Star Wars: The Old Republic - Hands on pt3

This is probably my last TOR post for... well, possibly ever. My free month is almost up and I can't really imagine why I would pay for more time when... well, you'll see.

As of this writing I am level 31. I've experienced a fair bit of the game and have my own ship! Let's talk about that for a moment.

I have my own ship. Initially I only had useless Vette for a companion, but the ship comes with a droid who is at first amusing and then completely wears out his welcome. He's an ass-kisser droid. He's also capable of healing in combat, but he only has one line. For everything. It drives me mad, I wanted a healer type since Vette only provides DPS with no support and I thought it'd be nice to have a robot companion buddy. Instead, I got

EXCELLENT, MASTER. I WAS JUST WONDERING WHAT I COULD DO TO PLEASE YOU

every time the robot did anything. Entering combat? He says that. Healing you mid-fight? He says that. End of combat? He says that. Mid-fight smack-talk? He says that. It is his only line, and he sounds like Threepio. You can imagine how, hearing this once every four seconds, it is not an option to keep him out.

Anyway, the ship itself. There's a kinda-fun mini-game rail-shooter thing attached to the ship that allows you to play Starfox-like levels while not on a planet. They're... kind of fun. For me, anyway. I know Claire didn't like them much. There are some weird spots, though... Like, for example, if you have a bead on something to shoot (be it an enemy ship, a gun on a larger ship, the shield generators on a capital ship, those sorts of things) your target indicator turns red. When you fire, your shots will hit. No matter what. When I say "no matter what" I mean even if you are shooting through asteroids to hit something. I can count the number of times I've been flying beneath a larger ship and taking out the topside turrets while not being able to see them. Your bullets magically penetrate everything in their way to hit their target. Lock-on with rockets works the same way: If your indicator is red when you fire a weapon, that weapon hits. It's not a bad thing, but it allows me to do stupid shit like completely taking out a dozen laser turrets and four shield generators in one fly-by because I can shoot clean-through everything that isn't my target.

I also ran into an amusing bug the other day. I was finishing up a space mission when my internet connection pooped itself and dropped me. The game then dropped me with something like 30 seconds left on the timer for the stage. When I logged back in, the game freaked the hell out, and...

That's me, standing on top of my ship, which is about the size of a novelty-ship-shaped-bed. You can see the game didn't render anything else about the level: I was flying in a straight line the entire time. You can also see it renewed the timer. Those two ships flying in front of me? Completely invincible. I couldn't complete my objective. And on top of that, the timer was bugged and it kicked me out after about a minute.

Finally, questing. The game doesn't go so far as to give you "Bring me 12 bear butts" like WoW does at times, but they don't do themselves any favors by adding "bonus objectives" to your quest. When Farmer Joe tells me that his Doowackey got stolen by Nogoodniks, my ACTUAL objective is to go get it back. As soon as I kill a single Nogoodnik a bonus objective pops up: Kill 25 Nogoodniks! Oh joy. It sometimes gets better, too. I had a round of bonus objectives that went "Kill 15 baddies" then "Kill 40 baddies" then "Kill the lead baddie." Baddies, of course, come in either groups of 1 tough guy and 1 mook or 3-4 mooks who are all ranged fighters and cannot be cleaved.

This wouldn't be TOO much of a problem: You don't NEED to do the bonus objectives to continue. Well, techncially. The problem with the way TOR does questing is that a lot of things are phased: The nogoodniks stole Farmer Joe's Thingy and are hiding it in a cave way off yonder. The "Cave" is of course actually a "tunnel" with only one way to go, and the "optional" enemies are all dead-center of the route and you cannot pass them without a fight. Of course, you can kill the bare minimum to get to the Thingy at the end, but then you end up with 13/15 kills and at that point you just deviate a bit on the way back to Farmer Joe and then kill a pair of goons to finish your "optional" content. It really isn't optional; you will always have to fight through the majority of the objective before you can finish the required part. The "optional" portion is whether you feel like delaying to get your bonus exp.

Let's continue with question: I've found myself "space-barring" through a lot of the needless dialogue. If it isn't a story-mission, and if the first three lines of a quest-giver don't catch my attention, I speed through the dialogue without listening. I don't really care about Farmer Joe or his device. I care that I'm underleveled and barely making any money to craft with and Joe's got what I need to continue.

TOR uses Ranks for their abilities. Leveled up? Go see a trainer to re-train some skills to a higher level so you can continue to operate at about the same level. Combat right now feels exactly the same as it did 15 levels ago to me, except I've got some buttons that I may or may not use. My damage-to-enemy rate is basically the same percentage done per strike. The cost to train to be adequate is also ridiculous: While leveling you come across a lot of credits which then get eaten as soon as you ding in training and retraining. There's also your first Speeder at 25. Let's complain about that.

Speeder training is expensive. It'll cost you most of the money you've made to that point in the game when you first are available to purchase it. That's before you actually buy the speeder, too. It is a credit-sink, a large amount of money taken out of the game for what SHOULD be a quality-of-life upgrade: Faster movement means less downtime, more quests, more time playing and less time traveling. Well, you'd think that.

I was able to learn Riding on Tattooine. Tattooine, however, is a fucking huge planet. Normally, there's a Taxi service just outside of a spaceport, allowing you to land on a planet and get to your quest hub with minimal waiting. Tattooine's taxi service is outside of a huge (compartively) area. The first hub you use on Tattooine is the same size, give or take, as the entire city-hub on Dromund Kaas. Of course, you could always buy riding to ease up the run...

This idea is further smashed forcefully into your face when you try to get anywhere after leaving the first hub. The area is huge. The distance to quest objectives is littered with enemies, there are no safe roads, and it is FAAAAAR to go from one place to another. Instead of buying speeder training and a speeder to get anywhere faster, you end up paying most of what you have to your name to... maintain the status quo, just like training ranks on your skills. You are led to believe you are growing, but you are just bailing from more holes.

As a single player game, as KOTOR3, the game isn't too bad. There are some odd bugs, like the spaceship thing, and the frozen-faces thing. There's some horrific pop-up in dialogue that ruins immersion: I had a quest-giver spit off a bunch of orders to people who weren't there who suddenly popped into existence when they said "Yes sir!" and ran off.

I probably won't hit 50 by the time my game time is up, and I find myself sort of not caring. I haven't done any of the other flashpoints past the first one but popular comment is that everything else sucks and are tunnel-combat simulators with a Good/Evil switch at the end. I'll probably go solo one of them now just to be sure.