Tarae: The Unbound is a new hack-and-slash game that strongly resembles Diablo 4. MyMMO editor Benedict Grothaus has already played the demo and is… confused. A little. Or maybe more. But it’s good! Probably.
You can confidently call me a Diablo fan. While I don’t know my exact playtime, I’ve definitely spent a few thousand hours on Diablo 2, 3, Immortal, and 4. Only the highly praised Lord of Hatred kept me busy for a long time.
What the series has always stood out for, but especially since Diablo 3, is its casual-friendliness. Don’t think, just press buttons, make demons burst, and loot. This formula has been perfected by Diablo like hardly any other game, and that’s why I love it.
Now, a new action RPG called Tarae: The Unbound has attracted me with a similarly dark world, only to ambush me from behind with logic puzzles. I just wanted to play a little…
Formation, Resonance, Harmony – uh, what?
Tarae: The Unbound plays fundamentally just like Diablo. You play as one of six different classes – of which only three were playable in the demo – level up, collect loot, and equip up to six different skills for your build.
For the preview, we had access to three pre-made characters at level 30 and landed right in the middle of the campaign. I chose the Geomancer, a sorceress who fights with the elements, and I probably should have left that alone, as she relies on chaining attacks:
- Certain skills can create formations. A hit with a formation improvement triggers a formation change.
- Such changes create resonances that can be absorbed to unleash elemental attacks.
- Additionally, hitting a formation with a harmony skill causes explosions or penetration.
Got it? Me neither. Since a run in the demo is limited to 30 minutes, I figured out through experimentation eventually how skills interact with each other, discovering something akin to a rotation. If I couldn’t maintain that… the damage dropped rapidly.
Tough bosses that you can’t just steamroll
Unfortunately, I had to prove my skills to master the two highlights of the demo: two bosses with real mechanics. Real boss fights, as you might know them from Path of Exile. Quick breathers weren’t an option here.
However, these bosses also kept me engaged. I had to learn not only their patterns but also figure out how certain mechanics were meant to be played. One of the bosses, for example, is invulnerable until you lure it to a certain spot.
Usually, competition like Path of Exile, which focuses more on complex gameplay, doesn’t grab me – I simply don’t want to think when I’m playing a hack-and-slash. I just want to hack and slash.
But once I got the hang of it, I had a great time. At least with the little I could see, as it wasn’t much.
I didn’t see much, but it seems like a solid foundation
From a test run in the middle of the game, without really getting to know the classes, and a time limit, plus only a linear level, it’s hard to say how much Tarae really has to offer. At its core, the game seems quite promising:
- The classes have their own identity and play uniquely – some are significantly easier than the Geomancer, as I later found out.
- Tarae uses Asian folklore and the Buddhist idea of reincarnation as its theme, which surprisingly works well, as the mythology has some dark monsters to offer.
- Apart from the well-polished graphics (as is customary for Korean games), Tarae does feel quite dark, not least due to monster names like “Childsnatcher Ghoul”.
With only three of the six classes playable and strong differences in their complexity, I estimate Tarae somewhere between Diablo and Path of Exile – possibly a bit “simpler” than Last Epoch.
At least visually and in terms of the story – I am to prevent the cycle of reincarnation from being broken – Tarae: The Unbound sounds like a very fitting game in the dark fantasy setting for me. How much the gameplay ultimately convinces can’t be judged at this point, though.
Tarae is set to be released in 2027 for PC (Epic, Steam), PS5, and Xbox.
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