The MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise.
Introduction
Even though it’s a sequel, it takes place several hundred years after Star Wars: Knights of the
Old Republic II The Sith Lords, so most of the characters are long since dead. The Old Republic game takes place several thousand years before the Star Wars movies, so, no, you won’t find Darth Vader. Players can choose to join either the Republic or the Empire. Within these factions there are the basic MMORPG roles: the healers, the tanks, the ranged and the melee. The four starting classes on the Republic side are the Jedi Consular, Jedi Knight, Trooper and Smuggler. For the Imperials there are the Sith Inquisitor, Sith Warrior, Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent. Like
its predecessors, the game includes companions to join you and aid you in your adventures. The game contains crew skills which allow you to craft weapons, armor, and more. This game also brings in the concept of PVP, which no MMO would be complete without!
Game Play
Choosing a Path…
As in all the Knights of the Old Republic games there are choices you make that change your alignment to the light side and the dark side. These decisions are confronted in quests and flashpoints. The more you think about the good of innocent people and act on their behalf as well as the greater good your character will move towards the light, but if greed and corruption tempt you then you’re headed down a darker road.
Advanced Classes
After leaving the starting world of your character at level 10 you have a chance to choose between two advanced classes. For the Jedi Consular these are the Sage, a healer with a single-blade lightsaber and a force focus, and the Shadow, a stealthy assassin wielding a dual-bladed lightsaber. For the Jedi Knight there are the Guardian, a tank with a single-bladed lightsaber, and the Sentinel, a fighter wielding two single-handed lightsabers. Troopers can become Vanguards or Commandos. Smugglers can become Gunslingers or Scoundrels.
The Imperial side is basically the same as the Republic with different names. The Sith Inquisitor chooses between the Sorcerer and Assassin. Sith Warriors can be either Marauder or Juggernaut. Bounty Hunters become Power Techs or Mercenaries. Imperial Agents choose between Operatives and Snipers. One thing that I found somewhat annoying was that the dual-wielding classes have main-hand and off-hand weapons, so if you have a really nice off-hand weapon you just picked up and its better than the main-hand but the same or worse than your current off-hand it’s no good.
Flashpoints
Flashpoints are instances where you can group up with up to four players to tackle elite opponents. Companions also count as players so you may make combinations of two players and two companions or three players and one companion. These place you and your friends in difficult situations where what you decide impacts your battles and alignment. As hard as they may be, they yield great armor and weapon rewards, as well as titles for the conversational choices.
One cool thing about flashpoints is you can repeat them as often as you want. So depending on who wins the conversation rolls, the story your team sees will change. One of the most differential flashpoints is the Black Talon (Empire)/Esseles (Republic). There are so many choices to choose from that you practically play a different story every time.
Questing
So far I’ve played the Jedi Sage (lvl36), Jedi Knight (lvl10), Jedi Shadow (lvl10), Sith Marauder (lvl24), and Mercenary (lvl41). Each of them have a unique story line. However, the advanced classes with the same beginning class, such as the sage and shadow, have the same storylines. For the consular you are sent out on a quest to save Jedi masters from an evil plague. The Jedi Knights are sent out to basically save the universe from the Sith. The Bounty Hunter’s story is my favorite storyline so far. You join this new team but soon the majority are murdered by a Mandalorian and you must join the Great Hunt to find him and get revenge.
A cool thing about this game is when you talk to an NPC for missions they cut into their own cinematic. This is also a trait shared in the previous games where there would be a cut-scene for all the NPC’s you talk to.
PVP
Queuing:
On your minimap there is an option to queue for PVP where you can enter solo or with a group. Once you have the option to enter, it will bring you to one of three group games: Huttball, The Voidstar, or The Alderaan Civil War zone. Once there you are matched with other players and transported to the battlefield. All the maps you play on for the war zone queues contain buffs you run through to pick up. There are brief sprint buffs and attack enhancers to aid you in whatever it is you need to accomplish.
Huttball points are gained by each team grabbing the ball in the middle and bringing it to the opposing teams side. But while you have the ball you are slowed down drastically and a pillar of light streams up to show everyone who has the ball. You are allowed to pass it to other players and you can use all your skills, so protect the ball keeper and fight off enemy forces. I find that the objectives of this game are seemingly worthless. It’s best to just rack up all the metals you can by killing and healing, and defending for whichever metals you can obtain. The medals increase your valor, experience, warzone commendations, and other statistics at the end of the battles. These can be used to purchase valuable items from the PVP vendors. 
The Voidstar is like a flag-point challenge, reach the end and your team scores a point. You and your team must pass through 3 checkpoints by blowing up doors while the opposing team attempts to repel your forces. After the first team attacks it switches the roles and they must defend the checkpoints. Whichever team makes it successfully to the end, in the shortest amount of time, after each team gets a turn, wins.
The last queue location is the Alderaan civil war. In this game teams must capture as many of the three turrets to destroy the opposing team’s ship. Both teams’ ships start at 600 points of health. As you gain turrets for your side they fire on the enemy’s ship and the more turrets your team control the more damage will be dealt and destroy the ships faster. The turrets can be captured at any time so make sure to have someone on guard at all times!
Open Map PVP:
Open map PVP is available on PVP servers from what I’ve noticed. I have a character on a PVE server and a PVP one and I have yet to see a single imperial on my republic side for the PVE server. Basically, it’s all fair game, you can go looking for trouble wherever you can find it on the map. It would be best to avoid trying to sneak into the opposing faction’s base as they are heavily guarded.
Space Battle
Once you leave your second or third planet you’re given your own ship. The ship received depends on the characters class. Traveling to your factions main space station will give you the opportunity to visit vendors for upgrade parts to apply to your ship. There are also space missions that can offer upgrades as rewards.
The objectives are listed in the top right of your screen, where missions are normally placed. The ship is constantly moving forward and you maneuver with your mouse pointer as well as aim with it. Left-click fires and holding it down will release a constant burst. Right-click fires a missile that locks on to whatever target, displayed by yellow circles that turn blue when the target is locked.
Continuities and Changes
The game still contains the epic music from its predecessors to fit the mood. And this would never truly be considered a Knights of the Old Republic game if there were no puzzles! So far, from what I’ve played, there are items called datacrons placed in different parts of the planet. Only with your wits and knowledge of the surroundings can you hope to reach these datacrons (or youtube!). Both the previous Knights of the Old Republic games provided the options to get to know your companions better, and possibly have a relationship with them. The new game allows for flirt options in some companion conversations. In the second Knights of the Old Republic they introduced the “love triangles” for the companions, and the new game keeps this. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords the feature to display player corruption was installed. This meant that when you started down the dark side your character started to look ill and the flesh was cracked and dry almost as if it was a corpse. This stays true in the new installment.
When you start this game you have to chose which faction to start on which was never an option in the other Knights of the Old Republic games. One of the things I love about this game is the ability to have a heal crit! In the previous games this had not been implemented so it was a lovely new addition. Also, players are now able to buy their own mounts! No they aren’t animals…but they are vehicles and they make traveling across long distances so much less time consuming. Another difference is that they reduced the ability to travel with two of your companions to one, so make it a good one! The companions can also be sent on their own missions once you learn a certain crew skill. They may bring back credits and valuable items that make their efforts worth while, but be advised you must pay a fee to send them off. I also really like the looting option where you can loot all nearby bodies with one click. Another cool feature is when you have the world map open, once you start moving it becomes transparent.
Confusing Concepts…
Some of the things that I still cannot explain are why the designers chose to give the Republic and the 
Empire the same technology seen in the movies even thought it takes place several thousand years before them. Many of the space ships look similar in design so it’s almost as if they have REALLY been slacking in technological progression. I thought it was a bit bizarre to see Imperial ships that look like the ones in the movies even though a couple hundred years from this point they have much different looking ships in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Either the designers had limited imagination or they wanted to keep similar things to help identify with the movies in the Star Wars universe. Another flaw I noticed was that the Republic soldiers wore the same uniforms as the clones did in Star Wars Episode II: The Clone Wars. I thought this was very strange considering the old republic didn’t have clones…
Graphics
The graphics in the game are slightly disappointing. This doesn’t mean that the graphics are bad looking, however I expected more from a game like this. The engine they used is the: HeroEngine. A fairly new (2011) engine that hasn’t been used in any major games. Kinda makes me wonder w
hy they chose to use this engine. The only thing I can think of, while looking at the minimum requirements for this game, is that they wanted people with older computers to be able to play this game. I have tested the game with The XFX Redeon 5770 and it will run the game with 50~60 FPS with all the graphics settings turned to high.
Glitches
Unfortunately, there are some major graphic glitches. In the picture above you can see what looks like a colorful grid. The grids as well as the odd stray line appear randomly in major towns and bases. Along with the grids there are detached branches on trees! Another annoyance is that they didn’t use an anti aliasing technique to smooth the edges of everything. So when you look at the fine details you notice that everything has jagged edges! When your graphics are placed on the highest setting, the draw distance for additional objects like rocks and (taller) grass is far too close. Most other games place it farther away to make it look prettier in the higher graphical settings. A funny glitch I found was for the Jedi Knight class. When you are summoned to the Jedi Council room on the Tython one of the masters, Master Satele Shan, is PUNY. Another bizarre thing I encountered was on the Imperial side, during some conversations, the peoples’ eyes turned metallic black and grey, and sometimes their entire skin color and hair colors would change to different colors or black.
I Spy Master Satele Shan!
Conclusion
I would most definitely recommend this game to any Star Wars fans, especially those who followed to Knights of the Old Republic games. While there are unfortunately quite a few technical glitches, the game is really fun to play with friends, especially the PVP games in my opinion. The class stories show an interesting take on each of the characters. It’s an intriguing continuation of the galaxy after Revan left in the second installment. You get to follow his trail and only you can find out where it leads.
Game information
Recommended Specs
Processor:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better
Operating System:
- Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later
Memory:
- Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM
- Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM
Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.
Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:
- ATI X1800 or better
- nVidia 7800 or better
- Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better
Developer BioWare
Publishers Electronic Arts / LucasArts
Engine HeroEngine
Version 1.0.2d (January 12, 2012)
Platform Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) NA December 20, 2011 / EU December 20, 2011 / AUS March 1, 2012
Genre(s) MMORPG
Mode(s) Multiplayer
Rating(s) BBFC: 12 / ESRB: T / PEGI: 16+ / USK: 12
Distribution Optical disc, download(off there own website: http://www.swtor.com/)