My short time with TOR

whilan

Okay as many may be aware i've recently gotten some time with TOR in the last beta weekend, and are probably (hopefully) wondering what i thought about it.

Okay first off i started by hitting up various classes to see which i would like. I finally decided (trying to avoid the imperial agent as thats my class of choice) on the sith warrior.

Now i'm going to keep this as spoiler free as possible so people can still enjoy the story aspect of the game. If I'm forced to speak about the story so that the review makes sense i'm going to label in red with 2 stars on either end, which will look something like this

*SPOILER*

Then the stuff i have to say

*END SPOILER*

I'll try and keep it as brief as possible (the spoilers not the review ), but thats how it will look.

Combat (anything and everything related to combat, animations, fluidity of abilities, toughness/intellegence of mobs)

Pros- Pretty brisk always taking on several enemies except for the occasional boss.

Quick but somewhat dangerous fights frequently

People dropping in or driods uncloaking was a nice way to decieve the player into thinking it would be a quick and easy fight, when it actually turned out to be much tougher (got me killed more then once)

Cool down on stims make you time them, and as fights are quick your likely only going to be using once per fight anyway unless it's a boss fight, so you get like one reheal which is more of a hold over then an actual reheal.

There also some stategy involved in a number of the flashpoint fights, for example one of the driods would consistantly spawn a kamikaze type robot that would move towards your party members and blow up. Also i noticed the Jedi at the end would fly around the party, in quite a few of the situations she would push me down, jump on one of the sith sorc, then come back as i'm recovering and do a good deal of damage to me. Then fly off to one of the sith assassians forcing me to close the gap.

 

Cons- At first there are some gaps in the combat, as i only had 2 skills which forced me to wait until the cool down finished, later levels rectified this.

Some of the fights barely got me below health especially the worms.

The lightsabers when i fought actual people with vibroblades didn't clash together as much as i liked, it looks like an attempt was made and sometimes it did actually clash but nothing like it was in KOTOR. This could be due to the fact that you can consistantly move so that may make it harder but even that when standing still they didn't seem to actually clash with each other much.

Enviroment (this includes character models, world design, music, basically anything that contributes to the actual world itself.)

Pros- Being on Korriban gave me a sense of nostalgia from the first KOTOR game so it was nice to see it again. (this one is a personal one)

Worlds are really big, seeing tatoonie and Hoth stretch off into the distance was really nice. Another nice factor is on Tatoonie if you approach a area they didn't want you to go. You wouldnt run into some wall (invis or otherwise) instead you ran into an area that forced you to turn back due to exhaustion, from which i ignored and quickly paid the price as my health dropped very rapidly.

I loved the designs of the buildings, especially the sith temple.

The character models themselves are very nice, I like having the ability to give my character a scar and trying to role play how they got it. (some dark and mysterious past no doubt).

One word jukebox, yep they are in, 100 credits per token.

Music was really good and went well with the worlds. I also liked that every so often you would hear two or more npcs talking about the world. Really helped to get into it.

Cons-Biggest one for me, people in the world , i don't see much wandering around of the NPCs, nearly all of them are stationary. By stationary i mean they are in one spot, not that they stand completely still, they do wandering around but only around the general location. I would have liked to see the non required NPCs doing delivers or just wandering around town. With that said i did like the mouse driods that wandered the sith temple. They need to do more of that, except with the actual people.

The hair still looks kinda like plastic which while i know is an art style choice still looks a little weird to me. Not sure what if anything they can do about this cosidering the artstyle they went with.

(this one is a bug i'm sure but as it was a part of the beta, i'm going to included it anyway), quite a few times my character would pull the sims glitch which was really immersive break, this only happens to the head. This is the sim glitch i'm refering to: Gltich, i know it's a bug but it needs to be fix, until it does, it's a con.

Navigating the map: until i figured out what the symbol meant it was a little confusing trying to figure out where the quest npcs were, this cleared up once i figured out the little door with the green arrow meant to go up or downstairs. Plus quite a few times the icons wouldn't actually lead to the person which made it harder to find them.

 

Exploration: (Anything that has to do with or involve exploring the world, including world sizes and rewards for doing exploration)

Pros-As i stated before these worlds are big, even for the starter worlds and once you get to the more elder worlds like tatoonie and hoth they get even bigger.

Datacrons- These are nice little tidbits of lore and are placed in out of the way places that you might not normally visit which i always found to be a nice incentive to roam the landscape. I found a total of 2, one of korriban which i couldn't use as i was currently under attack while trying to get to a group, and one of typhon which i did use.

The world design is very pretty and i was always wondering what i would find over the next hill (haven't been like that in a long time)

Cons-Probably the biggest con would be that the starter worlds feel a bit...constrained as it tends to lead you down a path instead of letting you explore, the elder worlds are a lot more open though.

 

Monsters (hereafter refered to as mobs): (Anything that has to do with mobs directly, including animations, mob density, difficulty and other things)

Pros- most mobs seem to exhibit some form of intellegence and try to defeat you, especially the two boss mobs in the black talon flashpoint (the huge robot and the jedi).

Many times i found myself low on health or dead (depending on the fight) which means that mobs aren't a push over at equal level.

Stuff that drops from the mobs appared to make sense to me, no rabbits having money or swords and sheilds (internet cookie if you can find the song that includes that line)

Con- mob density, right now it's fine and later in the games life it will be to, but at launch it's going to be killer as there will be a lack of mobs to go around for people. as most of the areas is non-instance your going to have other players killing mobs that you will need.

Some of the mobs..seem to vary in difficulty compared to the area, you can easilly walk into a mob that will be much harder and not relieze it

 

Story (this part is very likely to have spoilers, refer to the top of the post for an example of how that plays out)

Pros- The story itself is great as always, the delivery and the voice acting are well done and you can hear the emotions of the characters as you respond (anger or disappointment if you pick a choice they disagree with)

Animation of characters, this one is another one of biowares known strengths, the character movements and reactions are excellant and very well done. They really help to make the questing much more interesting and far far..above just text on a wall. I especially liked one part where my character leaned against the wall like she was some really cool person, that one made me chuckle and smile at the same time

Light/dark side choices- I was actually surprised at some points what they'd let you do, some of the choices really made me think about wether i wanted to do it or not. For example Vette is a perfect example

*SPOILER*

In one case she asks you afer you "rescue" her from her cage, if you will remove the shock collar from her neck, you had three choices, tell her you would, tell her you would if she was obediant (this is the one i choose), or shock her again. I actually couldn't bring myself to shock her for no good reason (and i'm normally a complete jerk to NPCs in game), eventually she asked so nicely at one point saying i've been behaving just like you asked and i removed the shock collar, this i never do, not even in bioware games. It just played me so well that i was forced to remove it. I couldn't say no, that is really powerful story telling there. Nothing i've seen in most Single player games let alone a MMO one*

*END SPOILER*

Cons- The two cons i had regarding story is one that some of the stories, especially the jedi consular started off a bit slow and took a while to get moving.

The other is a mechanic of all bioware games including the single player ones, and thats the forcing you to stay right where you are until you are finished. I'd like to see some more freedom here.

 

Grouping (includes group mechanics, fluidity of group based content, multiplayer story telling/dialogue)

Pros- Right up at top has to be the multiplayer dialogue, this is a very unique feature and actually works much better then i thought it would. I loved just as much watching other people make choices in the quest as i did seeing my own character making choices and playing them out.

Content: some of the content for the group encounters were actually pretty tough and required some thinking to figure out an ideal strategy to win (such as the robot and jedi)

Cons: other then new abilities i didn't see much in the way of needing one ability in group then when i was alone, nothing like taunt or some kind of AOE heal which might benefit the group where it wouldn't if i was soloed, did pretty much what i did in solo  except watch out to make sure party members didn't die.

Overall

Combat: 7/10

Combat is fluid and well done but as for actual mechanics, beyond having more mobs consistantly nothing really different here.

Music: 9/10 Really well done here, i enjoyed all the music and it really made me attached to each of the worlds

Story: 10/10 This one is a given for Bioware, this is where they excel, stories are well done, put together nicely and always wanting you to see what happens next, this is only increased more when you group with other people as your never sure wehre its going to go next

World: 8/10 Worlds are large and well throught out, but it's not highly detailed so it loses 2 points for that.

Graphics: 7/10 While i understand the reasoning and for what it is, the graphics are well done, but the style still makes it look..less graphicly intense then i feel it could be. especially with that plastic looking hair.

Grouping: 7/10 Overall, the grouping was great, but pretty standard fair, i didn't include the multiplayer story telling in this category so it doesn't get points from that there as it was already in the story part of my score

Polish: 9/10 For a beta, this has to be the most polished, well done game i've ever seen, not once did i crash in the middle of gameplay, anythime i got disconnected was due to my ISP dropping (my lights dropping from 4 green and one orange to 1 orange and 1 blinking green) me. The only three reasons it lost a point here was due to the head graphic glitch, one time the graphics dropped out completely if i turned a certain way in a story instance and i had one crash when i closed out the game for the night. Over all most of those were put on a curve because of beta and likely either due to stress testing or to be fixed. When i do a review later, this will be more harshly  graded and if the same thing occurs the score will be a good bit lower.

 

Final score:8/10 Got points for great story telling, excellant polish, well done worlds, and immersive gameplay, plus multiplayer dialog is a great new feature. It lost points for somewhat linear gameplay at the start and a few bugs here and there that seem like they should have been caught by now and fixed, namely the head glitch)

Quesa

Thanks for the review!

Gardavsshade

Apparently the NDA has been rescinded. My internet decided to croak yesterday morning and I wake up today to discover all sorts of info on SW:TOR.

Thank you for this Review. Very nicely done and much appreciated.