STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™

Easily the best sci-fi mmo on the market currently, and a real treat for OG Star Wars Fans.
It's Bioware at the former height of their storytelling capability and Star Wars at the former height of it's world-building prior to Disney.
It allows us to pretend that modern-day Bioware and Disney Star Wars never existed, and there's a lot to love about that.

You can expose a politician's corruption and something actually happens about it

I played the game at launch for 6 months back in 2011 and stopped as the there was little endgame and content was low. Fast forward 14 years and there is now an insane amount of story content in this game.

If you are a STAR WARS fan and love a good, well written story then this is the game to play, this game is part of a dying collective of well written story led games that no longer exist.

-Quick Review-
Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG developed by BioWare and later handed off to Broadsword Online Games. You’ll create a character for the Old Galactic Republic or Sith Empire, level up, collect gear, vanity pets and mounts, complete quests, get achievements, collect decorations and buy houses, level up more, and run around on numerous planets from the Star Wars franchise. The biggest standout features in The Old Republic are the Class Related Quests, and the incredible amount of voiced dialogue in the game. I played for around 350 hours as a Free to Play Account before deciding to chip in $15 for a subscription for a month, and to unlock more character slots, and see the rest of the content.
After my account relapsed into “Preferred status” (Free to play: Never bought anything. Preferred: Has more perks, but back to FTP restrictions), I finished playing as all the different classes and chipped away at achievements casually. I may resubscribe occasionally for future content, but one subscription was enough for me for now. (If I do resubscribe again I’ll have saved up lots of credits and know exactly what premium stuff I want before my subscription ends again, stuff like housing upgrades requiring over 1 mil credits, or buying stuff in general costing over 1 mil credits.)

Review Video:
Hey hold on! before you keep reading, how about watching a 46 minute video I made instead? If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay please watch my:

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: In general sweeping terms, you’re playing as a character for the Empire or Republic, who is part of a 3 Act Structure, usually the first act is about some kind of growth or a hunt or something, then the second act is an in-between character development series for you and your crew, and lastly act 3 ends on Correllia (Probably the worst planet to navigate in the game, to think the YT-1300, YT-2000, and YT-2400 light freighters were made here. No wonder everyone wants to leave the darn planet, it’s a cartography-deathtrap).
After you’ve, become the Hero of the Republic/Empire, Ultimate Bounty Hunter / Agent, Jedi Master, Sith Lord, whatever your “final form” might be at the end of Act 3, you can continue your journey with the expansions which came out! Even as a Free to Play Account, you can access a few of the expansions: Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Galactic Starfighter, Galactic Strongholds, and lastly Shadow of Revan.
With the expansions, there will be some call-backs to your past deeds, for example as a Bounty Hunter, on the planet Rishi (the Shadow of Revan Expansion) there was reference to my status as “Grand Champion of the Great Hunt”. And all the way to the Legacy of the Sith Expansion, my status as a Mandalorian is acknowledged and kinship with Torrian being particularly special.


Gameplay: You know how most MMORPG’s control, right? Movement with WASD on the keyboard, looking around with the mouse, abilities and skills bound to 1-9 on the keyboard or click ‘em on the action bar with your mouse, get experience for killing stuff and completing quests, level up to get stronger new abilities, and as you reach higher levels equip gear to give you beneficial stats to increase your damage and health pool. (Most people are familiar with MMO concepts, if you’re not feel free to let me know and I’ll write it out or send ‘ya a link to a beginners video or something)
Star Wars: The Old Republic has all the typical expected MMORPG things with a Star Wars coat of paint over the top. Level up via questing, dungeons, or grinding exp out some other way. At Max level after you’ve finished the content you work at getting the best gear with the best stats. Once I reached that point, I marked The Old Republic as complete, I was in a raiding guild a lifetime ago on World of Warcraft and I won’t go back to that life in any game… and once I reach that point in any MMO it’s time for me to bow out. (I’m not going to log on and play a video game like it’s my job… unless you want to pay me how much I earn for working, I’ll do it then! DM me your best offers. lol)
However, the journey to get to that point was enjoyable and I’m satisfied with my experience playing The Old Republic! You have 8 Classes in total, but they mirror each other so, for the Republic you have “Jedi Knight” which plays the same as the “Sith Warrior” on the Empire side… the remaining classes are: Jedi Consular / Sith Inquisitor, Republic Trooper / Imperial Agent, Smugger / Bounty Hunter. Each Class also has its own Starship, and group of companions who join you for the adventure!
At character creation you choose your faction, be it Republic or Imperial, then choose and customize your species ranging from Human, Cyborg, and Zabrak… then they get ya as a FTP account because you can’t play as Twi’lek, Miraluka, Chiss, Sith Pureblood, etc unless you subscribe.
After Character creation, the fun begins! I suggest you sit back and enjoy the ride, don’t worry when the game announces “Exp reduced, subscribe for more perks!”. I think you should play a character through all the free content and then decide at that point if you want to subscribe to increase the level cap and get the rest of the expansions.
Again, after playing my Bounty Hunter to level 60 and finishing the available expansions, completing the Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent, and Jedi Consular personal stories, I played roughly 350 hours in game. You could quit there, but I enjoyed the game enough to cough up the subscription for a month to unlock more character slots and the expansions.


Conclusion: Star Wars: The Old Republic has been an adventure. I haven’t been hooked by an MMORPG like this for a long time, and it’s primarily because of the subscription model and coupled with it being a Star Wars Game.
Again, I would encourage anyone interested in the game to give it a try, the Free To Play Model is very generous, if you play smart you can make it so your first (and possibly ONLY) time subscribing will get you tons of great upgrades and unlocked content.
But it IS an MMORPG… so expect to spend a lot of time playing, expect to stick around… don’t rush the adventure, sit back, and let your choices guide your characters down their path… be that light side paths, dark side paths… or somewhere in between.

I have split this review first by general thoughts and then by its expansions, as the quality begins to differ dramatically. I have been playing on and off since about 2013.

General thoughts:
+ Consistently great voice acting, probably the best in all of video games
+ Great character customization
+ F2P is decent
+ Subscribing once will give permanent access to all expansions out at the time of your active sub. No additional purchases necessary
+ They have done well to update the game with QoL features over the years

- Cartel Market is greedy
- Currency cap on Premium players (subbed at least once, non-active) is prohibitive

Base Game (class stories, level 1-50)
+ Some of the best star wars content out there. Fun stories, good companions (mostly) and lots of opportunity to role play your character how you want
+ Completely f2p

Rise of the Hutt Cartel
+ The Empire’s story is pretty good
- The Republic’s, less so


Shadow of Revan
+ Quite fun, brings both sides together and is interesting to see and play as your character as you navigate a truce
- If you played Kotor you may not be a fan of what they did with Revan canon-wise

Knights of the Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne
I liked playing this one through for the first time. However, subsequent playthroughs lose the shine and become just a grind.

- Having all classes play through the same expansion really kills it. The plot makes literally no sense if you are not one of the jedi/sith classes, and even then it isn’t written particularly well
- Lots of spongy mobs that take forever to kill and can also see through stealth.
- Tons of gimmicky mechanics added that I DESPISE, with no way to skip them.
- The plot holes become more obvious in each playthrough
- Some of the missions were neat in theory but made no sense for certain classes.
- Too much power creep resulted in a stupid decision you would never make that causes you to lose all your prestige and make the entire thing pointless, as you are forced back into your faction (Empire/Republic) at the end
- There is a saboteur option but it is half-assed and poorly done. The option should have just been to switch sides and suspend your disbelief when using Fleet, rather than having to do it literally every time you have to make a decision.
- Losing all your companions and taking hours and hours and HOURS of story to get them back was so disappointing
- They introduced the decision to kill certain companions which is great in theory, but actually just relegates them to the sidelines as they didn’t pay to voice-act both scenarios.

Onslaught
- Oh boy am I sick of being a lapdog to Mandalorians
Too little actual story added with the expansion

Legacy of the Sith
- Haven’t played it all the way through. I would like to see something other than the corpse of Malgus for the 10th time.

Final thoughts
The base game is truly one of the best experiences I’ve had in a video game. However there is a sharp decrease in quality over time and it seems to be in a weird spot where no one is happy. They don’t add enough end-game raids, they don’t add enough story, and PvP is in a poor place with a toxic community. You will get an insane amount of playtime out of it though and I recommend subbing at least one month and be able to get your starwars fix for years to come.

Everyday I have to agree to terms and verify file integrity to fix the game. Please address this.

The DEFINITIVE MMO experience.
It has literally everything,
- The best stories in MMOs (Fully voice acted, and not as predictable as other MMOs)
- Great combat (Ancient sure, but it feels great, and looks fantastic.)
- Fantastic graphics (Biggest surprise to me, you have to fiddle with it, and add some FXAA through the NVIDIA control
panel, but once you do, it looks up to par with nearly all other MMOs)
- The BEST OST in MMOs today (WoW has some pretty great music, but nothing beats John Williams' original work)
- You get showered in loot, rewards, housing items, cool cosmetics, boosters and tons more stuff (And it's not there just to
hook you on the store either, it's actually insanely generous.
- A fantastic mount system
- A BRILLIANT housing system with decoration that can be gained through crafting and rewards.
- Lots and LOTS of F2P content
- A wonderful monetization model where once you sub for a single month, you gain and keep access to ALL expansion
content forever. (Looking at you ESO, this is the way to do it correctly)
- A metric TON of content (Truly with 8 class stories to play entirely for free, spanning 100s of hours, this has more content
than most paid games)
- A thriving world (Believe it or not, you will run into other players at nearly every instance of the game, still. Not the
biggest playerbase, but a very consistent one.)
- THE MOST ELABORATE IN UNIVERSE SW STORY THAT ISN'T TAINTED BY DISNEY OUTSIDE OF THE ORIGINAL 6 MOVIES.
(If you despise Disney SW and love the originals, this is for you 100%. It's the best SW story content outside of KOTOR
and the original movies.)
Some possible negatives or things to consider;
- Cash shop (it's F2P, so it's a given, and prices are....all over the place, but there are daily deals to be had that are quite
good, and it's not too predatory when it comes to selling QOL, most of that stuff is available for regular in game credits
too)
- It's old, and feels that way sometimes, but then again, it manages to surprise from time to time with how frsh mechanisms and content is introduced quite regularly. It's also pretty nostalgic if you grew up in the 00's.
- It's entirely playable as a wonderful solo experience. This might be a plus or a minus depending on preference.
Truly, even for F2P players that never want to spend. There are SO many cool adventures here, so much to enjoy for free, without feeling constantly pressured to spend or having to deal with loads of missing QoL. Even the QoL thats missing can be bought in the store (mostly with credits too)
I truly have VERY little negatives to say. This game is absolutely wonderful and a fantastic SW experience.