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Star Wars: The Old Republic Review by Trollsbane

Trollsbane over at MMO-Champion has posted a nice review on the new Star Wars franchise, The Old Republic.

Trollsbane:

-Been gaming since Atari
-RPGs are the only thing I play anymore
-Love the story in games, and thus love Bioware games. Baldur's Gate is still one of the best games I've ever played.
-Played WoW from Vanilla till ICC, left, came back for Cata to try it, left again during first raiding tier
-Was GM and raid leader for years
-Played multiple other MMOs looking for enjoyment, but not really finding it.
-Hate alts in MMOs
-HATE questing
-Love PvP
-Like to read books
-Don't like Hollywood big graphics movies, would prefer a great story
-Like linear play, as it adds to and enhances the story
-Don't care for sandbox games
-Played TOR for 3 different full-time beta builds or so

UI:

I'm a fan of simple UIs and usually use the one the game ships with. Being used to WoW's UI for so long, I was a bit bewildered by TOR's at first. After settling in and giving it a chance, I found that I liked the setup quite well. The chat box in the upper left was weird, and I changed it right away to the standard lower left corner. After a while I decided to move it back, because something just didn't feel right about it. After giving it time, I actually came to enjoy it being in the default location while having my raid frames in the lower left position above the companion slot.
I liked the 4 different bars available, but didn't like that they couldn't be shortened or moved. I hope they change that.

Many people want customization options, and I feel Bioware is making a big mistake in not allowing this. While their UI setup serves a purpose, it's not what's best for everyone and a rather simple change could make it exactly what everyone wants for their own experiences. This needs to be allowed if for no other reason than there's just not a reason not to have it.

Exploration, Datacrons, and the world:

Remember now, I don't like sandbox games, and exploration is not a key feature for me. I honestly think games like Skyrim overdo it and it actually detracts from a game. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not ideal for me. That said, I don't care much for datacrons. Unfortunately, I'll need to find them all for the stat boosts. I will be one of those people that waits for a list of them all, and then goes grinding to get them. It's neat when you find them by chance, but not neat enough for people like me to go looking for them. For an example, (this has changed a bit since then) one on Tatooine required you to make your way to a high point and jump on a jawa balloon that encircles the entire map. Then you had to jump off at a certain point to get a datacron. The problem (at the time) was that this process took about an hour. Yeah, but no thanks. lol I know many people love this kind of thing, but I'm not one of them.

The world though is a different story. It is alive. There are ships and manta rays flying over head, explosions and crashing ships, wandering mobs and packs of them doing their thing, conversations between NPCs, etc. Now, these things don't happen everywhere and with everybody, but they are out there. I really like the stylized art style Bioware went with the game, and it makes the world look gorgeous. The style is one that won't look dated in a couple years like the games that go for a realistic look. This is crisp and clean.
Did you know that the difference between low and high settings results in practically a new looking world? It's true. If you put the settings low and look at the world around you, then change them to high, new things actually appear. Grass blades are present, tree branches and leaves appear, rocks stick out with real angles, lighting is dynamic and shadows fall from things overhead. It's actually quite amazing. Running the game on low settings gives you the basic look of the world and allows more people to play. Running on high will give you a rich new experience with details otherwise unseen. It's the most beautiful world(s) I've ever seen in an MMO so far, though GW2 will make that same statement when it's released.

Questing, voice acting, dialogue and choices, and story:

As I said, I hate questing in MMOs. I have to do stupid things that mean nothing and have no reason other than to gain XP. This is where TOR changes the entire market for the future. Gone are the days of click quest giver > spam button > don't care > go kill/collect. Though if you prefer that method, it's still available to you.
As someone who enjoys the story element above all else except gameplay, this is a smash hit. I was engrossed in my characters from the very beginning. I didn't notice that the cut scenes took me out of the leveling world for a bit. All I noticed is that the NPC, the reason, and my character were all important. The story drew me in so deeply that I forgot I should be out killing things to move an XP bar, or collecting things for crafting. I forgot that MMOs of the past didn't do this, and many people consider it a stupid mechanic for this type of game. I forgot that I wasn't playing a game for fun on my own time, but was in an MMO where others wanted me to level up so I can raid with them. I remembered what an RPG game should be like; immersive and fun.

The voice acting is top notch. Hardly anyone says otherwise, and I'm no exception. Some people will not like that your own character is fully voiced, because it's not what they wanted that character to sound like. I can understand that. But to me, hearing my character talk with personality was awesome. I'd give him an idea based off the conversation wheel, and he'd say something along the lines of my choice. It was fun to actually hear my character express my own thoughts.
I do wish the dialogue wheel had more than 3 options. If in no other place, I believe the character's personal story should have more options. I can understand that shared world quests could do without 6 options, but the class quests felt like they missed an opportunity. I'm not saying they are bad, because the stories are awesome. But when my smuggler only has 3 options to choose from, and none of them are flirt, threaten, persuade, bribe, etc, and instead the basics of yes, no, kill, don't kill, it makes me sad. It could have been so much more.

The story though, is amazing. 8 different stories to choose from, light and dark side choices on top of that, and all of them enthralling. That's a lot of options and for the first time in my MMO history, I actually want to have alts. I want to play every class. And if this game makes someone like me want to do that, I think they did something very right. If I kill someone at level 10, there's a decent chance that someone ambushes me for it later on. or if I save a child, the mother might come and reward me for it later. Things like this that add to the overall enjoyment for me.
I can understand some people will be pissed that no matter what choices you make, you really end up at the same point anyway. But those people need to remember that this is an MMO, and not a single player game. People need to end up in the same place in order to be on equal footing at end game. There's no save button, and that limits the amount of different endings and choices along the way.

Combat, controls, animations, and companions:

When I watch videos of other people playing TOR, I think it looks like garbage. The animations look weird, the combat looks out of whack, and it looks like the controls don't function well. It's a huge turnoff.
When I play it myself, I feel 100% different.
The controls are like every MMO of this style out before this. If you played WoW, you pretty much know how TOR will play. Personally, I'm happy about that because that has always been my favorite combat style. Imo, actual play is just as responsive as WoW. There are things that TOR does differently though, like no auto attack, that make it seem weird for a bit when making comparisons. Though I will say, as you level and learn your toon, you won't feel that way anymore.

With the way TOR does combat animations and the lack of auto attack, people will brand it as clunky. That's not really the case though. Once you learn your characters moves and rotations/priorities, combat doesn't slow down. Stringing together your spells is possible and brings life to the feeling. If you don't know what you are doing, it will show, and it will seem unimpressive. There's no denying that. You can't just waste all your resources and have to spam basic attack and hope the game works well. You need to use that noggin of yours. Though the exact can be said about every game in the world. Unfortunately, everyone seems to forget this and just want to trash on it. Double standards and turning a blind eye must be fun. /shrug

The animations in this game are so-so. Well, let me rephrase that. Some of them are so-so. The character animations out of combat aren't anything special. Jumping looks strange, running is hit or miss depending on your gear (Yeah really, gear changes it a lot. Watch your character run at level 1, and then compare that to level 20. It's strange.) and weapon, and some cut scenes are almost lifeless. Though I will say that even the lifeless cut scenes are just as good as any other game out there doing the same thing. It's something their entire industry needs to work on.

The combat animations on the other hand are hands down the best I've ever seen in an MMO. There is no need to hide poor animations behind tons of flashy lights and explosions. It's motion capture technology at work, and they did this very well. The subtle things are what really impressed me. Things like pivoting of a foot, wrist movement, head sways, recoil, facial expression changes, etc, really add a flavor to this game that is only seen in single player games. The lightsaber parries are awesome to watch. And the sheer amount of animations is outstanding. Every single move has its own unique animation. One thing that TOR does that initially throws people off is having one attack do a few different animations. Take the Warrior for example. One move makes him hit 3 different times over a couple seconds. At first, it feels off. but that's just because it hasn't been done before in an MMO. Once you get used to this game doing things differently, I believe you'll drop the thought of it being clunky and weird looking.

Companions make combat, and the game, stand out and outshine other games. You want to level as a healer in WoW, you better have the patience of a coma patient. You want to level as a healer in TOR, you'll go just as fast as a DPS. This is because of the added companion at your side. They compliment your role and add to the enjoyability of questing. They also are there to enhance the story, do jobs for you, and give you additional quests. I'll go into some of that a bit more later. The companions can be micromanaged as much or as little as you like, which is good for everyone. You toggle on which skills you want to use, then leave them alone to help you, or you can have their bar showing at all times (instead of the collapsed version) and can manually click their skills when you want them to use them. Also, the companions can leave your side to sell your junk items at any time. They'll be gone for 60 seconds, and you now have more credits and bag space. Yay!

Just remember, that like any other game, combat can be fast and furious, or slow as molasses. The controls are in your hands, and you are the one that dictates it.

Flashpoints, Operations, Single player, and being a MMO:

I can't remember a dungeon where I was thinking to myself, "wow, that was pretty fucking epic." in any game I've ever played. TOR changed that for me. The added story element and reasoning to do things enhances this feature so much. The alive feeling of the flashpoints, such as infiltrator pods crashing into the spaceship releasing droids, ships flying overhead and being shot down in front of you, ground troops running in through side passages, etc, brought the classic dungeon crawl to new levels of immersion and enjoyment.

As for difficulty, you've all heard varying reports. The first build I was in has every boss tank and spank. The next added more enemy abilities, and the next added even more. Now, some of you are even hearing of groups getting slaughtered by the first flashpoint bosses. While I wouldn't go so far as to say they are hard, they definitely are not loleasymode unless you are in a group with people that are experienced. There are challenges to be had for sure. With 15 or so in the game at launch, and the hard modes of those at level 50, along with the 2 initial Operations (raids) at launch, there is a lot of PvE to be had outside of questing. Operations also come in varying degrees of difficulty, so there is a version to be played based on your skill and desire. Depending on how they do lockouts and the mode of gear progression and new content, a lot of people will be split on this. Running the same place on 8man reg, hard, nightmare, then on 16man, reg, hard, nightmare could get old really fast. We'll need to wait and see the final implication though.

"It's just a single player game". Are you high? In WoW, or any MMO I've even played (that does not force grouping, like FF) it's a single player game throughout the entire leveling process. So why is this game being bashed for the same thing? My only guess is because it actually has a story. Other than that, it boggles my mind when people say these things. TOR actually has more group content than any other game I've played. Every planet has multiple group questing areas where you need a group of people to complete them. You level faster and get better rewards if you are grouped. You get social points by grouping and answering dialogue options, that give you access to some rather good gear for the cost of credits. You have your warzones, and a few open world PvP areas and objectives for PvP, your flashpoints, your operations, so I really have no clue at all how people can question the "MMOness" of the game. It's got everything the other games have, plus more, to promote grouping.

PvP:

I enjoyed PvP in other games more than PvE. Not that I didn't enjoy PvE, cause I did, but PvP, especially battlegrounds, were amazingly enjoyable for me. Unfortunately, WoW went the wrong way with it. Too many things were done that left me scratching my head and sucked the fun out of it for me. Lucky for me though, warzones in TOR were amazing fun for me. I did warzones exclusively for an entire month on my level 50 Bounty Hunter tank. Huttball was easily my favorite of them all. WSG was my favorite WoW battleground, and Huttball was the same sort of thing; get the ball and get to the objective to win. As a tank, I was a ball carrying machine.

Regardless of what some people will tell you, I found TOR to be the most balanced PvP of any game I've ever played. Now, that's not saying they were perfect, or that they won't totally screw it up down the road, but on the overall, it was pretty darned balanced. The ratio of damage output vs incoming was what impressed me. As a tank, if I stood toe to toe with a DPS and we both stood there going through rotations, he would usually win, but he'd be almost dead by the end of it. I'd hit for less, but soak more damage. He'd hit for more, but would also take more damage. And thus a long forgotten thing is reborn in TOR.
Strategy.
To those saying snipers had no place in PvP because of cover, or healers weren't lasting long enough (hah), or tanks couldn't do anything, or knockback abilities rule Huttball, or Sorcerers could beat anyone, or that spec is obviously the best, etc, all I have to say about that is you need more time to learn how to play, and how to play smartly. I've seen all those things, and I've also seen all of those thoughts blown up. Use your head in this game. it counts for more than other games you are used to playing. All the "OP skills" have counters. All the "OP classes" can be managed. All the "too weak" mechanics can be mastered. It's up to you to learn them, not the game designers.

The slower combat is a huge turn-on for me. If you like WoW's 3 hit kills, you may not like this game. Strategy and timing has a lot to do with TOR's PvP. You can't run into a group all by yourself and nuke down one of their players and expect it to work well. You can't global a lone guy defending a node and take it real fast. PvP is different.

Are there problems? Yes. The resolve bar keeps getting tweaked, and they have yet to nail it down perfectly. There is a lot of CC in warzones. And it gets really frustrating when a team knows how to use it. The bar needs to fill up a bit faster and once it's filled, it needs to break you out of your CC immediately and give you your 8 seconds of immunity. That's the only way I see it really helping. The last time I played (and I believe it was changed again since then) by the time you had immunity, you were already dead anyway. It was far too slow for group play, and was rarely even a factor in 1v1 because it wouldn't get high enough to fill.

Balance needs to be had. I played builds that they were tweaking things and made some classes really OP. The build before Troopers and BHs were mirrors, Troopers were OP as all hell. They had too much burst, and they healed for too much. The next build it was Sorcs and Sages. They dominated pretty well. They did say that sorcs/sages were where they wanted them to be in that build, and other classes would be brought in line with them in the future. I hope they don't fail in that.

PvP gear currently is awesome. It works well for leveling when you need a cetain peice replaced, and in PvP it only gives about a 10% advantage, which is really small when you factor in strategy to the equation. What the worry is, is that once the raiding gear starts getting better, the PvP gear will need to do the same or the advantage is null and void. Also last I saw, there were no PvP mods. The PvP stat was on a couple mod slots, so you couldn't switch out those mods for better stats, or you'd lose the PvP stat, which was the main reason for the gear in the first place. I hope this changes.
Overall though, as a PvP lover, I was highly impressed with the amount of fun I had in TOR.

Crafting and crew skills:

I hate crafting. I always have and never devote time to it to make it anything more than a stat boost. TOR won't make that different for me. I still will not devote time to crafting. I'll let my guildmates do it instead. It's not that I think the system is bad, it's just not one of my interests.
The way it works is similar to how Aion did it. You can crit items to make better versions of the items. That's neat I guess, but overall you'll just end up with a lot of vendor trash since people will only want the crit versions. You can reverse engineer (DE) certain items and that will give you some mats back, as well as a chance to crit and learn a higher quality item recipe. I'm unsure how far that goes atm, but I do know a green can net you a blue recipe, and blue can net you a purple recipe. It may or may not actually stop there.

Crewskills are what the entire system is called because you have your crew do it for you. Darth Vader didn't spend time making his own boots, he had his minions do it. The same is true for TOR. When you want to craft and item, or 20, your companions do that for you. Gone are the days of watching your character's hands wiggle back and forth with a bar timer overhead. And thank you for that, Bioware. Sending companions out for a chance of credits, materials, etc is also a cool feature and a gold sink. You can easily go broke if you're overdoing it. =)

Misc:

The sounds and music are incredible. The codex is a lore junkie’s wet-dream come true. The map is the most impressive I've ever seen. Enemy AI is pretty good. When you encounter a group of 4 mobs, the melee one will rush you, one ranged will roll for cover, another will run the opposite way for cover, and the last might stand where he is and open fire. It really adds dimension to the combat cause you're not just standing still doing your things and letting all the mobs come to you. You need to be active and go get them yourself. Tanking is more reactive than it was for me in WoW. I had to actually work to keep aggro on groups, get them together, position them the best way, etc. I had a lot of fun tanking. Healing is still getting tweaked a bit, but I enjoyed my time as a Sorc. Resource management is crucial in some fights, and I was on my toes in group activity. Mouse over macros would surely save the day here though. Manually clicking the people or raid icons was fine for me, but I know many healers will be pissed about it. Space combat is stupid, for me. Though I'd have been even more disappointed if they actually invested time and resources to make it a full fledged game like so many people are crying about. TOR is a game about your character, on the ground, playing out your story. It's not, nor was it ever going to be, a spacecraft simulator. I'd loathe building my character to be a leveled up powerhouse that I love, then disregarding all of that work to be in a spaceship with totally different abilities and more crap to level and skill up to be able to compete.

Misc:

It's no surprise coming from me, but I am in love with this game and can’t wait to get in there with my guild. In my opinion, this is Bioware's best ever; their crowned jewel. It's been a long time since I've had real fun in an MMO, and I'm glad that TOR delivered for what my personal tastes are. It won't be for everyone. Some people will hate it passionately for their own reasons. But overall, I see the game becoming a huge success. The story aspect adds an incredible replay value to the game for people that like to play single player games, and a big chance that people will roll alts, even the ones like me that have always hated rolling them. The linear gameplay doesn't bother me one bit. Because after all, WoW was the pretty much same. Just because I could pick Darnassus or Stormwind did not mean I took much of a different path. after 1 time through each continent, it was all the same. And at level 60 and onward, it was pretty much all the same, just like TOR. The shared world quests may get tiring for most people, but that's what your spacebar is for. Skip the dialogue after you've already done it (or don't care to ever see it). No one is making you watch them each time, so the room for complaining about cut scenes is a thin one imo.

The biggest surprise of this game was when I tried to go play other games after playing TOR. I tried every free-to-play MMO there is, as well as a few sub based ones when I was done with TOR. I couldn't get into or have fun with a single one of them; even the ones I've enjoyed in the past. That was the real kicker for me.

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