Tantra Online: CBT | First Impressions

Tantra Online from GameNetworks is an original MMORPG, cast in a neo-oriental themed world with heavy chinese and indian mythologies. Currently (Oct. 9-12, 2008) the 2nd Closed Beta is being tested for connectivity, quest and God War issues - the latter is the full world PvP system that is implemented in the game. The OB will commence OCTOBER 17, GMT TIME.

Download Size: 650 MB
Install Size: 1.63 GB

This game has pretty low spec requirements. I am running it (at work LOL!) on a lame Dell D600 Latitude laptop (1.4GHz, 512MB Ram, 32MB Mobility Radeon 9000), so its a good choice for those that have hardware issues.

In the following I will give you my opinion (as avid MMO gamer:) of this game and provide you with player-side information about what the game is like and its positive/negative aspects.

Character Creation

There are 8 character types to choose from, which originate from 4 races and are surprisingly seperated into Male and Female types (so the Female's and the Males of the same class type, actually belong to different races, which is kinda odd...):

> Male Female (Weapon Type) : Class (Main Attribute)
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> Naga / Kimnara (Sword, Spear) : Buffers, Damage Dealers (Muscle)
> Asura / Ralsasha (Dagger, Bow) : Damage Dealers (Nerve)
> Yaksa / Ghadarva (Bare Fist, Gloves) : Tank, Healer (!?) (Heart)
> Deva / Garuda (Staff) : Magic, AOE Damage (Mental)










There are some pretty interesting twists in class paths for players to follow. The one that I found most interesting was the Bare Fist Fighting Tank type that I havent seen in a very long time in a game:

My character was surprisingly a stout, stalky gurlie that looked like trouble and that reminded me a lot of Toph, from Avatar - The last Airbender and hence my toon had a name!

During character cration you can only change face/hair types, (which is kinda lame, because you are bound to run into your clones all over the game). Furthermose the face/hair types seem to go in pairs, so Face 1 goes with Hair 1 for instance. In some characters there are hair textures ON the head that might not correspond to the actual hair type you choose, as shown in the figure below:



--- Character/World Graphics/Sound

The graphics is Tantra start off looking a little bit old. As you start exploring the world however, you find that there are some pretty interesting environments, with crisp textures that do the job nicely. Overall the characters are pretty cool looking. They are easily distinguished on the battlefield and the weapon armor designs have very nice clear graphics.

The sound is very atmospheric, and even though it may not be of the highest calibur, it definately goes well with the game, which is all you need really. The character and monster sounds could use a little bit more diversity, so that you dont just always hear a ... "hep.. ha! hak..." when you're attacking. Some better soundbits when your toon lands a critical hit would be nice.





The NPC graphics however are too heavily compressed, in my opinion, which makes everyone look old and crusty - even the beautiful maiden in the center of the village.


The game world is seperated into township maps. I cant really say much the other maps, but there are several open and closed area dungeons, some of which appear to be unimplemented at this time.

Once sufficiently leveled you can choose a governing DEITY to follow. Shiva... and some other's - Im not sure, but there are 3 to choose from. Depending on the GOD you choose, you get access to a special skill list, which further branches the very nice Skill trees avaialble in the game. I didnt get that far, but you can see the paths and they are very interesting and will allow for unique Character building - I like!

--- Gameplay

The first thing I saw when I logged into Tantra was a GM, standing in the middle of the town, helping out anyone that had issues. I have played a lot of MMORPGs and have only seen a GM a handful of times. This one was very vocal and helpful and I immediately made note of that. The people at GameNetworks want to do this right, it seems, although having someone out there talking to the people during a 3 day Closed Beta test is just common sense.

It took me longer than usual to get used to the HUD and movement. You can use WASD to move around, or point-and-click your mouse and can also fix the camera so that it is overhead, which adds a cinematic feeling to the game and is useful in complicated areas.

Pressing M changes the map size and can even make it vanish, which is great. Pressing TAB hides the HUD and everything else which is fantastic for screenshots - something I hope most games implememt - there is nothing better than showing off your character on your blog or forums! Pressing L brings up your character information where you can distribute Chakra points to your Attributes.

Experience and Drop rate seem very nice, if not too high, but that may be because the game is still in CB. I was able to get a full set of armor and weapon by griding on some nearby Wolves in about 5 minutes, which somehow doesnt seem right, but Im not complaining:) The game currency is the Rupiah, which sounds a lot like the Ruppees used in Rappelz - another MMORPG that shares Tantra's Asura/Deva Indian Mythology.



At level 10 you go through a class transfer where you pick what kind of specialty you want to have - this too is similar to Rappelz, but also so many other games. The problem I encountered here was that the class transfer quest, required me to kill 6 different types of monsters from all over the map. Only 3 of each type were required, but if I killed them out of order, the kills were not counted! So basically, I went running through the whole map, making note of where the monsters I needed to kill were, and then ran back and forth trying to get them in the right order. At some point I was looking for Vasabhum Kulapra for 30 minutes - darkness decended upon me and i was thinking of uninstalling the game on the spot!

WHEN WILL GAME DESIGNERS LEARN THAT IT IS NOT FUN TO LOOK ALL OVER A MAP FOR HOURS AT A TIME TO FIND SOME VARIANT OF A RAT, WOLF OR TROLL!!!

With evil thoughts and a full inventory - that fills up in absolutely no time, by the way - I ran back to town and bitched the GM out. He went into no-clipping mode and retured to me with coordinates (that can be seen on the map) as to the location of the enemy I needed. Turns out they were perched on a hill, the road leading up not really looking like a road. I thanked the GM profusely and regained some stamina to continue with the game.

Later I found a lot more "roads leading to higher levels" which actually added a lot of beauty to the game. My character was leveling fast (probably because I was grinding really hard everywhere I went - GRINDING = THERAPY!) and started to assign some skills. I found that my bare-fist fighting Tank had a nice DEFENCE and ATTACK speed buff, as well as TWO HEALING SPELLS - a heal and a HP Regen spell that regenerated like 25% of my HP every 4 seconds and that lasted for 8 minutes. It was fun, but I think there will need to be some skill balancing somewhere down the line.



I have never played a game that has a character that is both a TANK and has HEALING SPELLS. Actually it blew my mind. For kicks I put all of my Chakra points into Heart and I realized that my character was immortal (I had accumulated 60 before noticing where they are! - Everyone is a n00b when we fist start off).

I took on a big boss that was hitting me slowly but really heavy, that took 65-75% of my HP per hit, but I could still heal, regenerate or use potions fast enough that I managed to kill him in about 2 minutes of fighting...

Item enchantment is available at a Temple of some sort ... for a price ... using Enchantment Items dropped from monsters. It was very poorly described and although I did get some enchantment drops, I never figured out how to do that. In all honesty, that doesnt really matter, since you only start enchanting stuff when you have committed to the game. If it gets to that, I'm sure the other players will help me out.

There is no way you can actually check the level of the monster, you are fighting, which is really annoying. Enemy level is simply distinguished by the usual gay color coding:

GRAY is to0o0o0 low so NOo0o0 experience for you,
WHITE is sameish level, grind away my friend,
ORANGE is sorta-kinda higher than you (?) and
RED is really a lot higher than you. Stupid.

Later I decided to return to the quest at hand and try to figure out what the first Class job is. I RAN AROUND EVERYWHERE, never found them. Returned back to town, didnt find the GM, turned the game off.


--- IMPRESSION

+/- : Nice graphics. Characters have very nice high quality graphical detail, environments are cool too, and reflect the fell of the area and epoch you are playing in. Overall stark but they will even run on a 4 year old laptop. Actually quite pretty at time. The style of graphics reminded me of 2Moons actually... meh... dunno what to say about that. That game had nice graphics too, but I didnt like the quests/game story.

+ : Classes are different than what you might be used to - this is a good thing. There are no underpowered classes, so everyone has a place in the game. I will be returning to play with Toph at some point, as long as my character survives into OB, whenever that may be.

- : The quests are retarded. There NEED to be better directions to executing the quests. The NPCs that give/receive quests MUST be clearly highlighted on the map. Maybe they can implement a ground-breaking HOT/COLD system, which tells you if you are getting closer or moving further away from the monsters you are hunting for your quests? That would save the game.

Overall... I liked this game. I really fell in love with my toon: Toph

Monk-style bare fist fighting / tank / healer and she's little and cute. Doesnt get better than that :)

I'll be watching this game as it progresses. I am looking forward to more content, game theme, storyline and a good dungeon partying and PvP (God War) system.

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You can see all my screenshots and Tantra wallpapers here:

Tantra Online

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This article has been featured on MMOsite with my permission.
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