Star Wars: The Old Republic, Game Review, Part 1
So, City of Heroes is gone, and I'm not the only former player trying to find an MMO to call home now. Over in the City community LJ, players have been posting reviews of other games they try and discussing the pros and cons. And closer to home, the old Sunday night team has been slogging through The Secret World, with mixed opinions. Looking for other options, laridian tried Pirates 101, and I've decided to go back and give one of my very first loves a fresh look...
Now, I never played Star Wars Galaxies, nor have I tried The Old Republic before now. But Star Wars was, as I said, one of my first loves. I lived in that universe from the age of 7 onward. It was the inspiration for some of my first stunningly awful attempts at writing, and opened me up to a larger understanding of creativity and possibility. I'm still a rabid fan of the Original Trilogy, and I tolerate the Prequels with good nature. I've been really enjoying the Clone Wars series.
So, I've been following the development of The Old Republic even before it was released. And once it was, I wanted to try it out. Because, I thought, how fun would it be to really play around in that universe, like I used to imagine when I was a kid? But, I had City and not much free time. Plus I thought it might be better to give TOR some time to get an issue or two under its belt, work out kinks, ect. And now that City is gone, Sims 3 refuses to cooperated with me, and I've got a smidgen more free time... I figured it was time to give TOR a try.
TL;DR: So far, I am really enjoying it. Game play is easy to get used to, the environments are pretty and seem large, the UI is intuitive and gives a lot of information without seeming too cluttered. I've yet to run into a single situation which frustrated me or made me angry. Game seems to combine some of the best elements from City and TSW, while including very little of the annoying elements. F2P limits lots of little small details, but doesn't seem to hamper game play or enjoyment. There are still some things I'm unsure of and need to research to find out about, but otherwise I'm having fun.
Now for some more in-depth reviewing...
(first off: apologies for the size of some of these pictures, as I was trying to show as much detail as possible)
TOR takes place in Star Wars canon a little over three thousand years before the events of any of the movies. So, while it is definitely SW, there's a slightly archaic feel to it as well. At least, I think so. But then, I'm probably a lot more familiar with Star Wars canon than some. And, I'll admit, the Old Republic is a time period that I've visited and enjoyed before, way back when it was first developed via comic in the early 90s. Plus I have all the Old Republic role playing game books. So, the setting is appealing to me.
When you first start the game, after a lengthy execution and installation process (it took me overnight to fully install), the first thing that greets you is a cinematic which explains the story. There are two factions in the galaxy at this time, the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. They've been at odds for a long long time, but in the cinematic, the Sith makes a bold move and invades the Republic Jedis' Temple on Coruscant (that's the city-world where the Jedi are stationed in the Presquels).
In orbit above the planet, a Jedi-run station is the first to be attacked and taken over, while a fleet of Sith ships heads for, and targets, the Temple on the planet below.
The cinematic is visually exciting, very “Star Wars”, and introduces some of whom will be main characters and/or contacts in the game.
After the cinematic, your first decision is what server you want to play on. They are all listed, along with information about them, like where they're located, and what types of game play are primarily practiced on each.
Clicking on each one will give you information about what's meant by the game play styles. I chose Bergeren Colony because it's a West Coast server, which is closer to me and more likely to have people playing in my time zone, and because it's an RP server, and that's what I like.
Next you must chose your faction. Are you going to play as part of the Galactic Republic?
Or as part of the Sith Empire?
Faction choice is important because, as far as I know, you cannot team with members of the opposing faction. Just like in City, when heroes couldn't team with villains. From reading forum chatter, I get the impression that there might be co-op instances, like in City, but otherwise it's a blueside/redside situation again.
I chose the Galactic Republic this time, because the character that I intend to play has always wanted to be a hero ;)
After choosing your faction, you get another cinematic, updating you on how the conflict is going since the Sith took down the Jedi Temple. Things aren't great...
But the Jedi and the Republic forces are out there, fighting back against the darkness of the Sith. Eventually, things settle into a Cold War type situation. The Jedi have been forced to retreat back to their ancestral homeworld, Tython, so they take the opportunity to regroup and train the next generation of Jedi.
After the cinematic, the next choice you get to make is what Class you want to be. On the Republic side, there are four: Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Smuggler, and Trooper (with four matching ones on the Sith side). Clicking each Class will give you information about each.
There are also buttons above which will give more information on the weapons each class uses, what their abilities are, and what part they play in combat. The game gives you lots of information so that you can make good decisions on what type of character you want to play.
There's more to consider than just the Class itself, however. Because when you reach level 10 in the game, you can chose to specialize in one of two paths.
Very roughly the Classes would be analogous to City like this: Jedi = tanks and scrappers, depending on which Advanced path you take. Jedi Consular = defender or stalker. Smuggler = blaster and stalker. Trooper = blaster/defender and tank.
I picked the Jedi Knight for my character, though now I think I probably should have gone with Jedi Consular for the stealth path. Oh well, it's all a learning experience!
Your next choice is what species you want to play. As a Freeper, I only have two choices.
If I subscribe, I would unlock all the species. The little symbol on all the locked species is the symbol for the Cartel Market, which is where you go to buy (with real money) all the things that you want for your game. Like in City, subscribers get a certain amount of Cartel coins every month that they're a subscriber, so that they can purchase extras, or nifty gear, or whatever. As a Freeper, if I wanted to, I could spend some real money to unlock a species, but at this point it's not necessary.
That note was the first time I ran across the term “Legacy” and I didn't really understand what it meant, not even after seeing some mention of it on the forums in terms of naming one's character. What I thought it meant, it turns out, isn't what it actually meant. But I'll discuss that more later.
Anyway, I chose a Human.
Now you get to customize your character. TOR's character creator isn't as good as City's (then again, nothing is ever as good as City's was), but it's not too bad. No need to worry about clothing, because this is one of those games where your visible gear changes depending on what you have equipped (you can get around that later, though, after a fashion). But you have a decent number of options for customizing.
Everything is pretty standard here. For humans, only natural skin colors are available. So no blue humans or green humans. Same with hair color (oddly enough, there's no real blonde available, only dark blonde). There's more than 20 options for faces and roughly that amount for hairstyles, I think.
Two items of note. There are only four options for body type.
Absurdly skinny:
Normal:
There's a tall option that I forgot to get a picture of, and then there's super bloated:
The other item of note is that the category “Complexion” not only changes your complexion (giving you freckles, dirt, eye bags, ect) it's also where you change your eyebrows.
Is my boy looking familiar yet? Maybe to some of you. :) Even despite the massive chin.
See, I am operating under the theory that, when the reality of City (Prime) was destroyed, the Ouroboros Menders somehow sensed it coming, and so they did their best to move the souls of existence-important individuals into other realities in order to save them from destruction. At first they started out trying to integrate the souls into their new realities properly - manipulating time and space so that the souls would be born, have histories, no memory of Prime, ect. But as the destruction of Prime cascaded closer and closer, the Menders had no choice but to just get all the souls they could to safety as quickly as possible. People were thrown into new realities kind of willy nilly, picked up with whomever happened to be close by at the moment. That's why Crash, Johnny, Alatan and PHM all remember their old lives and were variously traumatized by the experience.
However, my Jedi character was fortunate enough to be moved in the first wave, and was born gently into his new existence with no memory that he was ever Tainted Shade, aka Tag van Keuren, stalker, hero and developing Incarnate. His soul-deep personality and innate traits remained intact, however, so he manifested Force ability and is driven by that deep-seeded desire to be a hero, to do the greatest good that he can as a Jedi Knight.
Time to give my baby a name!
Now, the naming system in this game is not very good. I saw a lot of complaints and grumbling about this on the forums. And just like in early City, the option to change a character's name is one of the most requested features in TOR. Everyone wants it and has been demanding it, and I can certainly understand why.
I played around with a few Star Wars name generators to get a good Star Wars sounding name for Shade. What I ended up with was Tagva Romus, but I changed the Tagva to Tagger, as I've used that for name for him in a game before (Fallout 3!) and I really like it. And to me, Tagger Romus sounds like a good human name in the Star Wars universe. (Wedge Antilles' father was named Jagged, after all).
However. Despite the fact that a majority of canon SW characters have two- or multi- part names... the name field in TOR will not allow you to use spaces in your name. Or underscores. How stupid is that? So, I tried to go with Tagger'Romus.
That's exactly as I imputed it, with Romus capitalized. However, when I eventually got into the game, I discover this:
That's right, the game allows only the first letter of the name to be capitalized. So what I ended up with was Tagger'romus, which looks long, clunky and ridiculous. As I was searching the wikis and forums to see if there was any possible way to change one's name, I found so many people complaining about this, how the game does not keep the name as you entered it, how it doesn't warn you anywhere that only the first letter can be capitalized, ect ect. Players are absolutely not happy about this, and I can't say that I blame them.
As I was reading these complaints, I came across another mention of the Legacy System. People were saying that, once you finished your first planet and opened the Legacy System, you could add a last name to your character. And while that is technically true, it turned out that it wasn't accurately true. But again, I will discuss later.
At one point early in the game, I actually considered deleting and re-rolling Tag, to try and give him a proper name while I was still low level and wouldn't lose much. But then I decided to just live with it for now. Still, the naming mechanics are probably the one disappointment I've experienced with this game so far.
Wait a minute! Holy spit, my character is created and named, do I actually get to start playing the game now?! Eeeeee!
Pretty pretty cinematics...
Tagger arrives on Tython from wherever he did his initial training. Fresh faced, a little grumpy as usual, but eager to finish his training and prove himself a hero.
He's met at the landing pad by Derrin Weller and they chat a little.
In this game, most of the time when you speak to a contact or a person of interest, you get a little cinematic like in TSW, rather than the Wall O' Text like in City. But unlike TSW, in TOR your character doesn't just stand there like a lump while he's talked at. Instead, you get a choice of responses:
This will be familiar to you if you've played games like Mass Effect, where your responses determine some of the direction of the game (some JRPGs do this sort of thing too). You generally have three choices. The “good guy” choice, the neutral or “give me more info” choice, and then the “I'm a dick” choice. Your choices help to give your character a voice and an attitude. And in some cases in TOR, your choices will give you either Light or Dark points, which will later affect how others in the game view and interact with your character.
Your character does speak - TOR is fully voice acted - which in some games I find to be a detriment, because when your character is already voiced, to me, it feels like less of an RPG. But I'm not feeling like it's too much of a problem in TOR. It hasn't taken me out of the game at all, so far.
So, Tag's barely arrived, and there's already local problems that he is pressed into dealing with. Flesh Raiders are attacking a Jedi outpost and need help, so of course Darrin Weller is going to send the brand new arrival with the least amount of experience to deal with it!
I think we'll stop there and next time I will discuss the UI and actual game play.