NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.

"When Netflix let us know they were toying with the idea of releasing a companion game to their yet unreleased, super-secret Dark Crystal project, we jumped straight into it."

How did the idea to develop a tactical RPG based on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance first come up?

Andy Cotnam (Senior Concept Artist): There were a number of people at the studio who loved the tactical RPG genre, myself included, and were dying for an opportunity to make that type of game. When Netflix let us know they were toying with the idea of releasing a companion game to their yet unreleased, super-secret Dark Crystal project, we jumped straight into it. Once we learned ‘Age of Resistance’ would be more of a group journey, with multiple main characters and storylines, a team-based tactics game seemed like a perfect fit.

For those who have watched the Netflix series, how much can we expect the game to tie into that?

Thonny Namuonglo (Art Lead): We definitely represent the show in the game by following the characters and events. Also, because part of the game is gathering a party of allies, we allow you to bring characters that weren’t there for certain events in the show to fight with you during those events in the game. During the game we visit areas that weren’t shown on the show such as the Drenchen, Spriton, or Sifa clan areas. Along with characters from the show we’ve added a few new ones just for the game to join your party too.

What sort of a balance are you looking to strike between adapting material and creating new and original stories?

William Lemons (Designer): We wanted a fairly even balance of adapted and original content. There were some great moments in the series we wanted to capture in the game, like when the Arathim attacked Domrak, and when the Hunter ambushed Rian. But, there were also several new stories and parts of Thra we wanted to explore; What do the Drenchen swamps look like? What were Naia, Kylen, and Gurjin doing while the others went to the Circle of the Suns? Thra is a big world and we wanted to show players places they’ve never seen before.

"We think the average player will take 20 to 25 hours to play through the main story levels the first time through."

How long will an average playthrough of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics be?

Dave Pottinger (Game Director): That’s a great question. The answer depends on how much you dig into as you play through the game. We think the average player will take 20 to 25 hours to play through the main story levels the first time through. Savvy tactics veterans may finish faster. Folks playing on the harder difficulties will probably take longer. If you do every last optional mission and collect all the gear, it could take a LOT longer to finish. And then there’s the New Game+ mode that unlocks once you finish the story the first time… that’s a whole other experience. Our goal is always to put a lot of content and depth into our games. In that sense, strategy games like DCAORT are fantastic for appealing to lots of different players. Everyone can find a fun game to play inside of all the options, characters, and different party build-outs.

Are you looking into next-gen versions of the game as well, especially as get closer to next-gen console releases?

Pottinger: Immediately, no, we’re focused on releasing the game on all the consoles (Xbox One, PS4, and Switch) alongside the PC and Mac releases. Releasing five versions on one day is the first task! We’re already working on updates and improvements, though. Players should start seeing those updates roll out quickly after launch. Beyond that, we will evaluate future development once we see how fans are playing through the game. If everything is great and they just want more content, we’ll focus on that. If the best thing is to be reactive to requests for interface changes or more features, then we’ll try to get those knocked out. We are supposed to get some dev kits for the new consoles soon, though. It would be fun to see what we can do with the FX and look of the game on those devices!

Age of Resistance Tactics’ combat shares a lot of similarities with Final Fantasy Tactics– to what extent has that game served as an inspiration?

Jacob Naasz (Designer): As a game lots of people in our studio love, FFT served as a big inspiration for us when we were designing Age of Resistance Tactics. One example is our job system which takes cues from FFT’s jobs that allow a player’s ability to mix and match different sets of skills on units to create a party that’s uniquely your own. We worked hard to get that same feeling with our jobs by giving you the ability to mix in a second set of skills with your primary one. We really liked where this ended up because there are several obvious combinations that work really well together, but there are also some pretty powerful combos if you start getting creative with your choices. When you combine that with your unit’s job, equipment, and even the unit’s clan these all come together to make for some great depth that allow you to approach combat and take on different challenges in many different ways.

"Players can combine two jobs to create their own custom selection of abilities. There are some insanely powerful combinations out there."

How do dynamic events work during combat, and what sort of impact do they have on battles?

Joe Gillum (Designer): We have two different dynamic events in the game, sandstorms and flooding waters. We also have some other battlefield altering mechanics like tall grass, poison water, and Gobbles. The goal of all of these systems is to add more tactical complexity making the battles more interesting and fun.

Sandstorms arrive and push units across the map. You can see them on the timeline, giving you time to prepare. Arrange your units against obstructions so they are protected, or push enemies into the path of the storm to manipulate them into advantageous positions.

Flooding waters reveal and hide parts of the map as you progress, opening up new areas to traverse or hidden objectives. Timing is key here, because units caught in the waters when they rise can drown and be lost.

Tall grass, poisoned water, and Gobbles act more like areas to avoid or use in the battle. Push enemies into poisoned water or the Gobbles to damage them. Tall grass makes a unit only targetable by melee attacks, this is a great way to sneak up on ranged casters.

Can you talk about the Jobs system and how that functions within combat?

TJ Huckabee (Designer): Jobs grant Gelfling, Podlings, and Fizzgig strengths and skills. Choosing a character’s job is more than just choosing their role, as each job has a selection of abilities that further define how you’ll use them in a fight. I might want to take a Fizzgig Herder that’s great at weakening and slowing down enemies, while you could bring one that’s better at shrugging off hits and dealing damage.

There’s even more customization for Gelflings and Podlings, who have access to secondary jobs. That means that players can combine two jobs to create their own custom selection of abilities. There are some insanely powerful combinations out there. One of my favorite character builds is a Gelfling Strategist primary and Paladin secondary stacked with as many passive abilities as possible.

Looking at the game’s progression mechanics, it seems like there’s a lot of emphasis on build variety and player choice- how much of a focus was that during development?

Alex Swaim (Design Lead): It was a huge focus! One of the best parts of tactical RPGs is that relationship between getting to make clever decisions with how you build your characters between battles and watching those decisions pay off (or sometimes backfire on you) during the next battle. That feeling – where it’s not just Deet, Brea, Rian, and company saving the Gelflings but your Deet, Brea, Rian, and company saving the Gelflings – was a major reason why we loved the fit of a tactical RPG with the Dark Crystal world. In order to make that work you have to be able to make meaningful decisions with how you build out your heroes. It helps that different players like playing differently, and having a variety in builds lets players choose the style they feel most comfortable with and then get to work out how to adapt to the challenges the game throws at them.

"You have the freedom to choose and level up dozens of different job combinations in Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics. Even if you start a whole new game, you can develop your party in different ways and end up with a totally different feeling team by the time you reach the end."

Can you talk about what Age of Resistance Tactics does to encourage replayability?

Clare Valesh (Lead Producer): You have the freedom to choose and level up dozens of different job combinations in Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics. Even if you start a whole new game, you can develop your party in different ways and end up with a totally different feeling team by the time you reach the end. There are literally hundreds of possible team and job combinations. We also have New Game+, which allows you to take your high-level characters through the game again using their existing jobs and abilities, while learning more along the way. You’re also able to access more powerful gear in New Game+, which, combined with the higher-level characters, allows a different experience the next time around. Having the campaign replayable in New Game+ mode gives you more time with the characters you’ve spent time with, and allows you to spend more time with the advanced classes, combining abilities in new and interesting ways.

As far as delivering a solid experience in that vein is concerned, Age of Resistance Tactics is quite a successful game. It won’t blow anyone away – this is a small-scale production that captures the fundamental strengths of the genre pretty well, but often doesn’t go all-in on them – while issues such as a disjointed storytelling style and the lack of some basic quality of life features put a dent in the overall experience. But if you go in expecting a solid, if ordinary, tactical RPG – and nothing more – you’ll be getting your money’s worth.

Age of Resistance Tactics covers the events shown in the recent Netflix series, while also taking the opportunity to expand upon it by delving deeper into things that weren’t shown on-screen. For fans of the universe and the Netflix show, it’s an intriguing prospect, and there will surely be those who will enjoy the greater context the game provides to the events of the show. For the most part, however, what should have been one of the game’s biggest strengths only ever remains a strength on paper, owing to how poorly it’s executed.

"If you go in expecting a solid, if ordinary, tactical RPG – and nothing more – you’ll be getting your money’s worth."

Storytelling is very disjointed and consistently rushed. Players are dropped right into this dense, rich fantasy universe and provided little context for anything, while most pivotal story moments feel like they’re being glossed over. The writing is constantly clunky, as if the game is in a hurry to move on from the storytelling bits and take players straight to the action.

On one hand, I appreciated how nothing felt like it was dragging on too long, and how it never felt like too much time was passing between battles. On the other hand, I was thoroughly uninterested in the story as a result, which is a shame, because this is a setting that is ripe for some truly fantastic storytelling. While fans of the show and the movie will find the narrative easier to invest in for obvious reasons, for those who have never had much experience with the property, the story will feel like little more than noise.

It’s good, then, that the bulk of the game focuses on battles- because those are actually fun. It’s clear that BonusXP have a good understand of the ins and outs of the genre, and Age of Resistance Tactics constantly displays that understanding. It nails most of the fundamentals, and though some facets don’t escalate as much as I had hoped, it does at least execute most of the aforementioned fundamentals quite well on a consistent basis.

"While fans of the show and the movie will find the narrative easier to invest in for obvious reasons, for those who have never had much experience with the property, the story will feel like little more than noise."

Take the characters for example- there’s over a dozen playable characters in the game that gradually join your party, and examining their strengths and weaknesses, purchasing and equipping them with better gear, and then constructing your party to suit the needs of each battle adds an interesting layer of strategy. Things are made even more interesting by an engaging jobs system. You can assign two jobs to a character at a time, and as they level up, they unlock new jobs, which get progressively more specialized. There’s plenty of room for experimentation here, and the number of the possible permutations means there’s a decent amount of build variety. And with a total of a dozen jobs that you can unlock (for most characters), there’s more complexity here than you’d expect.

Each job brings its own unique attributes, of course, providing different buffs and debuffs to stats, but they also give characters access to special abilities – both passive and otherwise – that can be used in combat, such as being able to heal allies, or a ranged attack that lowers the enemy’s movement, or a special attack that can only be used after a unit has moved three turns, but deals significantly more damage. Some of these abilities can also be used in combination- for example, after using the Mark ability on an enemy with a Scout, you can use a Paladin’s Double Strike on a Marked enemy to attack them twice in a single turn. You can pull off that combination either with two characters, or with a single character who’s both, a Scout and a Paladin, and has those two abilities equipped.

Add to that the restrictions on how many abilities a character can equip at a time – three from their primary job, and two from their secondary one – and their movesets are something else that you have to mull over and decide on, and something else that allows you to personalize them as you see fit. In isolation, these are all simplistic systems, but Age of Resistance Tactics uses them in combination to create a surprising amount of depth, giving you quite a lot of control over the progression of multiple characters on a micro scale, and the composition of your party on a macro scale. It starts off quite shallow and simplistic, but progressively keeps adding more layers.

"In isolation, these are all simplistic systems, but Age of Resistance Tactics uses them in combination to create a surprising amount of depth, giving you quite a lot of control over the progression of multiple characters on a micro scale, and the composition of your party on a macro scale."

None of that would make any difference if the game didn’t put up some sort of a challenge. Thankfully, Age of Resistance Tactics keeps throwing some decent challenges your way, incentivizing you to make use of its progression mechanics and to think more tactically about how you approach battles and how you upgrade every character. Not every battle is a tough one, but there are quite a few skirmishes in here that will test you, where you will have to keep an eye on things such as party composition, character builds, and unit placement.

Similar to the progression mechanics, map design in Age of Resistance Tactics also starts off very simple- however, this is one area where the game doesn’t show too much growth. It does throw some interesting elements into the mix, such as hazards, or chokepoints, or elements in the battlefield that you can interact with to use to your advantage- but it’s all pretty basic stuff. Even when the game is well into its runtime, the maps will mostly only throw the kind of hurdles at you that something like, say, Final Fantasy Tactics would have moved on from within its first few hours. Of course, this is a much more small-scale production than Final Fantasy Tactics, and so the two aren’t really comparable in that sense. It’s just disappointing that that the game isn’t more ambitious with its map design.

Age of Resistance Tactics suffers from a few other issues as well, some of which do have a noticeably detrimental effect on the experience. For instance, there’s the camera, which can zoom in or out or rotate left or right, but doesn’t allow you to adjust the angle of its tilt, which means your visibility of important things in the battlefield all too often gets obstructed, forcing you to constantly keep fiddling with the camera.

"It’s disappointing that that the game isn’t more ambitious with its map design."

Then there’s the fact that you can’t use the d-pad to move your characters or select commands, which seems like a glaring omission in a grid-based game, especially since the analog stick can often feel quite inaccurate. Some basic quality of life features that you’d expect to see in any tactics game are also missing- for example, to attack an enemy, you cannot select your character and then simply select the enemy you want to attack. Instead, you have to select your character, move them to a tile adjacent to an enemy unit, and then manually select the attack option as a separate action. These issues all come together to make the game feel like it’s lacking in polish, and in a game that otherwise seems to understand its genre so well, it’s weird to see such baffling oversights.

Taking the good and the bad together, there’s still plenty to like here, even though some of it is let down by issues that are often hard to ignore. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics doesn’t re-invent the wheel, and its storytelling is clunky as hell, but the core of the game – the part that matters the most – is largely well-executed, in spite of missteps or missed opportunities here and there. It doesn’t do justice to its source material, nor does it come close to matching the excellence of the games it draws inspiration from- but it’s solid enough. And sometimes, “solid enough” is good enough.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Some things really just come out of nowhere. Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance was a prequel series to the infamous Jim Henson film from all the way back in 1982. Considered an interesting experiment, and much darker than the usual Henson fare, the film itself always garnered mixed feelings. The show, though, has been a big hit for Netlfix. And it seems there’s hopes to implement that same surprise success to games with The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics, and now we got a trailer that highlights some familiar faces.

The trailer is titled, “Allies and Adversaries,” with a lot of highlights on characters from the TV show. The game is a tactics based strategy that allows you to control the Gelfling clan in their resistance with promises of dynamic battles.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics will release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch and PC later in the year.

Closers is a mutliplayer online action RPG from En Masse Entertainment that first released back in 2014, for which a new update has been released. The update introduces a new character, called Wolfgang, who is a dark wizard. Furthermore, the German localized test pilot for the game has just been launched as well, which translates “the most core aspects” of the game to German.

For those of you who don’t know, Closers sports an anime style, and is about a group of teenagers with special abilities  known as the titular “Closers” and are fighting against a global alien invasion. The game features a beat em’ up style of gameplay and a diverse roster of characters. Wolfgang, the latest character to be added as part of this new update, the first character from the Wildhüter team. Wolfgang uses a grimoire known as the Black Book to summon powerful monsters to do his bidding in combat. You can view him in action in his introductory trailer below.

Closers is currently available for the PC via Steam.

To find out more about the game’s current status and plans for the future, Gamingbolt reached out to En Masse Entertainment and the company’s Senior Product Manager Matthew Denomme provided the following answers.

"Since Open Beta we’ve launched the game fully and, with more players, we’ve identified a number of other issues that we are working with the game’s developers to sort out as soon as possible."

TERA has gone through numerous changes since its launch. What are your thoughts on the current status of the game and player satisfaction?

The TERA development team continues to support the game and is constantly adding new content for players to engage with, including new dungeons, classes, events, social features, and other quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes. TERA’s longevity and players’ continued engagement with the game I think speaks to the quality of Bluehole’s ongoing development support and En Masse’s live service support for the game, though there is always room for improvement. Non-gender-locked classes and overall support for PvP content I think are two areas where players would like to see us improve, and we’ve made some strides recently in those areas with the addition of battleground leaderboards and the male brawler in March 2018’s Counterpunch update.

We recently got some insight into what Bluehole has in store for TERA for the remainder of 2018 and beyond, and we are really thrilled with what they’re planning…and we think players will be too!

What kind of feedback did you received from the Open Beta of the console versions and what kind of fixes players can expect in the future?

The Open Beta revealed some bottlenecks: areas where players cluster during leveling or shared social spaces that contributed to poor performance, and in some cases crashing and client freezes. We remedied this during our second Open Beta a week later by adding more channels (think separate instances of the same area) and that seemed to help a lot. While these areas still suffer some performance issues, they are no longer a roadblock to players.

Since Open Beta we’ve launched the game fully and, with more players, we’ve identified a number of other issues that we are working with the game’s developers to sort out as soon as possible.

What can you tell us about the rebalanced dungeons? How do the changes keep the difficulty fair while still rewarding players?

Every dungeon in TERA has a purpose, whether it’s introducing new players to group dynamics at level 20, or speeding you along to better gear at level 65. With the introduction of last year’s progressive enchanting system, we were able to provide players with that gear as soon as they reach level 65, which also allowed us to retune dungeon content that players were skipping into challenging and relevant end-game experiences.

As you mentioned, challenge versus reward is something our developers take very seriously, and when we take a dungeon out of the mix, it’s always with an eye to bringing it back with new and improved mechanics, and more rewarding gameplay.

When is the next major content expansion for TERA? When will we see new stories, quests and continents?

Every content release moves the needle a little bit farther, but to your larger question all I’ll say for now is: Keep Looking Up.

What are your thoughts about bringing TERA to consoles especially with how successful games like Neverwinter have been?

We’ve had our sights set on a console release for a while now, but our priority has always been making TERA the best game it can be. Moving to Steam was an important first step, as it helped us gauge the impact a wider player base would have on not only our servers, but the TERA play environment. With the lessons we learned there, consoles were the next logical step, but we didn’t want to rush in half-cocked. So we took a couple years to get our business plan aligned with the needs of the players, while at the same time rebuilding TERA from the ground up with consoles in mind. We like the result, and we know that players will too.

"Like all free-to-play games, we have cosmetic items available in our store for players who want to customize their look, or are looking for a snazzy mount to fly around TERA’s friendly skies."

In this age of newer competitors and the like, where can TERA go from here? Could a sequel possibly happen at some point?

Anything’s possible, but right now we’re still focused on making TERA the best game it can be. And really, after over six years of live service, TERA is kind of its own sequel!

Does the game have any sort of microtransactions or loot boxes?

Like all free-to-play games, we have cosmetic items available in our store for players who want to customize their look, or are looking for a snazzy mount to fly around TERA’s friendly skies. Our loot boxes have been carefully designed to provide value without disrupting either game play or the in-game economy and often include items with unique properties like the ability to be dyed different colors.

The game is now confirmed for the PS4 and Xbox One, which also means it will support the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Can you please let us know the resolution and frame rate it will run at on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. And the resolution and frame rate on the base PS4 and Xbox One versions?

TERA does not have any specific support for Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, though it does gain some passive performance benefits when running on both resulting in higher framerates and an overall smoother experience.

On the base models as well as the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, the game runs at 1080p and targets 30fps, though the framerate is variable and can go up or down depending on what’s onscreen at any given time.

What is your take on the recent trend of games as a service model and the possible controversial monetization practices arising from it?

Games as a service don’t need to rely on controversial monetization practices necessarily. At the core of a service model is a dedication to the long-term commitment to a product both for developers/publishers and players. It’s about finding products that appeal to your audience and also fit your game design.

Is there anything more you’d like to tell our readers?

TERA’s got plenty to offer any gamer. The combat of a character-action game, the deep gameplay and customization of an MMO, stunning graphics, a soaring soundtrack, and epic enemy encounters. If you’re looking for your next gaming obsession, TERA may well fit the bill!

It doesn’t throw too much at you at the beginning, and sports a very clean UI that usually makes sense and can get you where you want to go in just a couple of button presses. These and many other elements make TERA make a lot of sense for consoles, which I’m sure is a delight for lots long-time players of the genre. TERA is indeed a fun game with lots of addicting gameplay loops and grinds that add up to an experience that doesn’t stand out as well as it did several years ago, but still holds up nicely if you’re looking for a neatly organized MMO experience with a decent story.

"TERA is indeed a fun game with lots of addicting gameplay loops and grinds that add up to an experience that doesn’t stand out as well as it did several years ago, but still holds up nicely if you’re looking for a neatly organized MMO experience with a decent story."

Speaking of story, TERA’s lore is pretty typical RPG-fare. The two characters of primary focus here, Arun and Shara, titans who wield quite intense power and whose fates became linked in an unavoidable way, so the story does have plenty of fantastical nonsense for enthusiasts of the genre to enjoy. Blue hole really went all out and clearly had too much fun when designing this world, and that’s a good thing.

The gameplay is pretty easy-going for quite a while, as you can do quite a large chunk of the story missions without much help before things really get difficult and force you to get serious about the ins and outs of the classes and races. But once the difficultly does ramp up, it stays there, offering a good, relatively well-paced amount of challenge throughout. The classes you have to choose from is of a pretty solid variety, and there should be at least one class here that speaks to you.

Even though a lot of the character models look pretty good in terms of detail and design, the worlds themselves are somewhat bland in that department, and rarely bring you any designs or aesthetics that you haven’t seen a thousands times before. That being said, I wouldn’t say any of the worlds or dungeons quite cross over into boring territory. they’re just… unremarkable. For as detailed and interesting as the characters can be, I feel like it’s an odd juxtaposition to play them in such a bland-looking world.

"Leveling, crafting, learning new skills all feels pretty good overall. There’s also a fairly good amount of skills to dive into, which is nice."

That’s not to say there isn’t diversity in the areas though, there certainly is, I just couldn’t help but notice how shallow they ultimately are. That said, a lot of the effects are nice and really make me appreciate them, particle effects during combat in particular. I say some though, because every time I see something I like, I see something else that looks like it would have made more sense in a game from a decade ago. So overall the presentation ends up being pretty mixed, with nothing really blowing my mind one way or the other, but I do lean toward favorability of the graphics considering how old the game is and how well it seems to be holding up compared to other, newer games in the genre in terms of detail and design.

The technical performance of TERA itself doesn’t fair as well though, with a inexcusably inconsistent frame-rates that probably bring the average FPS to under 30, and rampant texture and asset pop up even on the Playstation 4 pro. When the action settles down the performance certainly improves, but once things get busy, as they often do, expect the game to start chugging quite a bit. Thankfully, even though I found the performance drops unpleasant to look at, the gameplay largely remained in-tact and that’s what really matter I suppose. I have heard lots of talk about crashes, but personally, in my experience, I rarely encountered this. Leveling, crafting, learning new skills all feels pretty good overall. There’s also a fairly good amount of skills to dive into, which is nice. Lots of gold can be had without too much grinding, and the skills are mostly fun to discover and learn once you gain access to them. On top of that, there’s lots of weapon skins other cosmetic options for things, if you like that kind of thing.

The music is pretty good, with some nice melodies sprinkled around the soundtrack. Even though you might not be rushing out to buy the soundtrack for your car, it does get the job done by providing nice, emotional, sub context to a lot of the battles and the tracks usually really kept me motivated. Some of the tracks teetered into momentary greatness before retreating back into more generic RPG-style chord structures, but I did enjoy the good moments enough to overlook the generic ones.

"If you’re an experienced dungeon crawler whose looking for the next step in complexity and depth, TERA might not be your jam, at least not in this day and age."

Voices are also good, while I would have appreciated more of them, what is here is well voiced and voices fit the characters well and there’s a good amount of variation in the tones and delivery styles of different characters. The sound effects coud have had more of a punch to them, though. Lots of the samples for various sounds are tacky and generic, and I feel like slightly more effort in this department could have gone a long way to helping establish some more personality for the game, which is another missed opportunity I think they could have easily addressed for the console version.

Thankfully what we have here is a well-designed game that nails the fundamentals of action-based online RPG gameplay. What it lacks in performance it makes up for in design, and what it lacks in complexity it makes up for overall fun-factor. If you’re interested in TERA, you have very little to lose by trying it out on consoles thanks to the “freemium” model it finds itself in. The world is nearly seamless and huge, the graphics are well-designed and fun, and there’s lots to do in TERA without spending a dime if you don’t want to.

I personally got a little bored later on, as the repetition definitely started getting to me, but as long as you keep your expectations in check and stop yourself from applying 2018 standards to it, there is fun to be had here. I just wish there was more of a reason for those who have already played it 3 years ago on their PC’s to return.  If you’re an experienced dungeon crawler whose looking for the next step in complexity and depth, TERA might not be your jam, at least not in this day and age, but if you are mainly a console gamer and interested in dipping your toes into the MMO genre, the console version of TERA is a great place to start.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Bluehole Studio’s non-Battle Royale title and long-standing free to play MMO TERA will be coming to consoles soon. “Soon” being next week – publisher En Masse Entertainment has announced a release date for April 3rd. Check out the trailer below for some console gameplay footage.

Though TERA will be free to play, you can also purchase a Founder’s Pack for $29.99. This will include some items and early access to start playing on March 27th, a week earlier than the official release date. If you’re worried about it being a straightforward port, then it’s worth noting the many new features it will have.

Control schemes for different characters, a revamped UI with Smart Inventory, quick chat and guild options and a new targeting system for combat have been included along with other options. TERA still has its share of players on PC but whether it will have that same level of influence on consoles remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more information on the game regardless.

The MMORPG space for consoles is ripe for the picking, and En Masse Entertainment has revealed via press release that Xbox One and PS4 players can check out TERA, their 2011 PC hit’s new console port, completely free, for a few days early next month.

From 6 AM PST on March 9th to March 12th at 12AM PST, console users interested can simply download the client from their storefront and have full access to the test. The full game comes out sometime later this spring, but this is likely the only time you’ll get to try out the game before launch.

En Masse Entertainment published the original 2011 PC game, which was developed by Bluehole. Bluehole having their focus on other things now leaves En Masse to take the helm on the console port for TERA, which will likely launch a little behind the PC version in terms of expansion content.

En Masse Entertainment’s TERA: Fate of Arun has achieved a rather surprising milestone on Steam despite launching on May 5th. It’s the most played MMORPG on the digital gaming service with 4.5 million players in North America, bringing its worldwide total up to 20 million.

An infographic for the game has been released since then, indicating a whopping 6 million monsters killed; 97,847 guilds actively running around and committing the mass slaughter; and 70,000 dungeons cleared each day. The average player count per day is 5,347 players with a record of 18,454 concurrent players. It should be noted that TERA is free to play and available to download for any Steam player.

Fate of Arun is actually the latest update for TERA, which has been around since January 2011 when it first launched in Korea. The update added a new max player level of 65 along with four new zones, new story missions and four new instances aka raids for players to experience.

Have you been playing TERA on Steam? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below.

Yingpei Games’ new PC first person shooter, Zombies Monsters Robots was revealed last week, and now the developer and their publisher En Masse Entertainment have officially revealed the game, while also dishing out some of its details.

Zombies Monsters Robots is set an alternate world, where the invention of a portal device creates rifts that cross over with other parallel worlds, which causes strange creatures to cross over- hence the name. The game will feature a co-op campaign (which can host up to eight players), wave based survival modes and head-to-head matches as well.

“We are excited because ZMR brings a fresh and thrilling experience to PC shooters,” said said Chris Lee, CEO of En Masse Entertainment. “Playing the huge variety of co-op missions, facing crazy monsters and boss battles, and the intense PvP is going to keep gamers coming back for more.

“And in keeping with our philosophy of delivering great games and great service, we can’t wait to let players jump into the awesome action of ZMR, while we will provide our trademark level of player support and a continuous stream of monthly updates.”

Zombies Monster Robots will launch as a free to play PC title this summer.