Star wars, the money wars...

As I mentioned in my post about Tera, I am not a fan of Star wars: the old republic ideas of free gaming. So I thought I made a post dedicated only to that game and include any additional things that spiked my rage and the things I actually liked.

I should also point out that it has been a while since I’ve played the game, so it is very likely that things have changed or have been updated. I am not well-versed in the Star wars universe either, so don’t expect me to judge any story flaws and such.  

The good things

Well, I can’t really say it was all bad since the game had me glued to my screen for longer that I care to admit now. Some aspects were really interesting and did make you want to play more.

The first of one was the way the story was told. I have to admit, there must have been quite a budget behind this one. Basically anytime you talk to someone you’ll get a full animated scene of the characters talking… and you can actually talk back! You are given choices (2-3) of how to reply, some replies making you good and the others evil. You can even choose if you would rather bribe a certain snitch, kill him or get his silence by flirting. That’s how my character accidently had a very… private encounter with a particular “horny” Zabrak. (If you got that joke you most likely don’t need this review.)

The other thing that stuck with me was getting your very own spaceship. That did allow for a very interesting fast travel system from one planet to another. It also gave you the opportunity to engage in space battles and mission with your ship, giving the game a more varied way of fighting. You could even make your own crew and best of all; you could even take one member as your companion that aided you in fights.

Now on a more feminist note, I have to applaud the game for their portrayal of women. The female characters were no less clothed than men, wearing the same spy suit and the same jedi robes. That is one of its key points against Tera, where the girls still seem to miss key parts of their armor. Also, the female characters of SWTOR you interact with are all just as fleshed out as men. It really is a big step in the right direction of female portrayal in video games, at least in my opinion.

The bad things

For starters, I’d cross the “free to play” sign right off it. It felt like at every turn the game was grabbing for my wallet and urging me to pay for something. I fully acknowledge that games also need to earn money for maintaining their servers and so on, but when you restrict the gameplay like this, I wonder why you would even bother making the game free. At the very start, a lot of playable races are locked down and can only be obtained by becoming a paying member. Alright, I can live with playing as a cyborg and not a miraluka. However, then the game starts taking away more and more. Some useful skills like sprint or mount are pushed back several levels, making going from point A to point B incredibly tedious. There is equipment that monsters drop, but you yourself are not allowed to equip without paying real money first and even the basic feature like trading object with or sending letters fellow players is taken away. That was the striking point for me.

The other one is its combat. I don’t remember anything special about it. It was the tried and tested ‘click on enemy’ system that most MMO games use. It was alright back then, but after experiencing Tera’s combat I got spoiled. Another thing was that the enemies were usually grouped together. It wasn’t that bad since most of the objectives wanted you to kill off a massive amount of them, but the problem was you, the player, had no real means to avoid taking damage. The most you could do is build up your defense, get better armor and hit the dodge button every now and then. The fights usually left you with low health, making you either spend a fortune on med packs or making you wait for a long time between each fight to replenish your health.

Missed opportunities

Let’s move on. Remember those choices I talked about. Yeah, as the game progresses, that incredibly interesting feature slowly amounts to nothing. While it does make you follow the story a lot more than most other MMO games, the choices you make don’t seem to affect much. Your reactions are mostly forgotten. When it does matter for you picking the light or dark side, you even have little icons to tell you what’s good and what’s bad! It stops being about finding out which option is right or wrong, but a decision of: “Do I want my eyes to be red or white?” Yeah, the riveting moral grayness does not exist in this game, as you can see. Which is a shame as it would make the game so much more interesting to play. However, all you get is obvious, clear defined choices that are mostly about either killing a person for a bigger reward, or letting them go.

Conclusion

Star wars was a fun game to play for the time being, but now remains an unvisited icon in my game folder. All the buyable features along with the draggy combat and black-white decision-making really stared to get on my nerves. It is not a title I would recommend as it was back in the days of my brave jedi/sniper expeditions.