Rin Plays: Star Wars: The Old Republic

There are certain points in one’s life where you get grandiose ideas about where your life is going, what you’ll be doing, and what you need to do to get there. Points where the world becomes your oyster, and all you need to do is pluck the pearl of opportunity. Points where all of this is laid in front of you… but then you devote yourself to a time-devouring game and you lose an entire week in the blink of an eye. Guess which point this post is about.

Anyone who talks with me on a semi-daily basis knows that I’ve given my current life away to an otherworldly force called SWTOR—that’s Star Wars: The Old Republic for those who haven’t been typing “swtor” into their search bar what seems like every half hour. I’m actually kind of surprised that I got into the game as much as I did. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Star Wars, and even after reading through some of the lore, I still can’t remember shit besides my hazy recollection of The Empire Strikes Back (which was the best film out of all of them). But then again, this game has more than just the ‘verse going for it and is one of the best “free to play” MMOs available right now. I’ll explain the quotation marks later on.

Tales of Solaris: Pay to Win?

So I’ve been playing my MMORPG Tales of Solaris for a while now, enough that I officially do not suck at it, which is awesome. In my previous review, I mentioned that it was a free game, and that wasn’t entirely correct. You can play for free, but there are added features that allow you to pay real world money in order to get better items and become stronger. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the amount of enjoyment I was getting out of the game was worth a couple of bucks. And ever since it’s been a constant drain out of my wallet every time I “top up” on the special cash-player money.

Rin Plays: Scarlet Blade

(Warning: the images in this post are NSFW)

I planned to write an article on this MMO while I was still playing it. Unfortunately, it seems as though the honeymoon period with this piece of work was shorter than I anticipated. As such, let’s consider this a postmortem judgment on our time together Scarlet Blade, and no, we are never ever getting back together.

Scarlet Blade takes place in the distant future where regular humans have all but been wiped from existence and instead we have Commanders, Arkana, and the baddies. Arkana are perfect beings forged by the one called ‘Mother’ to bring peace to the planet, but working for peace also means working only off the filtered information Mother gives you. Those that choose to fight under Mother’s militaristic rule and her protection become members of the Royal Guards, while the revolutionaries who value freedom and autonomy over all else fight under the name of Free Knights. However, there is corruption and betrayal on both sides of which the Arkana must unravel.

Video Game Review: Tales of Solaris

My new addiction: Tales of Solaris (formerly known as Tales of Laputa), a MMORPG. Usually these things aren’t my thing. I don’t play well with others, and I don’t like the idea of depending on strangers to help me accomplish things in a game.

The game is in an anime style, and as a person who likes anime it makes me smile. The game is designed to be a little more kid-friendly. I personally don’t mind the kid-friendly-ness of the game, although in general I’m not attracted to the hard-core mature games.

I guess one of the things I like is that I don’t have to be dependent on others. I have my own character and I have my pets. Yes, I have pets that fight along with me. Currently I have a dragon. It’s pretty awesome. Anyway, I can choose to team up with other people or I can play through the game myself. I like the flexibility.

The basics of this game are really easy to grasp. All you do is fight things and go through the main plot of the game. This intricacies of the game are (shockingly) harder to grasp. I constantly have the feeling that I’m missing some key aspect of the game while I’m playing it. It makes me very insecure in what I’m doing whilst playing. And I don’t like not knowing exactly what I’m doing.

However, as much as I am enjoying this game, it is the biggest time suck on the face of the planet. I guess since this is the first MMORPG I’ve ever committed to, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I’m a competitive person when it comes to gaming. The more you put into an MMORPG, the more rewards you get out of it. And as one of those people who wants to get the most out of their gaming experience, it means I put in more time than I probably should.

And while I really haven’t interacted with a lot of people, I can tell right off the bat that the other gamers are a bunch of nerds. I’m the Chairman of the guild Fairy TaiL (by default when other people quit) and I constantly see other people with nerdy names. So if you are looking for Internet friends, this may not be a bad place to start.

So if you have the time and have any level of interest, I’d say check this game out. If you don’t, then this game is not going to be worth your time.