4/5 ★ – crimson2877's review of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Beaten: Feb 24 2022 Time: 30 Hours Platform: Mac (Via Crossover) 

Full disclosure: I’ve been playing SWTOR since it came out. Actually, before that, I’ve been playing since beta. Now, I haven’t been playing consistently for that whole time, I’ve taken years long breaks, and never really played for more than a month at a time. I haven’t even finished any of the expansions! Nor all the class quests. 

If you’re unacquainted, SWTOR features 8 classes, each of which has their own main story and companions, but follow the same order of locations. You’ve got 4 Empire and 4 Republic classes, which are all mirror images of each other (I.e. Sith Warrior plays the same as Jedi Guardian, despite them having completely different stories).

I’ve played many Sith Warriors (that’s your standard Darth Vader-type dude, big and beefy and extremely lightsaber-focused). I finished Sith Inquisitor (evil wizards basically) somewhere down the line, Republic Trooper a few years back, and I’ve tried but never gotten too far in the rest. 

What that means is that I’ve never played what are usually considered the best two class stories: Jedi Knight and Imperial Agent. What I’ve heard is that Jedi Knight is a solid KOTOR-type story, your classic Star Wars hero’s journey, and Imperial Agent lives much more in the grey. So, with the new expansion having come out recently, I decided to get back into the game. And I decided the Agent would be my vessel. The game itself is probably what you imagine when you think about the state of Pre-Destiny MMOs. It’s got hotbar combat, ability trees (er, it did before the new update. Now it’s a bit simpler), quick travel, and wide open spaces filled with quests. If you’ve played a hotbar-based MMO before, you’ll be comfortable here. That being said, there’s a particular kineticism to the combat that feels nice to me, particularly with the lightsaber-wielding classes. The visuals are on the simple and slightly cartoony side, but not to the extent of something like WoW. I love how the game looks in certain areas, but if you’re expecting it to look like a new game, well, it came out in 2011. 

Moving on to the Imperial Agent story, I mean god DAMN it was so good. I don’t really remember the other ones enough to compare them, but I definitely feel like this had the coolest themes, the most unexpected twists, and the most human moments. I wasn’t expecting that last part, and I wasn’t expecting the first part to succeed so well. The twists I expected, not that I saw them coming, but like.. you play a secret agent. if the story didn’t have twists I’d be worried for the writers lol. Thematically it’s concerned with loyalty and allegiance. At the end of the day, are we really culpable to anyone besides ourselves? And should we be? The companions also revolve around these themes, each one having their own hangups around who they’re loyal to. My personal favorite was Kaliyo, the first companion you get, who’s definitely the kind of person who prefers to have no permanent ties to anything. The places her story goes moved me, made me reckon with some real relationships I’ve had, and the way independence functioned in those relationships. I also just got done reading up on Attachment Theory, which just served to contextualize her actions. She seemed real, though at the same time a caricature. 

The same can be said for pretty much everything here. On the surface it’s a pulpy sci-fi spy story, straight out of some ratty paperback book from thirty years ago, but beneath that it has some really interesting plots going on, and some real emotions bubbling away. It won’t win any awards, and it probably won’t fulfill your Star Wars role playing dreams, but the Imperial Agent storyline is a fantastic little WRPG in it’s own right