MMORPG is the genre that requires a strong commitment and a lot of time investment. For this purpose I feel like anything that isn't the greatest MMO of all time in your eyes should not be played for more than 20 hours. I played this for 15.5 hours (that's not counting my first brief attempt years ago), and I wanted to give it a few more before finalizing my thoughts on this. I already knew I wasn't gonna commit to it, but the few additional hours would help me reaffirm myself in my convictions. Unfortunately, due to my hard drive failure last month and my subsequent distro-hopping, I had to reinstall this game thrice. And the last two times it would randomly start redownloading itself, with the first time being after it was installed, and the second time after reaching 80%. The game is 46GB in size, and my internet speed is 3Mbps. So I finally decided it's not worth the trouble just to reaffirm my thoughts on the game I am already planning to abandon.
This game had quite a challenge. Not only did it have to blend the KotOR gameplay with the MMO genre, but also somehow be a sequel to both KotOR 1 and 2, which are tonally and narratively very different games. I kinda feel that it failed at both tasks, though it's not a catastrophic failure.
Story-wise it resembles KotOR 1 much more than 2, which is a good thing in my book. I feel that the KotOR 1 tone and style of storytelling is much more fitting for an MMO anyway, as MMO's goal is to create a living and breathing world, not to convey some agenda or an overarching message. And I genuinely liked the story for how much I played through it, even though I never finished it.
The problem is how that story and the story-driven gameplay fits into the gameplay systems. And it kinda doesn't at all. I was impressed with how more than one person can participate in a conversation, but that's about the only feature that arises from the marriage of KotOR and the MMO design. Most of the time in this game you're practically playing a single-player game with some hub areas. And yet, if judged as a single-player game, it has terrible quest design (which is common, but forgivable in MMOs). The world itself, which I consider to be the most important aspect of this genre, feels very artificial and lacks interactivity. Which isn't helped by its WoW-like linearity.
Finally I want to comment on the art-style, which I consider to be an important part of any MMO, as it can make or break immersion. And here I really don't like it. It has this mobile-game cartoony aesthetic, and I just don't get why. As a sequel to KotOR 1 and 2, why does it differ so radically? This makes me not want to explore the worlds, as they all look cheap and plastic to me.
All this comes together in a Frankenstein monster of a game, different parts of which don't come together in a natural form. Rather it kinda fails as both a KotOR game and a Star Wars MMO. That being said, it is still a decent experience, as long as you're willing to invest huge amounts of time into something flawed. I am not.
This game had quite a challenge. Not only did it have to blend the KotOR gameplay with the MMO genre, but also somehow be a sequel to both KotOR 1 and 2, which are tonally and narratively very different games. I kinda feel that it failed at both tasks, though it's not a catastrophic failure.
Story-wise it resembles KotOR 1 much more than 2, which is a good thing in my book. I feel that the KotOR 1 tone and style of storytelling is much more fitting for an MMO anyway, as MMO's goal is to create a living and breathing world, not to convey some agenda or an overarching message. And I genuinely liked the story for how much I played through it, even though I never finished it.
The problem is how that story and the story-driven gameplay fits into the gameplay systems. And it kinda doesn't at all. I was impressed with how more than one person can participate in a conversation, but that's about the only feature that arises from the marriage of KotOR and the MMO design. Most of the time in this game you're practically playing a single-player game with some hub areas. And yet, if judged as a single-player game, it has terrible quest design (which is common, but forgivable in MMOs). The world itself, which I consider to be the most important aspect of this genre, feels very artificial and lacks interactivity. Which isn't helped by its WoW-like linearity.
Finally I want to comment on the art-style, which I consider to be an important part of any MMO, as it can make or break immersion. And here I really don't like it. It has this mobile-game cartoony aesthetic, and I just don't get why. As a sequel to KotOR 1 and 2, why does it differ so radically? This makes me not want to explore the worlds, as they all look cheap and plastic to me.
All this comes together in a Frankenstein monster of a game, different parts of which don't come together in a natural form. Rather it kinda fails as both a KotOR game and a Star Wars MMO. That being said, it is still a decent experience, as long as you're willing to invest huge amounts of time into something flawed. I am not.