Star Wars: The Old Republic
Review
The Force Is Strong In This One
by Quinn Levandoski
reviewed on PC
Clash Of The Saber
None of The Old Republic’s excellent voice acting or interesting missions would be worth anything, however, if the game’s combat wasn’t up to the same standards as everything else. Combat in SWTOR is pretty straightforward. Your character has a basic attack that delivers minimal damage but doesn’t require cool-down, along with a plethora of specials that can only be used every X seconds. The system is fine, but I found myself almost never using my basic attack. I wish that base attacks did something more than just deliver weak damage, since it’s normally just not worth it to keep clicking for what amounts to a very minimal reward. The obvious solution would be to input auto attack, where your character automatically performs a basic attack while your more powerful skills recharge, but I’m not a huge fan of this idea either since it makes me feel as though I’m losing some control over my character. This is one instance where I’m just not sure what the best solution is. All I know is that the combat, while definitely fun and varies, just seems like it’s missing something. Maybe it’s just because BioWare has set a new MMO standard in so many other areas of the game that the “been there, done that” feeling of some of the combat simply seems modest by comparison.
Combat also extends into space, but what could have been an excellent addition to mix up gameplay now and then ended up, in my opinion, feeling like filler. In short, space combat feels a bit like Star Fox Lite. You control your ship as it moves on-rails through the given environment. These missions can indeed be pretty, but they lack any real meat. They are completely linear with no shortcuts or alternate paths (at least not that I’ve come across), objectives are normally no more complex than “kill X enemy ships,” and even become repetitive after a short time. Normally I’d just say to stay away from ship combat and move on, but the failure for the feature to be fully realized hurts because there was so much potential for fun to be had. I have no problem with most of the missions being linear, but take a cue from the Star Fox series that clearly inspired the feature and add in some open-area dogfights and boss battles. On that note, just add some interesting boss battles period. Maybe sometime down the line we’ll get some better ship combat content added in an expansion, but as of now I just can’t get excited about it.
The Force Is Strong In This One
One thing that I was worried about when first popping in The Old Republic was how well the game would play when I didn’t have anyone else to play with. Clearly I can always group with some random people, but every now and then you might find yourself in an area without anyone doing your particular quest. This is where companions come in. Throughout your story in the game, you’ll come across a number of companion characters that you can bring with you on your journeys to aid you in various ways. One important way they help is fighting alongside you when you need another group member. These companions aren’t the greatest fighters, but they do an excellent job of filling in during a pinch. You can only take one with you at a time, but since they range from tanks to healers to damage givers, there’s always someone to hit the spot. In addition to fighting along side you, your companions can also go out and do missions, which has them bring back loot or crafting materials for you. While this is a nice way to earn some extra resources, I’m a bit disappointed that you can’t queue your allies to do multiple tasks. It becomes a bit cumbersome to have to manually send someone out each time they return, so it would be nice to be able to select a few different actions that they’ll automatically move on to when something is completed. A very minor complaint, but something that would complement this feature greatly.
So, there you have it. I still might not be what you’d call “an MMO guy,” but I am having a heck of a lot of fun with The Old Republic and plan on keeping my account active for quite some time. I’m in love with the personal storytelling that the game delivers with a fully voice-acted cast, I think most of the group dynamics work extremely well together, and I really feel a connection to my characters. These huge positives outweigh the few problems that I have with the game that hold it back from being an automatic recommend for anyone. A lot of people believed that The Old Republic would re-define the MMO genre as we know it. While it doesn’t completely succeed at this, it has changed the playing field in certain respects and will in my opinion, at least in a few areas, be one of the staples that new MMOs are compared to. The life of any MMO is completely dependent on how active its community stays, but if BioWare can keep supporting their game with the incredible amount of attention to detail and love that clearly went into the original release, I sense that the force will be strong with this one for some time to come.
8.7
fun score
Pros
An engaging and detailed world, excellent voice acting, each class has a compelling story
Cons
A few too many generic side missions, space combat is underwhelming
