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    Star Wars: The Old Republic

    Game » consists of 5 releases. Released Dec 20, 2011

    Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively-multiplayer role-playing game set 300 years after the events of BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic series, but still approximately 3,600 years before the events of the films.

    wagrid's Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC) review

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    Star Wars: The Old Republic: It is OK.

    Star Wars: The Old Republic is a very strange game. Not in the same way that KOTOR II was strange, with its outright evisceration for classic Star Wars tropes, but strange in that even years into its life span I still don't know what to make of it.

    In terms of gameplay, this is a WOW style MMO. It doesn't really have any new ideas; it wont convert people who don't care for MMOs, and it wont win over anybody invested in WOW. It is competent, that is the kindest I can be. An overhaul to be more in line with Dragon Age would most definitely be in this games benefit, particularly since TOR has long since dropped any pretence of being a serious MMO (more on that later).

    Released in 2011, the game has a lot going for it visually. Most of the art is lovingly crafted and the style they selected is smart. However, the game has some major technical flaws, still managing to run choppily on a machine that can run GTAV maxed out without breaking a sweat. Furthermore, its age is starting to show, with many textures looking blurry. Still, even years on the art remains a point in its favour.

    Sticking with presentation its also worth talking about the music. I doubt I could pick out any of the games original score, but the game makes some very smart use of recognisable tracks from the previous KOTORs as well as the movies. Re-contextualising John Williams excellent work on the prequel trilogy is a very welcome thing.

    The best thing on offer here are, obviously, the stories and there is a lot worth seeing there. The Jedi Knight storyline is KOTOR III in all but name and if you like Star Wars and the way BioWare tells stories its well worth seeing. The Imperial Agent is genuinely very well written, playing out like a Bond movie, or, if you prefer, MGS3 in space. However, the writing for many of the class stories is uneven - The Trooper completely runs out of steam after the first act and the Sith Inquisitor takes forever to get going, but ends up being great fun. Overall, I'm left thinking that many of these stories would have done better as their own games - Knight should have been a stand alone KOTOR III, considering that series never got a true resolution and committing to an MMO as large as TOR to see it is too much to ask. Trooper should have been Republic Commando 2. Agent absolutely deserves to be a Mass Effect style RPG.

    The writing then, is, overall patchy, but the good stuff makes up for the bad. I should point out that many of the romances are particularly cringe worthy and even the ones that aren't rest on a very creepy power imbalance between the player character and NPC.

    The game's worst sin is some of the area design. There are planets (Hoth, Tatooine and Alderaan) that are needlessly vast, utterly boring and seemingly only exist as cheap references to the movies. In general, the game can be a real slog at times and I highly recommend anybody interested in playing do so during one of the 12x XP for class missions promotions, so they can see the story, without getting bogged down with the more boring planets.

    In general, it feels like it has too much content. Too many planets that feel like they're in the game just so they could brag about how many planets they have. Too many planets that are vast and empty, seemingly so they could brag about 'vast questing areas'.

    Mostly, I've talked about content that existed in the game at launch. The class stories/levelling experience still forms the bulk of the game, so I think that is fair, but I can't get away with not talking about the new content.

    The end game is infinitely more robust on the PVE end. There's a nice variety of raids and daily questing zones ranging from level 50-60 and a staggering number of instances. If that's your primary interest, SWTOR is much easier to recommend now than at launch.

    However, PVP still languishes. New maps are introduced at a glacial pace and the variety of game modes is still limited to one per map. Constant promises to improve the PVP experience seem to have been forgotten, then remembered and restated months later, only to be forgotten again. PVP is absolutely a side show here, and anybody interested in should be aware of this.

    Earlier in the review, I talked about SWTOR no longer trying to be a serious MMO, and that's true. It failed at that and instead the game is clearly aiming at being a much lighter experience. It's trying to be Star Wars dress up. If that sounds appealing, then the game has a lot to offer.

    In conclusion, Star Wars: The Old Republic is kind of a mess. It gets a lot right, and you can see where the money was spent, ultimately much of it is just mediocre. Its hard to say what could have been done differently after years with the game we ended up with. Combat much more similar to Dragon Age is fairly high on my wish, but I came to this game looking for KOTOR III, and maybe I'm failing to break out of the single-player CRPG mindset with this request. I do think the game should have been pared down dramatically. Act I of the game is four planets long and that feels like too many. I think cutting each act of the game to two planets each would have dramatically increased the time that could have been spent polishing the rest of it, or had more end game content available at launch, although this latter request is much less relevant now than in 2011.

    Other reviews for Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)

      Force Majeure 0

      The gravest mistake the producers of the latest Star Wars movies ever made was to think they could tell a great story. In doing so they failed to realise that the greatest of all Star Wars stories have already been told and told repeatedly, in school playgrounds, at friend’s houses and almost anywhere where fans of the series may roam and gather. Disappointment was inevitable, as was the decidedly unpleasant nature of much of the backlash.George Lucas openly admitted that seeing kids with ...

      8 out of 8 found this review helpful.

      There are gems to find 0

      As you can see, the reviews are all over the place for this game and that is due to the fact that the game has a lot of stuff, some of which is good and some of which is bad, and the question is: will you find something that is fun for you? The answer might be yes, but you will have to find the strength to ignore a lot of the garbage, and you will sometimes need luck to stumble into the right stuff. I was lucky to pick the Imperial Agent as my first class and I enjoyed its story and the open wor...

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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