The combat in many MMO titles follow an often copied formula consisting of the player standing rather stationary and letting success ride mostly on the skillful use of the player character’s abilities. Tabula Rasa breaks step from that norm with combat that is much more centered on taking cover and having a positional advantage over your enemies. The game still has many of the standard MMO gameplay mechanics that fans of the genre are used to, but is tilted much more towards action-oriented gameplay.

The story of Tabula Rasa is a somber one, detailing how Earth was attacked and defeated by a marauding alien race. Millions perished, but the governments of the world managed to shuttle the best and brightest of the population out to a distant alien world through the use of warp technology. Upon arrival mankind finds that the aliens, collectively known as the Bane, have been doing the same to planets all across the universe. Shattered but not beaten, mankind has allied with other alien races who have suffered attacks from the Bane to help push back the aliens and carve out a new corner of existence and start with a clean slate.

Initial character creation is a simple affair, with the player simply needing to select a first and last name, gender, character height, and the color and style of the starting (and quickly replaced) armor. The last name chosen by your first character is shared across all of your characters on the server, and is generally the only thing that is used to directly identify players in game.

The class structure in the game is broken up into four tiers, with the first tier being that of the Recruit. At level 5 the player must choose one of the two main class branches that have their start in the second tier, either the Soldier or the Specialist class branches. The two classes really set the tone for the entire branches that follow them, with the Soldier class excelling in direct combat and taking damage while the Specialist class has enhanced Logos (magic) and support oriented abilities. All added up between the two branches there are fifteen classes that characters can become, with eight of them being end-game classes only reachable by level 45 characters and above.

Logos can be loosely described as magic in other games; they power the abilities that let the player do things such as deal damage in a manner that doesn’t involve a conventional weapon. For example, as a Soldier class one of your main Logos abilities is a shrapnel attack that releases a handful of jagged metal bits into the air before propelling them at high speed in every direction. Another defining Logos ability of the class mixes the power of Logos with some of the adrenaline coursing through the character’s veins to send them into a rage capable of dealing frightful damage. Every character class in Tabula Rasa is not only capable of using their class-specific Logos abilities but can also use the abilities from every class that character has progressed through. Sniper and Spies, both end-game classes, benefit heavily from the Rage ability that they both were capable of learning as a Soldier.

Every time a character levels up they gain three attribute points and two skill points. The three attributes are Body, Mind, and Spirit, and each has both a primary and secondary effect tied to it such as maximum health or power, regeneration rates, etc. Skill points are spent on gaining or enhancing skills, with each skill or ability consisting of five levels of effectiveness. Learning a new skill only takes one skill point, with the second level requiring two points, the third requiring three, etc.

Every skill that a character can learn is powered by one or more Logos elements; which are required to use the skill and are learned from Logos shrines spread out in the game world. It can be frustrating that players can spend points on a new skill only to find they can’t use it yet because they lack knowledge of the necessary Logos elements to power it, but nearly all of the starting Logos shrines have quests attached to finding them and waypoints for easy location.