Star Wars - The Old Republic - Page 145

On December 24 2011 03:03 Destructicon wrote:
Ok here is my review of the game after playing it for 30 hours during the short beta and getting to level 23.

Graphics 9/10
Poly count seems good, textures are good, I haven't seen any graphical errors, texture shutters or things like that, so from a technical point of view its solid. Artistically, yes the graphics is somewhat cartoonish, but even so it still has an undeniable charm, and it manages to capture an incredible sense of grandeur that I haven't seen in any game, without killing your PC. I quested on Coruscant and and the size and beauty of it was astonishing, it trully felt like you where on an entire planet, and yet it didn't drop my frame rates.

Sound 10/10
Everything in this game sounds right, the familiar wum of a lightsaber, the ring of the blasters, the explosion of concussive explosions, it all rings star wars. The music scores set the tone of the game, swinging between calm and adventurous tones to high energy and intense as you go from exploring to killing. You will recognize music scores from all the Star Wars movies, from the original trilogy to the new trilogy and even music from some of the other most successful star wars games.
The voice acting is fantastic, for each and every situation the voice acting is just right, capturing the correct amount of emotions, from fear and anxiety, to anger to excitement and joy.

Immersion 10/10
The brilliant combination of graphics and music creates a game in which you feel invested in, a game that you feel you want to play more and more because, you care about the characters and the story and how it all unfolds.

Gameplay 5/10
This, is probably more than anything, my own personal opinion and thus is subjective so, take it with a grain of salt.

I'll start first by tackling space combat. At level 20 you get your own space ship which acts as your home, base of operation and combat craft.
The problem is, space combat is very dumbed down, you don't actually steer your craft,it goes on auto-pilot while you target and destroy the enemy. While it looks nice at first, the lack control will really get to you soon and you'll start to get bored and hate it. This is a real pitty because, space combat had the potential to become its own thing, you could have flaspoints, operations and PVP battles in space, all reminiscent of TIE Fighter or Rogue Squadron. In my opinion this is the first thing that needs to be improved in the game in an expansion pack.

Crafting is done in a new and interesting way. You don't actually craft items yourself, you order your companions to craft for you, and this can be done even while you are in a flashpoint or questing. You also have access to three professions, however only one of them can be a crafting prof, the rest have to be support profs. Not only can you craft items but, you can recycle them to get back some mats, this makes farming much less of a hassle, though I don't know how it is at late game. One major problem I had though, when a crew member finishes crafting an item for you, it goes directly into your inventory, while questing this can really turn into a major annoyance, if you had the option for them to store the items in your ship's storage, it would be better.

Combat is very similar to WoW, or Rift. You have a hotkey bar and a set of skills, you use skills to build up energy and use finisher moves to drain that energy and do more damage. At level 10 you also gain your first talent point and can chose to specialize in one of two ways. And even within those two choices you have 3 talent trees to chose from, so there is a lot of diversity.

My problem is, I am just tired of this kind of gameplay. I hate tried and true by now, I want something new, and flashy. This kind of gameplay just doesn't do it for me, and I am very, very disappointed that BioWare didn't try to innovate in this area and just copied the Everquest formula. With that said, if you still like this kind of gameplay then by all means go and try it. For me though, and I'm sure there are many other people that feel the same, this combat is antiquated and is not enough to keep me playing, no matter how good the story or PVP is.

PVE
This is done a lot via instanced story areas and flashpoints. Even in the open world you will sometimes run into areas marked by red or green portals. The green portal means only you or your class can enter the portal, red means its for another class and you can't enter.
Each class area advances your class story in a particular way. The elegant part here is that, choices you made towards the beginning of the game will have implications in future story areas and it manages to simulate the feeling of consequence and having an impact on the world. This is by far the most brilliant part thing they have done and I salute Bioware for it.

However, remember, despite the instanced story areas, 90% of questing is still done along side hundreds of other players in a huge planet world, so a part of the immersion is broken there.

Flashpoints are very entertaining as well, when in a group and talking to an NPC you get some conversation choices the same as for regular quests, however the system then runs a roll to see which character will talk. This randomized system manages to capture the feel that everyone is involved in the story, another cool feature. And even if three of your partners chose the Dark Side, you won't receive Dark Side points if you chose the Light Side option.

The PVE encounters themselves didn't feel very special though. It always felt like I've seen the basic idea of a fight at least somewhere else in another game.

I won't comment on PVP since I haven't played it at all.

Anyway, this is my feeling on the game. I will not be buying the game yet since I find it too expensive, when the price goes down and everything stabilizes I'll get it. However I will not play this game past the max level. The real reason to play this game, is the story elements which are done like in no other MMO and are worth their way in gold. The Story is just brilliant. Its too bad I was sick and tired of the combat and questing, the running around killing stuff, no mater how it is covered up still feels the same and it is not enough to keep me playing more then the initial month they give me for free.

I hope some of you find this small review useful.