MMORPG Reviews: Part 2 – Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Galaxies was a very interesting game. For a lot of people, it seemed like you loved it or hated it. I however found the middle ground. There was a lot of things I absolutely loved about the game and some things that I learned to hate about the game.

First of all it’s freaking Star Wars so points for that. (If you need a review of the point systems. Please see other post about the Universal Point System.) I loved being plunged into the Star Wars world to basically do whatever I wanted. As a huge Star Wars fan, I loved the character creation, which finished in a Zebrak (Think Darth Maul). The worlds were beautifully done and the creatures were wild, crazy, and exciting. Except for the bunnies, which will be covered more in detail later.

Alright the Ups: They avoided levels, which I give them a pat on the back for. There were no levels in Galaxies, or at least the original version, I don’t know what the have now-a-days. It was a skill branch system. NO JEDIS – at first…-. They let you pick whatever skills you wanted to have, between: Hand to hand, fencing, polearm, fire-arm, creature handling, smuggling, explosives, building, and more. I of course went Hand to Hand/creature handling because for whatever reason, my favorite character always seems to be a monk type. The creatures were cool, and combat system was well done. Rebel and Imperial alliances were cool. Random battles would insure through the galaxies and you could join either side or walk down the neutral path. The sight of storm troopers, AT-STs was awesome the first time they were on my screen. It was an overall good game for the first month or so.

The Downs: The problem was the more people played and discovered, the more the games weaknesses and unbalances appeared. Bounty Hunters were over-powered and became a super-class. The fact that people could just delete their skills and go in any direction saw an increase in bounty hunters. With me as a hand-to-hand fighter I never got the chance to even hit the things we would be fighting, before my friends rocket would find home in the beasts chest. Occasionally my pet would get a hit off so I could get a tiny sliver of experience. Introduction of Jedi, (shakes his head). The game announced early on that it wanted to avoid playable movie characters and jedis, cause everyone would want to be them and jedi’s would be overpowered compared to a monk or a smuggler or whatever else. It was rumored that Jedi’s were in the game but the company was not going to release what skills you needed to reach Jedi status, which was fine, but then you realized that once someone got it, everyone else could delete there skills and take that path. Then the company just have a patch/expansion that said, heres jedi, and BOOM, lightsabers were everywhere.

The bunnies. The first creatures of the game that most encountered were bunnies or butterflies and stuff like that. Now these looked like normal bunnies, but I assure you, the grass they ate was filled with steroids. These things destroyed you if you weren’t prepared, but lets face it at low levels you were no match for the panthers a few yards behind them.

So overall the unbalanced elements of the game and introduction of Jedi is what killed this game for me. I fell in love with the game early on. I enjoyed playing music and exploring all the different worlds, seeing all the insane creatures and things, but as the game progressed I realized my class choice was apparently a weak one, as I’m sure many others saw. I hope the company tries a second version, this time with no jedis, and much much more balanced elements, cause I admit it. I enjoyed Galaxies. I’ve heard that they are working on new Star Wars games but I haven’t had the chance to look at them so I will check them out and if anything interesting pops up, I’m sure you’ll see a post about it.

May the Force be with you all, (except those people that give one prop)

cout << “T Evans”