I’m not going to ever really suggest that story content in Star Wars: The Old Republic is challenging. Nor am I going to call that a demerit against the MMORPG; if I want to get my nose bloodied for having the temerity of playing narrative content, I’ll run The Underkeep again. However, it must be said, following the Will of the Polls from last week has made moving through the game extremely easy.
But hey, that’s not necessarily a complaint. It’s more a point that I bring up in the favor of the Sniper and its gameplay, even as I tried to introduce the possibility of a little bit of friction. I see this as an absolute win.
Our story picked up from Coruscant, which is a portion of the Smuggler story arc that I’ve done a few times before, but that was also with the stealth class because I found the idea of sneaking around and using a shotgun as a backstab weapon highly amusing. The Sniper, by unsurprising comparison, is extremely straightforward: I take a knee or tumble over to some cover, line up some shots, and tear off big chunks of HP from targets. Or as is often the case, I place down the giant AoE “spray and pray” skill and just cause groups of mobs to fall over.
That really does sound simplistic on the face of it, and it is, but then again I’m not really bothered by it. Feeling overpowered can be nice sometimes, and the gameplay loop of the Sniper has arrived at just the right time when I’m kind of burned out on higher challenge.
That said, as I moved through the story, I did try to bring a little bit of abrasiveness into the Sniper’s combat routines, primarily by turning Corso into a tank role. The long-established wisdom of SWTOR is that you set your companion to the healer role and just handle mobs yourself while being effectively invincible in combat, but I decided to slightly eschew what I believe to be that convention and see how turning him into a tank.
Initially this did make things slightly more involved as my chosen pet ended up taking a bit of time to establish mob gathering and aggro, something that felt oddly validating considering my own annoyances with being a tank in the game previously, but after a bit of time and observation, I started to learn that I needed to time my attacks and exercise a little bit of patience before I started mowing down enemies. It ended up making me feel like a better Sniper player.
As for the story, I’m once again enjoying things. The general beats haven’t been completely lost on me as I’m sent into a scavenger hunt to piece together the lost treasure of an NPC that I’m supposed to care about because of Risha’s fangirling, but the moment-to-moment stuff is still pretty enjoyable and engaging. I so far have had some fade-to-black fun with another Smuggler, halted a misguided attempt on my life, absolutely bullied the hell out of a few bounty hunters, and earned myself a Wookiee companion.
That seems to be the correct companion choice, honestly. There’s something iconic about hearing those roars as a Smuggler. Also not having to hear Corso is a blessing.
So yeah, overall I’m having an absolute blast with the Sniper (pun not totally intended). I’m beginning to get into a groove with its combat routines while eagerly looking forward to the next wrinkle, the DPS the class puts out is kind of nutty, I’m beginning to make in-character choices as the story moves along (which is helped by the fact that he’s styled after a Star Wars TTRPG character I play as), and the story is entering into new-to-me territory. Hell, even the portions of the narrative that I thought were going to be a slog got done faster than I expected. I genuinely don’t remember Taris being finished nearly as swiftly as it was here.
That, rather neatly, segues into our first poll choice for the week. The chase for space pirate treasure continues, and that means I’ve got one of two planets to start running around on next. Obviously I’m going to be going through them both. This is just a question of which one comes first. If that matters.
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As for the second poll, that’s more about plans sometime later down the line. As I’ve pointed out a couple of times now, playing as a tank in SWTOR was deeply unsatisfying and annoying, but one of you fine readers commented that perhaps I should give healing a shot.
The way I see it, there are a couple of avenues toward this idea: I could either roll a new character and start to learn how to healer from low level, or I could roll a new character and use a level boost that I apparently have in my pocket. Or I could just… not do either of those things whatsoever!
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Polling will once again wrap up at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 19th. For the time being, I’m going to once again sit on my hands and wait for the poll results to formulate before I take my next steps. I would otherwise goof around with my other characters in the stable, but honestly, I’m getting kind of attached to my Sniper fella. Even if his haircut looks kind of stupid. I love my sniping trash boy.
Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.
