Star Wars: The Old Republic launches in just a few days, so here is our early, preliminary opinions. The game, as a whole, seems polished and looks decent but may not be the next Big Thing that fans have been hoping it would be. Still, it’s not Star Wars Galaxies (RIP), either.
I’ve spent most of my time so far leveling my young human jedi knight but I’ve also put in time as a bounty hunter and a Republic commando. The commando and bounty hunter seem to be counterparts (like the jedi knight and sith warrior) which I was not expecting. If anything, I thought the smuggler would counterpoint the bounty hunter. Seems logical enough, right? Apparently Bioware thinks along different lines or thought they’d throw a monkey wrench in for smart asses like myself who thought they had it all figured out. If so, well played, Bioware.
The game seems to be easier for me then it was during the betas I was in, especially the first one. My Jedi Knight then died a number of times on Tython (the jedi starting world) but this time I was rarely in danger. Maybe I’m better, or maybe they reigned in some of the over-crowding of mobs that was often my downfall. I opted to go with a Jedi Knight-Guardian as my advanced class because I don’t like dual wielding and the other JK class, the Sentinel, focuses on that. There are two DPS trees in the Guardian’s skill set so I can still (hopefully) keep my prospective DPS role despite Guardian’s tank-like reputation.
The combat seems a little too floaty right now but that may just be my characters’ low-level skills’ fault. My bounty hunter and commando shoot all around their targets, hitting – at least visually – only once in a while. My jedi swings around in a mime-battle fashion until the enemies obligingly lie down and die. There’s certainly no real feeling of power here. I keep referring back to DC Universe Online and it’s more action oriented combat as my benchmark in MMO battles and SWTOR falls well short.
So far I’m all of level 11 on my jedi knight and under 5 on my other two so there’s still some work to do (including playing the other classes) before I write up a full review. You can likely expect another preview or so before I commit to a final score.
