Tarisland Review: Engaging Boss Fights, but Is the Story Worth It?

I’ve been playing Tarisland for several weeks, running through the fantasy MMORPG with a Mage, a Paladin, and a Phantom Necro. All three are maxed out now in the best gear available at the time of writing, so I’m here to report back on the mid to late game. 

As a dedicated World of Warcraft player and fantasy nerd, it’s been a solid experience overall. While I certainly have my issues with Tarisland, the experience as a whole has been fun and it’s worth taking a look at. 

If you missed the Review In Progress, take a look at it here, where I covered the character creation process and early game content, which I won’t be diving into too much in this main review.

Level Up 

One of my main gripes with Tarisland is that I found the introductory process slow. I leveled three characters to max for this review, aiming to tackle different types of content with each one, and I was hoping for a unique experience with all three.

Unfortunately, the only difference I found is that my Paladin used a hammer while my other characters cast spells. While the characters feel decently unique in combat, leveling is very linear in Tarisland and I found myself zoning out significantly during my third run from 1 to 40. Overall, Tarisland is not a difficult game, except for a few end-game PvE encounters, and leveling felt lightning fast.  

In every major fight, the game will prompt you on boss mechanics and there’s a quest marker which walks you step-by-step to every location. It’s not really possible to fail a skill-based quest, and despite the lack of XP from killing mobs, I hit max level quickly.

Story Time

One reason that may have contributed to the speediness of leveling is that I ended up skipping a fair few lore cutscenes after I’d leveled up my first character.

I mentioned in my Review In Progress that I found the quest design interesting — this remains true. The team did a great job with creating quest type variety, but the lore felt unengaging. Sadly, this remained the case as I