Mini Review of SWTOR

[-PLASMA]

#382

I played SWTOR over the weekend and spent about 8 hours on it all up. It’s pretty good. I only played in the first zone really and got up to level 9 as a Jedi Knight. The MMOs I’ve played are CoH, CO, STO, DCUO, Age of Conan and APB: Reloaded so this is what I’m comparing to.

Graphics:
The graphics are ok, not as good as I expected. I think the graphics in STO are slightly better but they will probably improve over the next year as it settles in. Character movement is ok. Better than Age of Conan but not as smooth as Champions Online or STO imho.

Character Creator:
The character creator is pretty basic. You choose a class, a race from about four, a few body types and various heads. There are a lot more options on the head but they are fixed, i.e. no sliders. Everyone starts with the same clothing and these change with upgrades and armour etc. Considering the character creators available today it’s quite disappointing.

Environments:
The environments are pretty big, but they seem bigger because you have to run everywhere and there are no travel powers. You can get taxis between some areas but you have to do a lot of running. One thing that isn’t good is that the environments are not very open. You have to follow paths everywhere. Sometimes your objective can be pretty close but they put ridges all over the place so you have to take the long way around.

And now the good stuff…

Progression:
The voice acting is very good and the story is good to follow. The choices you make sway your alignment but I don’t know what that means yet. The story makes it a bit linear at the beginning but there are lots of side missions and I hear it becomes a lot more MMOy when you get to the teen levels. The missions are more varied than in CO and STO and most are pretty engaging. I’m guessing there is heaps of content already and I hear people are raving about the Trooper class storyline.

Combat:
The combat is really nice. It has some nice touches like if you have a guy behind you shooting a blaster you character will automatically block them with his lightsabre between power activations. Most fights are pretty easy, but some require some planning. There is no urge to button mash too. The targeting and movement is more like the STO RPG mode than the STO reticule mode, but again it’s more engaging than STO.

Companions:
The companion thing is pretty good. People are saying it is an innovation but STO did it first with Bridge Officers. The difference is that the SWTOR companion is involved in your story a little bit, but the STO bridge officers are much more customisable and are much more important to your play style I believe, although having only got to lvl 9 I may well be wrong.

Instancing:
It’s mostly open world but there are small instances for your storyline. You can invite other chars to your instances. The good thing is there are no loading screens in these mini instances, you just walk through a cave entrance and you are in your instance.

Performance:
I’m based in Australia and played a west coast server. I hardly got any lag, but when I did, strangly it was in my characters personal instances most, and when I went back to a large shared area it got better. I’m confused as to what this means.

I haven’t seen space combat yet but i’m not expecting much. Overall I enjoyed it a lot and it has lots of depth. I will probably subscribe for a while once it comes out. I took some screen shots but nothing you can’t see already without surfing google…except perhaps the map. If you are moving the main map goes semi-transparent which allows you to see both which is a nice touch.

[-PLASMA]

#966

I agree with everything you are saying Flash, this is exactly my experience with the game so far.

Thanks for posting a great review.

-Plas.

[-PLASMA]

#967

Wonderfull review Flash! And i also agree with everything is said there.
I played so far both factions, as Sith warrior (jugganaut) and Jedi Knight until around lvl 15.
What i would like to add is:
1. the sidekick story line develops during leveling up as you get more sidekicks and you can get them doing “missions” by their own (like in the F2P STO you will do too. But the relation with your sidekick is more close then it is in STO, there is a story line there, and also options to consider, decissions to make.
2. The game itself is a pretty heavy resource consuming program for your PC, especialy in terms of main memory and graphic card. Sometimes the lag you feel is actualy from your graphic card moving too slow for the game. They seems to work on that, as after the last restart they did the graphic performances improved alot.
3. Unfortunately for me, the gameplay is very similar with the one from WoW, as most players there seems also to be. That means (for me at least) some lack of social skills to teh players and their focus for performance. What i liked in STO is that given the various ways one can get his toon equipped and trained there were no much fixed classes and roles, like are in WoW (i.e. tank, healer, damage).
Bottom line, in my opinion, is that so far, STO remain the best MMO i ever played. SW:TOR have potential but there are things that they still have to do to achieve that.
Best regards,
Kara

[-PLASMA]

#968

It ended …. unfortunately way too soon … 🙁

lol … well … it was nice while lasted, but i guess we will have to wait until the end of december for the whole thing 🙂

Just a quick update to Flash’s review, as last night i managed to test the space part a bit too. It does look pretty much as a dog-fight space game, at least as much as i managed to do for now, but with pretty good rewards for the missions (much more XP points then the normal ground missions) so it will be good for leveling.

The flight is controled by your droid, you cannot decide the direction of the flight, but only can shoot the enemies. So not really a thrill. Except for the XP points, of course.

And another good thing about the space portion: the ship you have is actualy your private place not sure yet if you can also invite your friends there.

Best regards,
Kara

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