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Review: Star Wars: Galaxies
Star Wars: Galaxies Developer: Sony Online Publisher: Sony Online/Lucas Arts Genre: Sci-Fi Released: 06/26/03
Don't get me wrong-I'm still having fun, but I think it's in spite of the game, not because of it. This editorial piece (I can't honestly call it a review) assumes you have a very basic level of interest and, therefore, knowledge about the Star Wars: Galaxies MMO Game. I'll discuss several features of the game that have been… memorable, some of them even enjoyable. Read on. Character Creation I have to admit it and give props where props are due. This is by far one of the best, most customizable character creation menus I have ever seen. A character can be large, small, short, tall, skinny, muscular, and any combination in between. This means there is a highly diverse population. I must admit it was quite a treat to see a pot-bellied Mon Calamari wandering around Naboo. Eye candy starts from the get-go and stays superlative. User Interface The interface is new and fairly snazzy, with some great features. I have changed virtually all of the defaults to reflect my left-handed dyslexic idiosyncrasies. The skill trees are easy to understand and have most of the details I need to decide my progression.
The onscreen waypoint monitor is a handy feature that should also be automatically turned on; there's nothing like knowing the distance and direction of your next mission, updated on the fly. The macro editor is simplistic and once you have gone to one or two fan sites, you'll know easily how to make a macro that moves between toolbars, loads your armor in one fell swoop, and starts up the crafting process. The in-game mail system is buggy as hell. If I try to reply to a message, I end up spawning four or five duplicate messages. The “friends” section (under community) will allow you to select friends from your list and generate an in-game mail from that menu, but you can't add additional people to the “To” line of the generated mail if you accidentally left them off the list. And don't get me started on the chat system. When and IF it works, it works poorly. It drops people out and creates havoc. Have fun with chat tabs that clone themselves, so you end up with four or five windows at the bottom of your screen that have no purpose whatsoever. Sometimes you'll lose all forms of communication other than /say-right down to /tell and /reply. C'mon. I've never played in a game where you lose even private messaging.
There are maps galore-planetary, overlay, radar-and they are very easy to use and understand. I cannot navigate a city without the overlay map. There is a “find” feature, which is very handy when one first arrives at a new city; ie., '/find cloning facility'. Animations are very good. I have a dancer and some of the moves are absolutely great. I also like a lot of the battle animations. I think the social animations are pretty stupid for the most part; I would rather not sigh and roll my eyes every time I use the word “love” out of context… as in, “Man, I love the resists in my new armor.” Mounts are fun. Pure-and-simple. However, it took a bit of remapping my hotkeys to accommodate the fact that if I'm being attacked when I'm riding, my mount will “slow down and prepare for combat” (which as far as I can see means nothing), but I cannot attack back with my specials. So I have to dismount, tell my crazy chicken to stay, and go after the beasties on foot. With the advent of vehicles looming, I hope they allow real combat while mounted on creatures, or the Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers who suddenly feel useful will once again find themselves on the short end of the stick.
I live on Bloodfin. It seems to me like the devs haven't been spending a lot of time trying to correct the mistakes they've made with the PvP system. Sure, they've fixed it where you can't run into your private home once you've taken a potshot at the enemy, and sure, they've managed to fix some of the exploits from clone camping to popping in and out of Temporary Enemy Flag status (TEF), but the system still doesn't work and isn't very encouraging. Example: I hit the wrong hotkey and used an area effect item, and accidentally caught a TEF from healing an overt player. This made me susceptible to attack, and yet-even though I could see the player charging me, and even though I had combat music going on, I could not attack the inbound player until he attacked me first. Now, I'm not capable of standing and taking a hit from a Teras Kasi master, and I had no armor and no buffs at the time, so this got me killed in one blow. I wouldn't have minded dying if I could have at least gotten a shot off at my enemy. I come out of the cloning facility, hungry for blood and ready to do damage, but I can't attack again. I'm told this was a bug and that I should have had a revenge TEF, but I didn't. End-of-story. Also, end of combat! Turning SW:G into EverQuest Alright, this is it. What on earth were the developers thinking when they implemented the FSCS parameters? Why is it a good idea to have Jedi-hungry players master every profession (as far as I can tell from observation) before opening their FSCS? It's not going to slow your power gamers down one bit and it will just mean that no casual gamer without a good third-party macro program will ever open the FSCS. And giving the dog a bone-I mean, giving the players hints in the form of holocrons that are rare drops-just added insult to injury. I will move on to another game before I subject my toon to Holo Hell/Son of Evercamp, or take up Polearms just to satisfy the requirements of the developer metric. Yeah, my character with the 500 health points is going to tank with a staff. That wasn't what I was planning to do when I built my stats, and not even stat migration is going to compensate for racial min/maximums.
Synopsis I feel like such an ass for buying another Sony product. Yes, it's beautiful, lush, has a good skill system, and the planets are all different. Yes, I like the fact that I don't lose key skills if I die too many times, and that my items decay, requiring a fellow player to patch them up. But I didn't like camping, broken PvP, and unstable professions in EQ either. I really didn't want to see it in Star Wars:Galaxies. Discuss: But, It's Star Wars!
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