Well, I've put in my time. I have played the crap out of this game, and am comfortable enough with it to award a score. Here's the thing, everyone must take into account a number of factors that went into this review score.
This is my first MMO review
This is pretty much my first time with an MMO
I have put every bit of spare time that I can into it
The number of factors going into this are astronomical. Server population control, graphical issues, graphical awesomeness, sound design, controls, ease of use, load times, questing, this list is huge and I know I haven't gone into too much detail with anything really and I apologize so I am going to recap my thoughts now.
First things first, the opening cinematics are freaking sweet. I was excited from the moment I started up the game. They look amazing, they sound amazing, and they work well to draw the player into the game world. Setting the tone for a civil war that is both behind the scenes and out in the open. Gameplay the graphics aren't as great. The game looks like it was built on a fairly upgraded Knights of the Old Republic engine. Not to say that they are bad, they could have been better. Also, the only way I know how to describe the look of the menus and worlds and pretty much everything is Star Wars. It looks how you think it should look and that is a major positive. I did have some major slow down issues when the game launched, but since patches those have mostly gone away. Some of the slow downs did effect gameplay to near unplayability at times.
The next thing is the sound, which is also fantastic. Players are fully voiced, NPCs are fully voiced and the conversation wheel that Bioware is so fond of returns in full force. The story based mission conversations seem like they had a lot more work than some of the side quest ones which does bother me a little. Lightsabers and blasters sound like you would expect them to.
Character creation is a reasonably simple, yet deep tool to begin your playthrough. You start off with a gender, then a race, then a class. There are eight classes to pick from, four for each side. You then customize your chosen warrior to look how you want them to right down to the scars and aging on their faces, and head on into the world to kill everything or save everything.
Gameplay is pretty standard for an MMO game. You have your attacks hot keyed to different numbers and press them rapidly until your enemies are dead, rinse, and repeat. There is a market system where players can post items for anyone to buy which helps lower level players get some better equipment for affordable rates. The space combat leaves a little to be desired in my opinion. I have never been a fan of on-rails flight combat, but what is there works well, I just don't care for it. The Flashpoints and Warzones are fun distractions from the main game and help bring players together in groups for common goals. I am not as familiar with these as I'd like to be, mostly because I just went solo for a majority of the game. The questing system is simple to use and the quests are as diverse as can be with the game type, but there is a lot of kill X number of fill-in-the-blank and recieve Y number of rewards. Your companions are useful not only in combat but can be sent off on missions to collect items for you to craft weapons and armor. The different planets in the galaxy act as the different zones for the players and offer different experiences depending on where you end up.
There is just so much to do in this game that I am more than happy to say I will be playing it for the foreseeable future. The server population issues that were present before launch and the slowdowns have mostly subsided. I am happy to award Star Wars: The Old Republic a 9.5/10. This is an MMO you should not overlook and I hope to See You Online.
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