Star Wars Galaxies

This review will be part of a review series, thingy's star wars rampage. I'll be taking a look at all the star wars games i can get my hands on.

Star wars galaxies in an MMORPG, in other words, the basic idea is that you run around killing things to get better weapons that you can kill bigger things with till you're the master of thing killing. Also, there is sometimes a crafting system in MMORPG's, but i often find them very lacking. Also, this is set in the star wars universe (DUH) so it's obvious that you'll be running around on planets with star wars themes and use generally star warsy items to kill generally star warsy enemies.


Graphics and animation

Characters

The characters are quite well made, even by today's standards. They are not only well modeled, but the animations are good too. Characters can show moods like angry, happy, whiny, sad, cheery and so on (the list of moods and other social animations is huge)
The combat animations are... well... Nothing special. You hold the gun, you shoot, there's some recoil. Jedi animations are... Jedi'ish. You know, spinning around, stabbing, slashing and so on(Though some of the animations look kind of clumsy). The entertainer (musician, dancer, general entertainer) animations on the other hand are quite good. The dances are well animated, different and there's alot of them.

Scenery and world

The SWG world is mostly beautifully made and the scenery always manages to get a near perfect reflection of the planets found in the movies, books and comics. There's a total of 12 fully explorable planets. Tatooine, Kashyyk, Mustafar*, Lok**, Rori**, Yavin 4, Correlia, Dantooine, Dathomir, Endor, Naboo and Talus**. They're all very beautiful and true to their source material (Except maybe kashyyk, but it's still quite beautiful), as an example, correlia has snow covered mountain ranges, beaches, rivers, lakes and cities filled with correlian architecture, tattooine has huge deserts, sand covered mountains, sand dunes and an oasis here and there.

The graphics do show their age sometimes, but if your graphics standards arent too high, it's not going to be a problem. And even if you do have high graphics standards , you'll get used to them after a while.

(* Doesnt have a space zone. ** Shares space zone with another planet)

Space
Space is quite bland. There's space, the odd nebula (just a big gas cloud) and a few asteroids here and there. But, that's the background. The ships are a completely different thing. They might be the old, worn out fighter / gunboat designs we've been seeing in star wars movies, games and shows since the 70's, but these ones can be customized. Think the Y wing engines look too straight? Well, get some prototype engines (there's alot of different engines, weapons, capacitators etc, and they all work on all ships, but look different on every ship design). Think the X-wing lasers are too small? Well, get another kind of lasers. This enables the player to customize the ship's looks to fit the player's taste. But, there's a catch to ship designs, and the ships rarely end up looking like you want them to if you want to fly the ship, and not stare at it. (See the space combat section).

Nebula- Some areas can look really good

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Here are some pictures of the scenery

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Combat, loot and equipment.

Land combat

Land combat is very basic. You click an enemy, your avatar hits/shoots him, use a special move on him (Extra damage, more damage for every hit after the special for an amount of time, poisoning for an amount of time etc). Repeat till one of you is dead. And like most other MMORPG's, there are different kinds of armor, weapons and temporary stat enhancers. (i'll get in on that in the loot section). But, something (kind of) unique for SWG is the near total dependence on buffs when you reach late medium and high levels. Most NPC's are hard, and come in large groups, and as SWG doesnt have alot of players, you can either go solo, or wait for your friends / clan mates to log on, try to get enough people and find a time and day when you'll all be able to be on at the same time. That process often takes days, so soloing is often the best option.

But you will obviously not last long against a group of enemies of your level range, or sometimes above your level range. That's where buffs come in. Medics and entertainers can give you stat enhancers (aka buffs), if you have enough buffs, you'll be able to fight like you were several levels above your current level. But there's a catch, you have to listen to an entertainer / get buffed by a medic for quite a long time if you want the buffs to last long enough to actually be useful. So you'll probably find yourself spending alot of time sitting still in a cantina/ on the street / in a starport.

But unfortunately, things wont get more fun when you're buffed, equipped and fighting the bad guys. SWG is suffering from an advanced, mutated form of the grind epidemic that has infected most, if not all, MMO's out there and sometimes having fatal results (richard garriot's tabula rasa was a recent casualty, taken away from us in it's youth because of this epidemic). And by advanced, i really mean advanced. The game is centered around grinding. Collections are mostly about killing a certain / several kinds of NPC's to find an item, or hordes of the same / different kinds of NPC's to fill a kill qouta. And what if you want credits? Grind. Grind till you drop. Unless you're a trader or entertainer, you'll have to kill NPC's till you've got the amount of credits you want or the rare items you want to sell. Except for quests (which are grind tastic) the only way to level and get credits is grind.

Space Combat

If i had to describe space combat in one word, it would be grind.. It's all 100% pure grinding. That's all you do up there, grind and grind and grind till you've reached the highest space combat level and have all the space badges. The only kind of good thing in space is the ships. You start with a ship chassis, and then mount the components till you've got the ship you want. Different components have different looks on different ship models. This could have meant you'd able to customize your ship to give it the best stats for that level of equipment, and make it look good. But most of the time, you'll end up having to choose the equipment with the best stats but the ugliest / most boring look, and having to abandon the components that actually look good.

And the combat itself isnt really anything new, or anything good. You try to stay behind the enemy and shoot him till he's down while getting shot at by his friends (most enemies come in groups). Sure, you could try doing some fancy manuevers to avoid their fire, but you'll get shot anyways. In the end, it's all about spinning around and shooting till one is down, then go on to the next and so on. When the group is down, you go on to the next group and try to shoot them down too. Rinse and repeat till you've got the level / badges you want.

Pimped Out- You can also change the coloring scheme of your ship.

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Now, this is where SWG really shines. Equipment (armor, weapons, food, medicine, drinks, ships, ship components, backpacks, lightsaber etc) can all be made by traders (except the quest only ships). But that's not the only thing that makes SWG's crafting system special, all resources have an impact on the item's stats. You can for an example use a cold resistant metal and a heat resistant chemical to make an armor with above average heat and cold resistance, and the same goes for everything from droid battery power to stat increases for food. It might sound simple, but trust me, it's not. First, you have to survey for the best concentration of a resource, then you have to sample that resource to see how you could use it. If it's good enough, you set up a mining installation (made by structure traders), stock it with power (you get 200 units of electricity after the tutorial) and pay it's maintenance.

This means you will need skill and patience to make something. Unlike most other MMO's, xp and levelling isnt nearly as useful as real skill and experience. You can be a level 90 trader, but that level will be completely useless withouts skill.


Story

Quests

The quests could make a real game critic cry blood. The stories are pure low grade shovelware, and so are the objectives. It's always about killing (put ridicilous amount of creatures here), escorting an npc who cant run (walking is slow as hell, especially if the escort destination is far away), finding an item, talking to an NPC or a combination of those things. The only ''good'' thing about quests is the XP and credit rewards. They're often less grindy than... well... grinding...?, often give more credits than grinding and sometimes give quest only items / improved standard items. But the only thing you'll be able to do when you've got that money or XP is grind some more or do another boring quest.


Roleplay

Roleplay is one of the few good things SWG has to offer. If you have some creativity and some roleplay experience under your belt, you can make almost any star warsy scenario you want. And if you are good enough as a roleplayer, you can become a storyteller. Storytellers have the ability to place most items (scenery items, equipment, space ships, vehicles etc) in the game world and use them to make scenarios. You can for an example place an AT AT prop , a bunch of AT ST props and a few rebel vehicles to make a roleplay battle.The possibilites are nearly endless (as long as the roleplaying is set in a star warsy setting).

Correlian Corvette- Multiplayer instances called ''heroics'' are the few, good quests.

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Misc

Entertainer Class

The entertainer class is very unique to SWG. No other MMO that i know of has a class entirely devoted to the community. As an entertainer, you will find yourself mostly buffing the combat classes for tips, that can be done by dancing, singing and playing music. But we're not talking about preset music only, you are able to use tens of thousands of songs, dances, props and sounds to make a performance. This means it's a very hard class to master as you'll have to be very creative and play for a very long time to learn everything about the profession and the tools available to you.

And how to use the tools to make the best combination of music isnt the only thing you'll need, you'll also need to be very social. A social entertainer is much better than a non social entertainer with an equally good show.

Music and sound effects

Music

The music only shows up in battle, when you enter a new town, when you get a new badge and a few other special occasions. And that's actually good, as the music really sucks and gets repetitive very fast. After a week of playing SWG, i got tired of the music and muted it.

It's a combination of film music from the 6 star wars movies. When you enter a battle, a short piece from for an example the battle of endor plays. When you enter a town, something suitable plays. It's very repetitive, as you'll probably enter and exit battle hundreds of times, and they only have like 10 pieces.

Sound effects

The sound effects for the guns are just... Crappy. They have 5 animations, all equally dull. You fire your gun alot in battle, so you'll probably hear those effects alot. And i really mean ALOT. In a week, you'll probably have heard them a few hundred times. But the lightsaber effects are actually not too bad. Especially in jedi vs jedi PVP, the lightsaber on lightsaber sound doesnt get old for a looong looong time.

Put this together with some great jedi PVP animations and you've got a good lightsaber duel.

Conclusion

The gameplay could be summed up as a grinder with a star wars logo pasted on it, the music is crappy, the quests are grindtastic and have below average stories at best, and the graphics are old. I'd put a 1/10 on it if it was a singleplayer game. But it's an MMO, and with the instances, entertainers and community counted in, it's a 4/10. Dont buy it unless you really like star wars, but try the 14 day trial first.

Score: 4/10

And if i were to sum up the game in one picture, this would be it.

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I've never played Star Wars Galaxies, so I have no comment. Wait, scratch that, I have, but it was a long time ago. So, I have no comment, and the little picture you found, is actually mostlye true. Boba Fett has a lightsaber but he only uses it once in a comic. And in some other comic series Lightsabers were a common weapon and could be used by anyone.