SWTOR Review By Branaddar

[Legend]

Review By: Branadarr
Front Page Article: Click Here​

Overview

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a MMORPG created by BioWare, the studio behind many blockbuster games like Mass Effect, Jade Empire and more.

Combat

• Plays similar to most modern MMOs. Hotbars full of abilities that become unlocked via trainers as you level up.
• Every class plays a bit differently. Some classes use a "combo" system where you build up to powerful attacks. The shooting classes have an Energy or Heat system that depletes/fills as you use abilities, forcing you to manage your usage instead of just spamming abilities. Each class I've played felt different from the others.

Companions and Crew

• One of the key selling points in this game is the Companion and Crew system. As you play through the story, you will earn new NPCs that will join your Crew. You can have one that fights by your side while the others stay on your ship.
• Crew take care of all the tedious farming and crafting for you. You pick three trades for your Crew, then send them on missions to farm materials for you or to craft items. These missions take anywhere from 3 minutes upwards to complete.
• Companions fight at your side while soloing or in groups that are not completely full. The first one you get early in the game is a complement to your class playstyle.
• They are pretty autonomous and require little command to act well. You still can pop up their control window to fiddle with their AI behaviours or force them to use certain abilities on harder fights, but for the most part they don't need much management.

Your Ship

• Each player gets their own ship around level 12, depending on how fast you progress through your main Class Quests. This acts like a housing system as well as your base of operations for your Crew. It is also your transportation between the planets.
• Each class has its own unique ship type to start with. There is word that BioWare is looking into adding purchasable ships down the road as well as Guild Capital Ships.
• Ships can be outfitted with new parts that strengthen your offensive and defensive abilities.
• The space missions play like a Starfox game or the some of the old Star Wars flight games. It's an on-rails camera with the ability to move your ship around the space available as you fly, do barrel rolls and shoot enemies.
• It plays as an arcade-like game system rather than a full-fledged flight sim, but it's a lot of fun and a great way to earn money and xp.

Questing and Conversations

• The questing plays a lot like BioWare's recent game, Mass Effect. Conversations are a true dialogue instead of just listening to a monologue by the NPC.
• You are presented with multiple options during these conversations. Some choices will earn you Dark/Light Side points. Some require persuasion or other conversation-oriented skills. Some will earn loyalty points with your current Companion, which opens up quests with them.
• Multiplayer Conversations - Yeah, that's right! When you're playing in a group and the players enter the conversation together, you all earn Social Points as rewards for going through conversations together.
• Conversations are fully voiced, with your character chiming in as well. No more silent protagonist! In multiplayer conversations, a random group member will speak.
• Social Points work as a separate scale, earning you Social ranks. There are various vendors throughout the game that sell items based on your Social rank. Costumes, social animations, and more are available.

Itemization and Crafting

• Items in this game work like most MMOs. Armour and weapons are earned through questing or recovered loot. Each class will focus on two or three stats, depending on how you want to play them, making it easier to figure out upgrades.
• Crafting can be used to create or improve your items with modifications and is accomplished by your crew without the need of carrying junk in your inventory or juggling your bank space around. You can stash all your crafting materials in the bank and your crew will use the items from your bank.
• One of the truly unique aspects to SWTOR's crafting system, is the act of deconstructing items you make. You get back a portion of the materials as well as a chance to learn an improved version of the recipe that has higher stats. This means that the grind of making items to level up also becomes a hunt for newer and better items.
• Each character can learn one crafting skill, one harvesting skill and one mission skill. Picking the right skills means you can provide for yourself quite well and even early on some of the crafted gear exceeds what you get from quest rewards.

Story

• For the first time in a long time, I'm playing an MMO where I feel like I'm a part of the story, instead of a glorified rat-catcher. The plot of the various stories build quite well to their climax, while still making hints and relationships with a greater overarching story that is affecting the whole galaxy.
• The voice-overs are performed extremely well, making it feel like a movie more than a game. The characters are fully lip-synced as well as having facial emotions, making it very believable.
• Each starting area is inhabited by two character classes out of eight. This means there are four starting quest areas and each class has a set of their own quests as well. So even in those shared areas, you'll only be redoing about 80% of the same quests when you play a second or third or eighth character.

Closing Thoughts

BioWare has pulled of a wonderful game here and I think they are going to do very well with it. It has had a very smooth beta and pre-launch compared to most MMOs in recent years and is a top quality product right out of the box.

It's not without its shortcomings, of course. Some technical problems still exist for some people with specific hardware configurations, anti-aliasing is disabled until they fix some issues with it and there can be a significant wait in line to log into some servers.

Many will write it off as a World of Warcraft clone, but speaking as someone that did not enjoy playing WoW, I am thoroughly enjoying my time in The Old Republic.

Sure, some of the game mechanics are the same, but that's because it's part of the MMORPG genre. To totally rewrite a new type of game from the ground up means it's unfamiliar and strange to the players. The learning curve would be steeper and the enjoyment lessened.

If you enjoy BioWare's other offerings, you will enjoy this. If you enjoy World of Warcraft, you will probably enjoy this as well. Blizzard may have pandas, but BioWare has a story that is interesting and fun, even for players like me who aren't big fans of the Star Wars movies.​

 

[iamevilbear]

great review!

 

[Deptacon]

This could be my first MMO.....

 

[Vipers_Venom]

It is a very awesome game! I played WoW for three years and grew bored with it and stopped playing figuring I would never play another MMO, but I got in the Beta for this and it hooked me from the start and I don't see myself growing bored with it any time soon. Bioware has done a great job polishing the things WoW did right and fixing all of the things it did wrong! I would highly recommend this game to anyone who is even remotely interested in trying out a MMO.

 

[Boo-Yeah!!]

Speaking of someone who enjoyed WoW in its early days and not so much as what it has become I can easily say this surpasses WoW in both its iterations what it was and what it has become. A very immersive story line like Mass Effect and Dragon Age that lets you drive the story and make your own path in the game. The easy new way of gathering resources and crafting. A game that can be played solo and with groups. One that makes me want to try all classes and level them to 50 to see all their stories through to the end of this current release and see where the expansions take them. Space Combat in its current form is fun and will be expanded on immensely in the future.

This game has tons of potential and will only get better!!

As Bran and Legend stated there are some technical issues persisting with the anti aliasing and hardware configurations. This leads to certain graphics to be blury and not detailed at times especially some of the armor sets. However BW is working to fix these issues. The queue issue is to be expected with a highly anticipated game in its first few weeks of release and shouldnt be a surprise to those familiar with WoW or any other MMO that uses a multi realm setup.

There are still some minor issues that some may find less appealing like the Legacy system or the limiting of saber and blaster colors but this is far outweighed by the fact that this game is impossible to stop playing. I have almost forgotten about BF3 and have yet to even play Karkand following this game.

Truly worth every penny!!

 

[Toxxin]

Nice review!! Cant stop playing!
Things you may need

and

 

[Malak3347]

i. Want. That. Toilet.

 

[xosniper]

Great review Brand.

Your an awesome.

 

[Branaddar]

Thanks

I'm really enjoying this game. Most fun I've had in an MMO since the old days of hardcore EQ raiding, and I don't have the time to be hardcore anymore.

SWTOR has great stories, great group play and almost every game mechanic they've included is fun and/or an improvement on other systems.

I just hope that EA and BioWare do a good job following through with it down the road. Content updates, fixing the queues and some balancing issues and it'll definitely be one of the first MMOs to get close to WoW's subscription rate.

I don't expect it to take the #1 spot, but a solid #2 (that sounds gross) with a few million subs... I wouldn't be surprised. They just need to make sure it doesn't stagnate.

 

[Irish bRy@N]

great review. i have some of my own things to add


no lfg, no custom your ui,no mouse over healing,no target of target,no damage meters,no combat log,no threat bars, no macros, terrible graphics for a 2011 game. repetative quests.small world zones,only 3 bgs and huttball sucks..

these are some of my concerns about this game,i am playing it but i would love to see some of these features implemented

check out gameplay of guild wars 2 and gameplay of star wars and compare thge graphics of the 2, then tell me star wars has good graphics,the sky is just a painting.the grass spawns as your walking over it, terrible lag, big memory leaks in some zones.companions pathing is terrible..

if it was not star wars i feel some of us wouldnt botherr with the game