we weren’t forced to open our wallets to win, but on the other hand, it’s also honestly challenging strange Place to put a currency tap. I would prefer these elite dungeons to be tuned for more interesting mechanical enhancements.
I also have to point out that I didn’t really get into it Tarislands Cash Shop in some way, so I can’t really say much about how its offerings affect player trust; The few times I’ve been steered in the direction have presented cosmetic items, and I’m not interested enough in crafting or collecting to be bothered by players’ apparent fuss over energy costs (although I do also appreciates people’s complaints). ). Honestly, I played the game more than worried about the cash shop, which kind of fits with the idea that that’s the case. Tarisland don’t look hungrily at my wallet.
As gushing as all of this may sound, I have to temper it a bit by saying that while I enjoyed this MMORPG, I’m also not really looking to get back into it. It doesn’t feel like a home game, and as I mentioned, I can’t really call this a welcome hug for a jaded Blizzard Salt because I don’t have to carry that burden; Others who are wiser and can explain this feeling better than I can contribute.
It won’t be mind-blowing or groundbreaking. Still, it does what it tries to do with a reasonable level of competence. It just needs to iron out a lot of these major wrinkles and improve PC performance: I kept getting a lot of serious errors, there is no vsync option on PC and honestly the graphical options on PC are all directly portable to mobile devices Functions and not those that use hardware.
I will generally call Tarisland Mediocre, but a solid and entertaining game regardless of the current beta status. It’s vanilla. French vanilla. But like a really nice vanilla flavor.
Advertising