So, having played just a little while over the weekend, I decided to post a few thoughts about what I feel with regards to Star Wars: The Old Republic. As you can see, the game is not using any of the 2 branded graphics engine, Unreal 3 or Cry3, hence the texture of objects and environments seem kind of low-res when zoomed in. While people will say we don’t really zoom in all the time while playing, unfortunately, we do get much headshots during the quest conversations, exposing things such as the chunk of static crop of hair. Not really flattering, but this is just one of the small complains I have.
The combat itself is kind of tedious, and yes, players will say that having no auto-attack is a good thing, separates the noobs and the veterans in PvP and stuff. The point is, Bioware needs to have players from all sort of gameplay patterns, including the “lazy” ones in order to fill more subscriptions. Why not make auto-attack an option instead of pulling it out totally? This might have been answered somewhere else, but I still think a MMO should give players options, not restrictions. And it is kind of tiring for my aging fingers to spam the normal attack key…
Here comes the good part. Other than combat and the zoomed-in graphics, everything else seems awesome. I never thought I would buy into the voice-over and in-depth storytelling part, but I did. It keeps players engaged in the storyline, and somehow I did have the patience to listen through every dialogue without alt-tabbing out to watch my anime. The lore of Star Wars is not something one should take lightly in the game itself. The music is nice, graphics (without zooming in) is stunning, the system of letting players choose their paths in quests is kind of refreshing and the big, grand maps will leave players in awe.
What if the game was designed to have action combat instead of the traditional one? I am still kind of upset The Old Republic was not given this treatment, seeing that there are quite a number of guns classes and the ability to use the force and manually throw someone out gives a good idea how the game would have been. Light saber battles would have been awesome as well with active block and dodge, combined with the use of force… Oh well.
Is there really anything “new”? Yes, compared to the hordes of MMOs out there, the Star Wars setting is indeed very, very refreshing. What about gameplay? Personally, I don’t think so. Companion system, operations, space flight etc have all been done before in 1 form or another in other titles. The voice dialogue is a signature from Bioware’s other titles, including the quest options. Overall, Star Wars: The Old Republic is a good game, but if you are looking for something “new”, I don’t expect you to be forking out a monthly fee in the long run, especially with games like TERA and Guild Wars 2 on the horizon.
