Upon starting Tabula Rasa, I was thrown into some training scenarios. These felt more like single player missions since I was essentially fighting against AI and did not see any real life people around. The tutorial missions did a good job of getting me familiar with the controls, the menus, magic, mission logs, using the mini-map and other skills that I probably need to succeed in the game.
What I didn't like about the tutorial missions was the sense of invincibility. One mission had me going out with some squad mates to try and gain control of heavily guarded area. I didn't die once. I literally sat under a sentry gun and shot at it while getting shot at myself, but didn't die. It's good to ease people into games, but making tutorial missions too easy takes the fun out of it and makes me wonder what the difficulty level of the rest of the game will be.
The AI enemies seemed a bit buggy, but I'm hoping that's just because the game's still in beta. A couple times, the enemy would get stuck on something and be unable to move forward. It's also a bit silly to be shooting with my reticule directly on an enemy but still getting the message that the enemy dodged my attack even though no dodging action was seen.
I accumulated some character and skill upgrades from the couple of tutorial missions I finished. I usually like playing magic-based characters in games, but I also like shooting things, which brought the dilemma of whether I should build a magic-heavy character or a weapon-heavy one. Considering the only magic I have so far is the lightning attack, I decided to up my weapons skill to hopefully make my shots more accurate and powerful.
It's a little hard to gauge what type of character would suit my style of playing in the tutorial missions. I'm hoping that the world of Tabula Rasa will be balanced enough so that there will be an equal need for magic users and weapon users in parties.
