The Recruit is the basic soldier, and while you are a recruit you can consider yourself still in Tutorial Mode. After level 5 the fun really begins! Don't forget, this also means everyone knows how to shoot a pistol, rifle or shotgun etc., how to use armor and the powerful Lightning ability. As a starting tip, you can never go wrong if you put 3 points into guns, and it's also ok to add points to Lightning.

The Soldier is the first path towards a pure damage dealer class. As a soldier you learn to use the heavy reflective armor, the powerful chainguns, and have damage enhancing abilities like Rage. Combined with a chaingun, Rage can be a lethal skill, so you can safely train for it.

The Specialist has enhanced healing abilities but he gives up some of the damage. The hazmat body armor absorbs poisons, incendiary or virulent attacks better than soldier's reflective armor, and you can learn how to use leech guns to drain life out of your enemies and raise yours.

The Commando uses close range heavy damage weapons and can equip the graviton armor, making him a heavy hitter.

The Ranger uses range (obviously) and stealth to his advantage. He can go almost unseen with his stealth armor, and can call in airstrikes.

The Biotechnician can dispel virulent, psychic and biological attacks, and is the first class that can use a healing power.

The Sapper is trained to use heavy mech armor and polarity guns. He can disarm or reconfigure enemy devices and defence towers, and he can master mechanics and robotics.

The Grenadier uses propellant guns (or flamethrowers) to cause big damage and keep enemies away. His signature ability is concussive wave, an area of effect spell with a knockback effect.

The Guardian, while a damage dealer as well, focuses on defensive logo powers. He can use staff weapons, causing very high melee damage, and his signature ability is shield wave, an area of effect spell that bubbles all allies around and protects them.

The Spy uses stealth and the signature ability invisibility wave to conceive him from enemies. His training in blades makes him a very high melee damage dealer.

The Sniper is trained in the use of torqueshell rifles, and specializes in taking out enemy forces from distance. Crit wave is the sniper's signature ability, increasing his chance to critically hit enemies.

The Exobiologist can use corpse explosion on dead targets to cause damage. He can also clone himself and knows a lot about alien anatomy. Reanimation Wave brings back allies to life on the battlefield.

The Medic can cause insanity among enemy ranks; can become immune to certain types of damage; can leech health and give it to all party members back; his signature ability is regeneration wave.

The Demolitionist is a master of damaging multiple targets at once. He can use controlled fission and explosive nanites to enhance their damage, and their signature ability is explosive wave.

The Engineer can set turrets and traps and has his own Mech pet. He can create temporary wormhole portals to transport himself or allies to different zones of the galaxy. His signature ability is base wave, which increases everyone's armor and armor regeneration.

General Thoughts and a Conclusion

As in many other MMORPGs I wasn't impressed at all by Tabula Rasa in the beginning, but it slowly grew on me and I can safely say that if you are open minded and give it a chance you won't be disappointed. I still dislike the low-res textures they found for the ground in most areas, and the fact that Anti-Aliasing doesn't work, no matter how hard you try to enable it. It does *something* but polygons still have rough edges, and let's not mention 2D bitmaps. And what's that big bitmap "forest" that you can't pass through all about, come on! Animations don't seem to fit well with the environment, and music is dull. However, music grows on you in time...

Tip: If you have a decent video card and a good system you can try to do the trick I did: create a custom profile for Tabula Rasa in your video card control panel, and set everything to max quality. It helps a bit.

The ethical parables bring the much needed diversity through some quests and even if they don't have that big of an impact on the actual game action, they are a nice addition. Maybe in the future there will be an expansion pack where players could influence the actual future progress of the game. Who knows?

The shooter aspect keeps your adrenaline pumping and despite the fact that you won't be able to eat much while playing because of this, it's a great step forward against boredom and repetition. Besides, you can still drink...

While the graphics could be a lot better, I find the "spell" (abilities) effects and the way enemies die excellent! You feel the power every time you use an ability or shoot any kind of weapon!

Much could be said about Tabula Rasa, both good and bad things. It suffers from the early launch problems like minor lag for some players, and some bugged instances/quests. But because we're talking about NCsoft, a company with experience in MMOs, the problems are minor, and being fixed as we speak. They are also working on further skill balance, possible further high end content and most important: an auction house! Yes, the biggest issue at start: no place to trade!

With the lack of an auction house, the crafting upgrades are either too expensive or not worth creating.