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This is going to be a hard game to review, first because it's beta, and second, it's a MMO. Please note, this is just an impression review, as in, things may change on release or may be different than from what I've experienced.
I played in the beta weekend test from 11/25 to 11/27. The beta did go till the 28th, but I passed on really playing it, as I tested what I wanted to test.
Title: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Rating: T, rating changes in game
Genre: MMORPG
Graphics: 7/10 - I'm not a graphics whore, and graphics can be horrible depending on your video card too when it comes to MMOs. And while the cutscenes were really pretty, the overworld graphics lacked a certain charm as WoW had. Also, maybe it's because I had something turned down low, but the graphics seemed too dark, even when my character was in board daylight.
The UI is not too bad, but far from great, and hopefully will be more customable on release. There were some bugs with it as well, so I expect it to be more polished on release for sure.
The character customization is also lacking. While there are different races, they all look the same and are all humanoid. Cyborgs, besides one cosmetic different, looks exactly like human.
What's even more disappointing too is NPCs in the cutscenes use recycled models for body and facials. There's no excuse for having recycled models for this, especially considering how games made by Bioware have many custom features, like Dragon Age.
Plot: 8/10 - I'm only going to go on the character questlines here, the other quests will be covered in the gameplay. The character quests I've played so far, Bounty Hunter and Sith Inquisitor, have been really good and interesting. I only got to level 16 on my Inquisitor and 11 on my Bounty Hunter, but from what I've seen, I want to play further with both story lines.
Music/sound: 9/10 - Not going to lie here, the music and sound is awesome. When you swing your lightsaber, you feel like you're swinging an actual lightsaber. When you're shooting a blaster, you feel like you're shooting a blaster, and you feel like you're in the movie.
The music is epic. When you start a character, it even plays the familiar opening Star Wars theme.
The Voice acting in the game so far is fairly well done. There are some recycled lines your character says, but so far, it doesn't deter from the game.
Gameplay: This is divided into 6 sub-categories since MMOs are different.
Combat 6/10 - The combat is pretty dull and can be a little clumsy, more so the caster than the ranged I played. I have no idea how melee combat is. Targetting is horrible and brings me back to the old vanilla days in WoW. The only way to switch targets is to either tab or manually target, and that's a huge pain. No target-of-target exists, though this might change. The casting animations for healing is beyond dull. I thought it was bad in WoW, but it's worse in this game. Healing so far is the same spam heals, watch bars as every other MMO has, though you can dps during combat, depending how end game bosses are, this may not be possible in tight situations.
Star Wars adds something unique into the game called companions. These companions are sort of like your own personal NPCs or 'pets', as in they will fight with you in the open world and other things I'll cover later. Combat wise, they act like hunter pets. They actually have really good AI on their part, and they are very useful depending on what role you are, and I'd recommend you always have a companion out when you quest in the wide world. Also, any thing you can't use, you can give to your companion to use, which is great, because almost every item you find won't go unused.
Crafting 7/10 - Instead of your character doing crafting, you now have your companions do everything for you. You have the option of gathering the materials yourself in the world or sending your companion out to get them along with paying a small fee for them. As you go up in level for your crafting, your companion takes longer. If you have more than 1 companion, you can send the companion you're currently not using to get you mats too, which is really useful and you don't have to pause your gameplay.
However, it takes the overall feel away and while it seems good in theory, it's one less thing you have to do, and this might not work out too well end game. There's also the fact that you can only have 1 crafting ability and 2 gathering. You can't have 2 crafting abilities, which sucks if you decide to have an alt and want the alt to have 2 crafting abilities or if you want your alt to have all 3 gathering abilities.
You can also make something and 'reverse engineer' it to attempt to get another schematic. I don't know if you'll have to obtain schematics through other means later in the game, as I only got up to level 16.
PvE (Questing, exploring) 7/10 - If you played any other MMO like Rift or WoW, this is exactly the same thing only with a different paint. You gain experience by completing quests which range from 'fetch me this item!' to 'go explore this area!' to 'Kill X mobs'. There are 'bonus' quests you can complete with some quests and while you don't have to complete them, 90% of the time, you'll find yourself completing them anyways because it's on your way to your goal, so in a way, it's not exactly 'optional'. You also gain experience from killing mobs, pvping, and dungeons, which I will cover later on. But basically, you gain experience points the same ways you do in any other MMOs.
There are some innovative ideas such as Voice Acting every quest, but this backfires because you get tired of every single quest you get being VAed, and find yourself skipping the dialogue just so you can get your quest and go back to the game.
You get your own ship, which is a nice touch, and you can fly to whatever planet you want to go and play a mini game where you fly your ship in space combat wise. Sadly, this mini game is pretty much a space rail shooter, which may disappoint fans who wanted something more out of this than a Star Fox clone. So far, I found no real gain from doing this, but this feature would be a wonderful way to customize your ship both inside and out in the future.
Like other Bioware games, they added in an option to romance one of your companions, which adds another element into the game. I don't think I know of any MMO that has something like that, and it may be interesting. Sadly, I did not obtain a romancable companion on my Inquisitor, so I wasn't able to try this out, but you can send your companion to get gifts on certain crafting quests and give those gifts to your companions. You can also raise affection by taking your companions through quest dialogue and flashpoint dialogue.
The first flashpoint I tried out, Black Talon, is really fun and through dialogue choices, you can actually change the outcome of what happens in the dungeon and even change the mobs you fight as well. Depending on what and who is in your group will determine the drop rates, which is a huge improvement over a lot of game's dungeon systems, where as in you can go into one and all the drops are items that no one in the group can currently use.
PvP 5/10 - I had high hopes for Huttball. Sadly, after playing a game, my hopes shattered. I have a feeling that Huttball will be really fun if you go in a premade group. But doing it with a PuG is unbearable. The other two PvP warzones are pretty much clones of WoW BGs, only with different paint. PvP is going to be a problem in the future, because everyone has some sort of stuns/knockdowns. This could become really frustration with healing when you're constantly getting interrupted, stunned, or knocked down. It could make casters frustrated as well. It's still too soon to say, but I really did not enjoy the PvP as a healing spec, from what I've played.
End game (50 only content) N/A - I haven't played any end content in Star Wars, so I can't give feedback on it.
Misc (Latency. bugs, configuration, community) N/A - I'm not going to score this as well since it's a beta, it's expected for bugs. I expected Latency issues as well as crashes, but in all honesty, I rarely had any serious lag issues and I think I crashed once or twice out of 3 days playing, which is really good. Because features were missing as well, I can't make a final call for this option. Community I can't comment on, but this game feels more like a single play game with co-op rather than a MMO.
Final Score 6.25/10 - Lot of features lack polish or haven't even tried yet. This will change on launch for sure.
Overall: 7.5/10 - Overall, it's an enjoyable game with some flaws. There's no way to tell if it's game to stick a subscritpion fee with until end game content is out. If you're burnt out on WoW and want something totally different, I would say pass on Star Wars. However, if you like the current formula and are tired of just WoW's environment, I would say pick up Star Wars. You'll get your money's worth out of the first month and getting to level 50, at the very least.
I played in the beta weekend test from 11/25 to 11/27. The beta did go till the 28th, but I passed on really playing it, as I tested what I wanted to test.
Title: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Rating: T, rating changes in game
Genre: MMORPG
Graphics: 7/10 - I'm not a graphics whore, and graphics can be horrible depending on your video card too when it comes to MMOs. And while the cutscenes were really pretty, the overworld graphics lacked a certain charm as WoW had. Also, maybe it's because I had something turned down low, but the graphics seemed too dark, even when my character was in board daylight.
The UI is not too bad, but far from great, and hopefully will be more customable on release. There were some bugs with it as well, so I expect it to be more polished on release for sure.
The character customization is also lacking. While there are different races, they all look the same and are all humanoid. Cyborgs, besides one cosmetic different, looks exactly like human.
What's even more disappointing too is NPCs in the cutscenes use recycled models for body and facials. There's no excuse for having recycled models for this, especially considering how games made by Bioware have many custom features, like Dragon Age.
Plot: 8/10 - I'm only going to go on the character questlines here, the other quests will be covered in the gameplay. The character quests I've played so far, Bounty Hunter and Sith Inquisitor, have been really good and interesting. I only got to level 16 on my Inquisitor and 11 on my Bounty Hunter, but from what I've seen, I want to play further with both story lines.
Music/sound: 9/10 - Not going to lie here, the music and sound is awesome. When you swing your lightsaber, you feel like you're swinging an actual lightsaber. When you're shooting a blaster, you feel like you're shooting a blaster, and you feel like you're in the movie.
The music is epic. When you start a character, it even plays the familiar opening Star Wars theme.
The Voice acting in the game so far is fairly well done. There are some recycled lines your character says, but so far, it doesn't deter from the game.
Gameplay: This is divided into 6 sub-categories since MMOs are different.
Combat 6/10 - The combat is pretty dull and can be a little clumsy, more so the caster than the ranged I played. I have no idea how melee combat is. Targetting is horrible and brings me back to the old vanilla days in WoW. The only way to switch targets is to either tab or manually target, and that's a huge pain. No target-of-target exists, though this might change. The casting animations for healing is beyond dull. I thought it was bad in WoW, but it's worse in this game. Healing so far is the same spam heals, watch bars as every other MMO has, though you can dps during combat, depending how end game bosses are, this may not be possible in tight situations.
Star Wars adds something unique into the game called companions. These companions are sort of like your own personal NPCs or 'pets', as in they will fight with you in the open world and other things I'll cover later. Combat wise, they act like hunter pets. They actually have really good AI on their part, and they are very useful depending on what role you are, and I'd recommend you always have a companion out when you quest in the wide world. Also, any thing you can't use, you can give to your companion to use, which is great, because almost every item you find won't go unused.
Crafting 7/10 - Instead of your character doing crafting, you now have your companions do everything for you. You have the option of gathering the materials yourself in the world or sending your companion out to get them along with paying a small fee for them. As you go up in level for your crafting, your companion takes longer. If you have more than 1 companion, you can send the companion you're currently not using to get you mats too, which is really useful and you don't have to pause your gameplay.
However, it takes the overall feel away and while it seems good in theory, it's one less thing you have to do, and this might not work out too well end game. There's also the fact that you can only have 1 crafting ability and 2 gathering. You can't have 2 crafting abilities, which sucks if you decide to have an alt and want the alt to have 2 crafting abilities or if you want your alt to have all 3 gathering abilities.
You can also make something and 'reverse engineer' it to attempt to get another schematic. I don't know if you'll have to obtain schematics through other means later in the game, as I only got up to level 16.
PvE (Questing, exploring) 7/10 - If you played any other MMO like Rift or WoW, this is exactly the same thing only with a different paint. You gain experience by completing quests which range from 'fetch me this item!' to 'go explore this area!' to 'Kill X mobs'. There are 'bonus' quests you can complete with some quests and while you don't have to complete them, 90% of the time, you'll find yourself completing them anyways because it's on your way to your goal, so in a way, it's not exactly 'optional'. You also gain experience from killing mobs, pvping, and dungeons, which I will cover later on. But basically, you gain experience points the same ways you do in any other MMOs.
There are some innovative ideas such as Voice Acting every quest, but this backfires because you get tired of every single quest you get being VAed, and find yourself skipping the dialogue just so you can get your quest and go back to the game.
You get your own ship, which is a nice touch, and you can fly to whatever planet you want to go and play a mini game where you fly your ship in space combat wise. Sadly, this mini game is pretty much a space rail shooter, which may disappoint fans who wanted something more out of this than a Star Fox clone. So far, I found no real gain from doing this, but this feature would be a wonderful way to customize your ship both inside and out in the future.
Like other Bioware games, they added in an option to romance one of your companions, which adds another element into the game. I don't think I know of any MMO that has something like that, and it may be interesting. Sadly, I did not obtain a romancable companion on my Inquisitor, so I wasn't able to try this out, but you can send your companion to get gifts on certain crafting quests and give those gifts to your companions. You can also raise affection by taking your companions through quest dialogue and flashpoint dialogue.
The first flashpoint I tried out, Black Talon, is really fun and through dialogue choices, you can actually change the outcome of what happens in the dungeon and even change the mobs you fight as well. Depending on what and who is in your group will determine the drop rates, which is a huge improvement over a lot of game's dungeon systems, where as in you can go into one and all the drops are items that no one in the group can currently use.
PvP 5/10 - I had high hopes for Huttball. Sadly, after playing a game, my hopes shattered. I have a feeling that Huttball will be really fun if you go in a premade group. But doing it with a PuG is unbearable. The other two PvP warzones are pretty much clones of WoW BGs, only with different paint. PvP is going to be a problem in the future, because everyone has some sort of stuns/knockdowns. This could become really frustration with healing when you're constantly getting interrupted, stunned, or knocked down. It could make casters frustrated as well. It's still too soon to say, but I really did not enjoy the PvP as a healing spec, from what I've played.
End game (50 only content) N/A - I haven't played any end content in Star Wars, so I can't give feedback on it.
Misc (Latency. bugs, configuration, community) N/A - I'm not going to score this as well since it's a beta, it's expected for bugs. I expected Latency issues as well as crashes, but in all honesty, I rarely had any serious lag issues and I think I crashed once or twice out of 3 days playing, which is really good. Because features were missing as well, I can't make a final call for this option. Community I can't comment on, but this game feels more like a single play game with co-op rather than a MMO.
Final Score 6.25/10 - Lot of features lack polish or haven't even tried yet. This will change on launch for sure.
Overall: 7.5/10 - Overall, it's an enjoyable game with some flaws. There's no way to tell if it's game to stick a subscritpion fee with until end game content is out. If you're burnt out on WoW and want something totally different, I would say pass on Star Wars. However, if you like the current formula and are tired of just WoW's environment, I would say pick up Star Wars. You'll get your money's worth out of the first month and getting to level 50, at the very least.
