The Past and times of Yore: Spyro 2, Gateway to Glimmer, more features, more friends and some more good stuff

Release Date: November 5th, 1999
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games
Platform: Playstation
Players: 1
Classification: E (Everyone)

Awhile ago I reviewed the classic Spyro the Dragon, one of my favourite games ever so I decided to continue the aptly named “golden-age” of the Spyro series with Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer (named “Ripto’s” Rage in USA).

Gateway to Glimmer introduced quite a few new features to the game, first off the story introduces many new characters, some of which become a mainstay in the series appearing in several more games. The Professor, Hunter the Cheetah, Elora the Faun, Zoe the Fairy and Moneybags the Bear all make their first appearance as well as one of Spyro’s most notorious opponents Ripto as well as his hench-dinosaurs Crush and Gulp. Basically the story is that the Professor, Elora and Hunter accidentally allow Ripto into their realm of Avalar and Elora prevents him from going back by getting the fairies to spread the orbs all over Avalar. They then decide to get the help of a Dragon to get rid of him. Meanwhile in the Dragon Kingdom it’s raining and Spyro and Sparks decide to go on a holiday to Dragon Shores which is a vacation spot in the Dragon Kingdom but are intercepted by the Professor, Elora, and Hunter and are instead transported to Glimmer, which is the first realm of the game. The focus this time around is basically to defeat Ripto so that Spyro can go to there for a vacation, there’s no actual explanation given about the gems you need to collect this time (apart from needing them to pay Moneybags), I vaguely remember Elora commenting that you had to collect the treasure though the Orbs and Talismans are needed to progress through the game but the treasure is only to achieve %100.

The Professer, Elora, Hunter, Spyro and Sparx  near the portal from the Dragon Kingdom

Playing this game for the first time you can really see the changes, after he and Sparks have a short conversation with the Professor, Elora and Hunter, Elora gives you you’re Guidebook that is used to show your progress in the game. Interestingly the game starts in Glimmer which isn’t a homeworld but a realm, and you don’t actually go to the first homeworld of Summer Forest until you finish the level. You then automatically enter into a conversation with your first npc character Bounsa the Gemcutter who fills you in on what s happening in the realm and what they need help with, and as you progress through the level you meet other NPC’s who have various jobs and dilemmas for you to solve.

Spyro with one of the Gemcutters in Glimmer

They then reward you with Orbs in which they always have a different explanation for giving them as they never have any idea what they are, at the end of the main part of the level you meet a final npc who gives you a Talisman and then you gotta run around and find all the treasure and orbs you need to fully complete the level. Another slight change that you may not notice is that you can activate a map for the bottom left of the screen, but I didn’t bother using this much as the layouts are not really that confusing.

One of my favorite Talismans, the Idol Springs Jade Idol.

 Once you have completed Glimmer and go through the portal you find yourself in Summer Forest which is the first homeworld in which I did notice that it and the rest of the homeworlds no longer have enemies in them just the little creatures to flame, so they are basically safe apart from the ever-present abyss in most Spyro levels. Here is where you find several of the new characters such as Hunter the Cheetah who acts as a guide for various activities and you come across him fairly often throughout the game where he gives you various challenges in reward for Orbs he is also found in the various Speedways where once you have completed the main timed challenge you can find him or another character for another challenge unique to the speedway which include things like flying through rings while paragliding. Another new character (and way of saving your game) is Zoe the Fairy who zaps Sypro with her wand at certain locations throughout a level every time Spyro walks under her to save his game.

Hunter in the crystal cave in Magma Cone, these two orbs you get are one of the harder challenges.

Lastly, Moneybags the Bear is quite a character with his pompous British accent and dress, he charges Spyro lots of gems for services in realms such as extending bridges opening doors and activating portals and also trains you in various abilities which  include:

Swimming: Spyro can now swim on the surface of the water, meaning that not all sections of water are just pools that you drown in, Spyro can swim in almost all bodies of water apart from lava of course. Swimming is pretty fun, you just use the charge button to dive underwater and also charge enemies as you obviously can’t use flame, you can also swim along using the x button, I loved it the first time I did it as it adds a great alternative to the usually gameplay controls and collecting gems, especially when most of the level is underwater.

Climbing: This one’s fairly self-explanatory, there are walls with “ladder-imprints” on them which Spyro can climb and jump across.

Headbash: Spyro can headbash by pressing triangle while jumping and can break most contains inc the “headbash specific” ones.

These abilities are learned by talking to Moneybags and paying a “small” fee, they are learned in each of the three homeworlds. Often you can’t get %100 on some homeworlds and realms until you can get a certain ability where you have to come back to later.

Swimming is great fun, especially wiping out pots and enemies while zooming through the water.

Other then these changes Spyro has relatively the same controls as before, he can jump, glide, charge and is protected by Sparx the same way as before. A new ability is that when you are gliding you can now press triangle for Spyro to hover upwards a bit then fall giving you that last little bit of height needed as opposed to the previous game where if you misjudged the glide there was really nothing you could do but fall, Spyro also loses his L1 and R1 side rolling ability. Defeating enemies this time does not always yield gems but adds a spark to the Powerup gate which when neough enemies are defeated gives Spyo abilities such as superflame, supercharge, superfly, invincibility and spring jump which is pretty damn fun.


Me re-doing a gliding and hovering challenge that Hunter takes you on early in the game, was a cinch the first time too :D

Another feature which I am very glad they added is the “Gem radar”, when you press all shoulder buttons Sparks points to the location of uncollected treasure, man that saves a hell of a lot of time searching around. Spyro now interacts with other characters a lot more, before it was just the one line of Dialogue when you rescued the other Dragons, now you see a Dialogue box pop up when talking to the various different inhabitants of that particular realm which you can talk to for additional dialogue even after they have finished your initial conversation.

A dialogue box that appears in the game.

The realms in the game are fairly diverse in this instance as you go from places like Sunny Beach to Skelos Badlands. There seems to be much more technology around now with realms like Metropolis and Robotica Farms compared to the first game where the worlds were more fantasy/medieval with only a few parts where Gnorcs used electricity or industrial objects like steel and cannons. There are some levels which feature larger amount of water sections such as Aquaria Towers where you help the Seahorses to fill up the towers with water. Spyro also has various new animations where when he touches lava he now jumps in the air with a burnt derriere until he loses Sparx and then gets burnt to a crisp as well as the angry slap he does when he falls into the water while flying in the Speedways which also make a return in this instalment with a bonus feature of you being able to find a character hidden somewhere in the level with a special challenge for Spyro which is always done with Hunter or from Hunter himself.

Aquaria towers is a level where you are under the water almost all the timr.

The graphics in the game are mostly fine, I again used an emulator to play the game so it looks much better than playing with the original Playstation, the locations may look slightly more cartoonish and not as beautiful as the first game. Though there were still some very beautiful locations including: Summer Forest, Magma Cone, and Zephyr which were some of my favourite looking places even Hurricos which is in a constant stormy state of rain, dark clouds and patchy sunlight looked amazing. The design and architecture of the levels is good too, with places like Skelos Badlands.  and Fracture Hills really fitting into their theme with the building design.

Hurricos, one of my favorite looking zones.

The emulator does make the models look so much better with the anti-aliasing options though unfortunately it doesn’t quite work with everything, I could see that the sparks from explosions and the sparkles that Sparx emits (lol that’s fun to say) are basically just yellow pixels. You can also see that any large non-3d text or graphics appear slightly pixelated as well, but these are minor things. The overall look and feel of the game is great and even though the locations in Avalar aren’t quite as equal in beauty as the Dragon Realms they are still a slight step up in detail from the previous game as you’d expect with a new installment.

Who sees some pixelated sparks! and Sparx! lol

 The music in this instalment of the game is great as before, there’s more of a variety of instruments  and sometimes voices which are used prominently at the start of a soundtrack, this is especially the case in Scorch, Shady Oasis and Colossus, I think Colossus has one of the best soundtracks in the game. Although this game retains basically the same kind of music from the original, there are a few gems here and there (pun intended) which are pretty damn good with some of my favourites being, the music from Magma Cone with it’s upbeat action-oriented feel and the calming Summer Forest tone (which is the same for all home realms) are great to listen to and especially come back to after completing a level.


The Colossus level music

The sound effects are good as usual and not much has changed from the usual sound effects and skips and jump and flame breath. Some of the audible cues are back such as the bouncing of an orb somewhere in the level which works the same way as a dragon rattling in crystal. Though the biggest change has got to be Spyro’s change in voice, in the first game he sounded very childish and naive, though since the voice actor change to Tom Kenny he seems to have matured a little bit and has a much more pleasant personality and I must say I liked him much better in the 2^nd and 3^rd games.

Spyro 2 was a great advancement in the Spyro series, it couldn’t obviously be the masterpiece that was the first Spyro game but it did everything it could to improve and it did it well, improving sound, graphics and introducing new game feature and abilities for Spyro. As I mentioned before this was the 2^nd game in the “Golden Age” of the Spyro series on PS1 which culminates with Year of the Dragon. I’ve played this game many times though once you’ve actually finished the game there is little to do, the replayability comes with going through the whole game again and as always I highly recommend playing through the original PS1 sytem, emulator or the Playstation store as it is one of the best games on from the PS1 era.

JD

Story - 9
Gameplay - 10
Graphics - 9
Music - 10
Sound Effects - 9
Play Time - 9
Replayability - 8

Overall: 9

Older, wiser and friendlier.

An Android and his Nexus: New Post Title Introduction

Well here I go again, another post type, I have finally delved into the untouched (for me at least) realm of mobile gaming. The title comes from when I was preparing for a trip to Japan with my martial arts group (I do Iaido) and I decided I should get a multimedia tablet for internet, email and gaming cause I didn’t want to use my phone all the time. Funnily enough I decided on an Asus Google Nexus 7 (2013 Model) for a few reasons which I’ll detail below.

• It runs on Android

• It has a powerful CPU and graphics erm chip or card I don’t know what they have.

• It was cheap! (only $305)

• It has lots of storage space, I got the 32g model which has 26gb free 

My main screen in landscape mode, I managed to pretty much copy all of the apps from my phone,  the time/date and weather widget isn't a built-in feature

There are some drawbacks such as  7” screen which is only slightly bigger than those giant Samsung galaxy note phones and also I got the wifi-only version so I’d need to be connected via wifi to be able to use internet. However these are a minor issues, the way I see it if I got an actual gaming handheld such as the PSP it’s only 4.3 inches which is the size of a regular smartphone anyway. The other thing was I didn’t want to pay for a whole other phone plan for my tablet either, so I got got this nifty little thing called the TP-Link TL-WR702N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Router Atheros which basically allows you to create a Wifi hotspot from a normal Ethernet port supplying internet.I also got a case to go with it which was one of those thin shell black ones which fit nicely and had that feature where you close the front it automatically switches off the screen and it came with a  free stylus that I love to use as it’s a bit more accurate than your finger for pressing those little links.

Me holding it in portrait mode, the orange bit the the case

 The main reason I got this was for my trip to Japan, (which was awesome by the way) and the Nexus 7 delivered, the screen is great, it’s really fast, I wasted no time setting it up with all my options and most of the apps I had from my phone, it works fine from my wireless internet at home after a bit of mucking around. I was going to try and use Juicedefender and Adblock Plus but unfortunately the Juicedefender kept cutting out the wifi and Adblock plus didn’t really work. After I fixed those two issues the tablet was running much better and pretty soon I had loaded up on various different apps I wanted inc MX Player which plays all types of downloaded movie files where android will not. On the trip itself the time on the plane flew by with me with me mining it up with Minecraft Pocket Edition or going old school with GTA3, and yes that is on the Google play store for Android  even San Andreas is on there, I could scarcely believe it though I spose it was pretty old and these things were pretty damn powerful, so why not.

My games and bookmarks screen, up the top right is the general controls tabs such as wifi and birghtness.

I ended up getting a collection of games as there was an android equivalent of most of the games I play, I’ve detailed whole list below. It truly is a good gaming device, there’s even a Steam App

Pegland and Pegland Deluxe – This is just basically an Android version of Peggle though not as good but that’s usually the case with free games.

Boing! Pow! Zing! Isn't the same as Peggle though

Battlefield 4 Commander and Battlelog App  - These are one of the main reasons I got the tablet, I like being the Commander though it’s nowhere near as good as it was in BF2, I just like the idea of commanding a match while your friends play. When I was playing this in Japan they were damn obedient I can tell you that.

Oh the responsibility!

Grand Theft Auto  III – The old favourite, I chose to play this one as I’d played San Andreas recently and wanted to go right back to the (almost) beginning, plays pretty wellbut would really love a controller for it.

I don't know about you but I kinda liked good old Claude from GTA3, especially at the start of the game.

  
Minecraft Pocket Edition – You could probably see this one coming, though there is a few features that are missing or different to the PC, the main one being finite worlds.

Edge of the world, that just ain't right man.

Ravensword 2 Shadowlands – This is basically Skyrim just lower res and slightly different, less Dragons maybe.

This will be much easier with the MOGA pro

Real Racing 3 – There were a ton of realistic racers though this one was pretty good, couldn’t exactly find a test drive unlimited equivalent

Hey who recognizes this place? the developers do, as they are based in Melbourne.

Order and Chaos Online – They basically could have called this World of Warcraft for Android, top notch MMO for a mobile device.

Looks familiar doesn't it?

Clumsy Bird -  Of all the Flappy bird clones this one is awesome, it looks great and can even play online with others seeing how far you can get within a set time period.

Multiplayer fun!

Repulze – This is basically Wipeout except with less focus on tricky tracks and ship flying and more on shooting. Have to try this one yet.

Off road sections? reminds me of Wipeout Fusion, ugh oh well I'm sure it's still better

These three were put on by my friend along with a whole bunch of others, these were the only 3 I kept.

Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space – Yep you know what these are, tbh I may delete them as I really don’t see the hype.

2048 – An interesting numbers game that I can’t quite work out, it’s pretty damn popular though.

Plants Vs Zombies 2 – Another well known one, is pretty cool but I got kinda bored of it after a while.

The TP-Link router was really good as the wifi in the hotel was average at best, I really noticed the different when I beefed it up with the internet for the port, I actually had to go get another adaptor plug for the adapter plug that I had as it was an older Japanese plug. So apart from a few issues I had some good nights of gaming while in Japan. Screw arcades hey?

Ahh gaming home away from home.

So basically after explaining all that this post title will be about the games I play on my Nexus 7 using Android, hence the title, haven’t exactly decided what the first post will be but we’ll see. As a final note I’ve bought a MOGA Pro controller for my Nexus 7 so I may leave any games that I want to try with the controller for later and focusing on the ones that I only use the styles and some touching for, that sounds kinda weird actually.

JD

I’m through touching I need hands-on

Diablo 3: Time to put the Hammer down, or pick it up rather

My relationship with Diablo 3 or Diablo in general has been a bit of a fleeting affair I did do a review of it mid 2012 not too long after it came out, having tried to play Diablo 2 and not liking it, this installment wasn’t much different and I concluded with it being a good game, the action RPG genre was just not for me. Though unfortunately I was left without the proper closure as I didn’t actually finish the damn thing as I got sick of it. A time later due to much hype about the coming Reaper of Souls expansion, I thought to myself that something needed to be done about this as I had to finish it at least once before the expansion came out (not that I was going to get the expansion anyway). As I pondered playing it again.

Two heroes to the rescue! *tromp, tromp, tromp* I like my glowing hammer in this shot

 I thought to myself that it may have been the fact that I was using a Monk and although they were pretty cool, the fact that they did  not use their weapons with most of their attacks was kind of disheartening especially when they weren’t fist weapons. I tried Mage first as I really wanted to see what Mage was like in an action RPG, but after about an hour of slinging spells around it just didn’t have the same effect a proper melee character. As I’d found the most fun playing medieval fantasy games recently being a basic warrior type character I decided to go Barbarian as it seemed to fit the hack’n’slash genre the best.

I'm not sure whether this was a hack or a slash, looks like a slash but I was using an axe so you never know.

 I started off well as I always like starting from the start, and man do you start off bare, literally. The Barbarian is basically only wearing boots and undies at the start and is carrying a tiny axe but you soon get more armor and get beefier. I liked the Warrior abilities such as Hammer of the Ancients, Cleave, Rend, Revenge and Whirlwind and I learned to use them at the right times and combinations. One of my favourites was Call of the Ancients which summons 3 ancient warrior who kick a lot of ass, man if you ever needed an “I win” button this was it, click it and all of a sudden there’s five of you kickin’ ass all over the place. It didn’t take me long to get used to the Warrior, I swapped between a one-handed weapon and shield and a two-handed weapon on several occasions making sure I adjusted my passive skills accordingly. I used the Templar most of the time as he had good healing and defense skills I liked the idea of two juggernauts smashing up the demons, I did use the Scoundrel and Enchantress at times but by far the best thing was to hear the banter between them especially when the scoundrel was involved, the Scoundrel was also pretty good when fighting with you as he had a few funny comments.

Ah gold old straightforward Templar, call me boring but there's something I liked about him.

Loot was a bit better in recent patches but it was still a bit of a pain to sort through all the crap and outfit myself as well as my followers, I found most of the time I was glad to see portal save points as I could go back to home base and offload all the junk. I realised that my Blacksmith and Jeweller level was still the same from when I stopped playing with my Monk so It was good to see the recipes that I could get though a lot of the time once I had something made I got something else in the game that was better, but that’s just loot I guess. So I slammed and hammered and whirled my way through most of the game with the blinding intent of just finishing the damn thing though I couldn’t help but appreciate the graphics and artwork, especially the cinematic which were some of the best I had ever seen, well I spose it is Blizzard making them, seriously is a good looking game though. There was some pretty grotesque bits in the Tower of Sin walking past those flay demons, felt pretty good to kill that spider bitch afterwards.

Tyrael's Sacrifice, probably my favourite cinematic from the game.

I was majorely hyped when I got up to Act III again at Bastion’s Keep and was going to see for the first time the invasion of heaven or whatever it was called. I kicked the shit out of all the demons as well as Azmodan himself and finally got to Act IV where you go to heaven and assist the angels there. I liked the moment when Tyrael faces up to Imperius again but he’s still an arrogant bastard after all that you and Tyrael have done . I did most of Act IV with my friend Lachlan as I thought I’d need some help defeating Diablo though it turns out he was so powerful and I was playing on the normal game mode that we just kicked the crap out of everything. He mentioned that certain bosses were really hard usually and that I probably didn’t like the game cause I was bored cause it was so easy but I didn’t agree. So we got up to Diablo and kicked his ass then the game was over. 

IM'A FIRIN MAH LAZORR! (Lachlan was a great help)

 Frankly I was glad I got that out of the way, the Reaper of Souls expansion is out now with a new Crusader and a new story twist to follow in Act V, frankly I couldn’t be bothered and won’t be paying any money for it though the new trailers and features do look pretty impressive especially the Nemesis Monsters

My view of Diablo III stands as before, it’s a good game and I had a bit more fun this time but it’s just not my type of game though I’m glad I got through it eventually.

JD

"Uh Tyrael? I think we got a problem"

Now Bul’Kathos!

Hustlin' through The Old Republic: Keep your friends close when Starfighting

Well, well, well it has most certainly been awhile since my last post, actually it’s been a whole freakin year, more than that actually, goddamn really? where has the time gone? I got quite a shock when I saw my last Hustlin’ through The Old Republic post was from the 11^th of July 2013 so there’s gonna be one hell of a lot of ground to cover but anyway, here we go.

So after finishing off the Jedi Knight storyline I headed to Ilum to do the last bit of story that led to The Battle of Ilum and The False Emperor and wow what exciting flashpoints they were doing it for the first time with guildies Neffias and Areah *SPOILER ALERT* finally bringing down Darth Malgus was satisfying to say the least. So that was basically then end of the original set of story flashpoints. Pretty soon the very first expansion for SWTOR Rise of the Hutt Cartel had come out, bringing a new operation, species, planet and the experience cap to level 55. I had the good fortune to be invited by a Neffias to do a run of the Scum and Villainy operation and even more fortunate to be gifted a full set of modifications from him that would get me up to scratch to do the op as well, man he was such a nice guy I wrote a post about it in the forum. I wasted no time in deciding on a new armour set from the Cartel Market, I chose the Valiant Jedi set as I liked it from the cinematic as it was the armour that Jedi Master Ven Zallow wore, finally getting rid of my Tionese set though I still had my funky glasses!

Oo yeh Valiant Jedi Style

Scum and Villainy itself went ok, was with 16 people probably my first time doing that, we got to the end but unfortunately couldn’t finish off Styrak. I can’t remember at what point the Academy Exemplar guild I was in broke up to join Dawn (which is now called The Reclaimers) but it was around January last year that the guild leader Hawking decided to close Academy Exemplar and jump ship to Dawn which had a better and bigger playerbase, this was actually a very good move as I did much more raiding and instancing when I was with the new guild and started learning a lot more about end-game content. So anyway after I’d finished Ilum I decided to finish off several heroic areas of their quests such as Section X on Belsavis and the Black hole on Corellia. I had the idea to do these things in patch order because I had taken so long to finish of my story mission I needed to see all the content that had come out while I had been faffing around and also because I hadn’t purchased the game till the Aussie servers had come out which is kind of ironic now to be back playing on US servers.

I quite liked this picture of Makeb

 It didn’t take very long to finish off the pre - Rise of the Hutt Cartel content and soon I was off to Makeb which is quite a pretty planet indeed despite being wracked by earthquakes and instability due to Hutt Cartel Mining operations, I found Makeb to be pretty damn annoying as there were enemies pretty much everywhere and as the planet was made up of floating mesas it was difficult to avoid enemy npcs due to the tight confines of islands and bridges. But I got it done and it was quite a interesting storyline too.  Another note was I was as I had gotten T7 to maximum affection and I had achieved maximum Light side points and had gotten “The Pure” title. I was determined to use Lord Scourge though unfortunately this meant being evil, as he’s evil as fack and unfortunately an when I got to the first Dark side choice I just couldn’t, so that was that really. I continued on with Doc but lately it’s been kind of hard as you just don’t get enough story quests in endgame obviously.

Pure... but not simple

Sooner then I knew it, the Galactic Starfighter expansion had been released, honestly I reckon this was something they should have had from the start as when the game first came out everyone liked the on-rails starship missions but little else and they just trailed off from there. Don’t get me wrong the starfighter battles are fun but it’s little more than a feature and hard to play casually nowadays as you get massively upgraded people who you have no chance against though this happens all the time with PvP anyway. I had a bit of fun with it at the start when everyone was  new to it as well and it’s fun to dive in at times, can’t see myself playing it for a significant amount of time though. Around this time I finished off the Kaon under Siege and Lost Island flashpoints from the Rise of the Rakghouls patch, Kaon under siege was pretty damn harrowing I must say, with a few multiple NPC endurance bosses thrown in there.

Galactic Starfighter, well it looks pretty

Wham!, bam! shazam! Yeeeargh! Kaon under siege was a pretty chaotic affair

 After finishing off Makeb with Jxan, I got back on my Sith Inquisitor Shadow Kxan and set to work completing Belsavis which had quite an interesting part where I myself freed the Dread Masters, man wish I hadn’t done that now lol. Then I went to Voss and saw what the Empire side of the story was like, and it was actually pretty entertaining playing the trust of the Voss and getting their favour while making them scorn the republic, you even get into trouble by allowing a Gormak to leave Voss. Also I purchased a mobile security key so I could have access to the vendor to finally get the customization for Ashara Zavros where she has red-skin and white facepaint making her look much more appropriate to her new Sith identity, ironically after that  I managed to get her to full affection which was pretty fraught with uncertainty and timidness but we did end up doing it (I think) though not quite as much as with Kira Carsen man she was eager. She was probably the fastest companion I levelled up though as she liked most things Light side and I had racked up quite a few Courting gifts as well.

Ahh beautiful Voss

I then decided it was time to start a new character and this one of course would be a non-force user, I was initially trying to decide between a Smuggler and an Imperial Agent and even made forum post about it to get some ideas about the two classes. I decided against the two though mainly because I kind of wanted a more boss (dare is say it) Master Chief style of blasting away as an armoured soldier, but no so boss as to be a commando carrying a huge gun as a rifle was good enough. It was a huge conflict because my first two choices were pretty easy, I wanted a Jedi Knight first and foremost then I wanted to make a ‘good’ Sith so I chose Inquisitor Shadow for a few reasons as I didn’t want to do a Sith Warrior as they were pretty much the Sith equivalent of a Jedi Knight though I may make a Marauder in the future to cover that side of things. The other reason was that I wanted to create a Jedi Sage so I can use force telekinetics rather than a Sith Sorcerer where is mostly just force lightning. But this was different as it had lots of conflicting decisions for example there were lots of pros  and cons for each for example I knew I wanted to make a Jedi Consular so I technically should have gone Empire Side

Smuggler

Pros: Funny alternative storyline from Jedi and Sith serious stuff

Cons: Republic Side, Healer advanced class uses stealth like Sith Assassin, Gunslinger class used too much by other players

Imperial Agent

Pros: Empire Side, Awesome looking Ship

Cons: Serious story again unlike Bounty Hunter and Smuggler, Healer advanced class uses stealth like Sith Assassin, Sniper class used too much by other players

Trooper

Pros: Boss as boss, uses rifle new odd looking ship, easy to raise companions affection as will be Light side

Cons: Republic Side, serious story, another tank character....

Bounty Hunter:

Pros: Empire side, Powertech boss tank  “Rebel without a cause” story, totally hot romanceable companion

Cons: Ship interior looks too much like Jedi Ship, Can only use blaster pistol :(

So after trying both the smuggler and bountry hunter starting areas for a bit. I decided on Trooper cause I can kick ass with heavy armor and a rifle. Yes I was on Republic side but meh, I picked a male Zabrak with a tank body as he was meant to be a tank and yes I know I now have 3 tank characters lol went with “Gxan” as in G-troops heh realised after level 10 I had spelled it “Gzan” so had to use my free name change to change it lol. Starting out wasn’t quite the start I’d hoped, you’re a recruit of the famous “Havoc Squad” and are thrown into the action on Ord Mantell after your troop transport is attacked though I must admit my first time blasting weak enemies with my rifle was pretty damn cool and the rocket boots were so goddamn helpful in getting around. Ord Mantell itself was actually kinda pretty apart from the war going on.

Gxan lookin' boss

What a lovely cove/inlet, apart from the lizard

When the time came to get my first speeder the way I look at them is by going to Dulfy.net’s awesome speeder guide  then checking out what’s available on the cartel market. I had a look at what was available and man did the Rark K1-A sure stand out, and it was only 30,000 credits too with an adaptive speed licence, though technically that colour scheme and the badass-hog riding position may be more suited to a bounty hunter or smuggler, but screw it, my Trooper is badass. I’m kinda wishing that your companion had their own speeder instead of just disappearing when you mount up, the ladies could even share the one, or the men too, I’m just imagining Khem Val or Lord Scourge riding on your back on one of the standing speeders LoL. Coruscant was a pretty muted affair as I had done it before obviously, though it made for a couple of good screenshots.

Oh yeh, roll out the red carpet for me and my stupid hat.

LooooL at option 3

But of course then it was time to get back on Jxan and continue with finishing shit off and exploring new shit (their both technical terms or course) starting with the two Makeb datacrons where my very helpful guildy Tyr helped me to get the Endurance which is by far the hardest and scariest datacron yet.

We're almost there! *splat*

 Then it was on to the Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droid missions which were a bit different to the MMORPG norm I must say. The Macrobincoluars missions have you chasing a mysterious character called “The Shroud” and to do this you have to use these binoculars to find the Shrouds spy towers and solve puzzles while visiting a host of planets most of which you’ve been to before, it’s kinda like a nostalgic journey. I was glad that I decided to do the Seeker Droid missions as well as this, as they involved using this Seeker Droid bot (which works similar to the ‘Survey’ archaeology ability in WOW) to retrieve the Dread Seeds which have been buried on various planets, almost exactly the same ones that you’re sent to with the Shrouds missions I might add. The Shroud’s puzzles were somewhat fun but the Seeker Droid was a bit of a pain to use.

Oh man yeh I can totally see that, that's shifty as, man this guy is good.

But I got there and now I’m up to the final two mission for each but goddamn trying to finish them was a hell of a pain, I think I organised a night twice with my guild to get them done and missed it both times, I almost got the Macrobinoculars one done with 3 people but unfortunately didn’t get the credit the first time and then we couldn’t quite finish it the second time so I’ve still got them sitting there, oh well maybe a bit of spamming in Fleet chat may help.

End of the final Dreadseed quest which I unfortunately didn't get credit for.

During this time I completed quite a bit of end game content as the Dawn guild was pretty active during this time, I completed the tactical hardmode flashpoints such as Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown from the Titans of Industry patch, the Kuat Drive Yards from the Galactic Starfighter Patch, and the Assault on Tython from the Invasion patch. Tactical flashpoints are interesting as you don’t quite need a healer or even a tank as they are designed to be able to be completed without the “Holy Trinity” Tank/Healer/Dps setup, so they are based on quick fights and have healing devices which you touch to heal your group around boss fights. As well as this I finished pretty much all the operations I had missed before inc Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace and Explosive Conflict, I also got to the end of Terror From Beyond but failed to defeat the damn thing even after 5 or so tries, and managed to down the first boss of The Dread Fortress. I earned quite a few pieces of gear and commendations for this and it was great to see the story mode for all the fp’s and op’s (Flashpoints and Operations). 

They call him... Soa! the infernal one himself

I also acquired the Desler Avenger from the Eternity Vault which although looking pretty boss was freakin huge and because of its size looks even slower than my current mount, though really I never expect much from this game’s mounts anyway.

Crusin at 30km/h in style

 I had collected a few new pieces of armor from the operations which made me look somewhat ridiculous, I was sad to get rid of the Valient Jedi gear but at least it will always be there in case I get decked out with modifications again.

Black Hole Pummeler gear, fitting name for looking like a futuristic NFL player.

Meanwhile back on Kxan I had acquired the companion Xalek who had beaten the last opposing apprentice by killing him even when he’d lost fair and square and to be honest having a look at his likes and dislikes I’m not too fond of him already but regardless he’s the first companion I’ve had that takes the same armor type so I finally can gift one of my companions all my old armor, and that I did. I had been using the same set of armor, well the helm and chest mostly for quite a while and I thought it was time for a change. I had a look at the various sets of armor on the cartel market and was first interested in the Investigator robe which looked kind of like the robes the Sith Inquisitor was wearing in the ‘Return’ cinematic which was pretty cool but the helm was actually similar to the “iron man” one I had before. I decided on the Eradicator armor as I reckon it looked pretty cool and was pants instead of a robe which was better for Sith Shadow spec, I also purchased the Vindicator’s Sabrestaff which looks pretty cool and had an odd sound and delay when lighting up. After they were purchased I used my mass amount of planetary commendations to purchase modifications from the Makeb vendor which is the highest you can get and once I was all decked out I looked pretty damn cool, and what made it a bit more fun was I got to deck Xalek out in my old gear.

Some pics of my Eradictaor armor dyed with the red and black armor dye module

Fack this datacron was a close call

So after that I finished off Voss and then headed to Corellia which is packed with Republic vs Empire Lore and I was eager to see it, and after getting some nerve wracking datacrons I had done the place and won Coreillia for the Empire (go me!) and as with the Republic side even got my own personal  crowd celebration. Since the Eradicator helmet is full faced I’ve gone against my previous vow and sometimes have my helm hidden (especially for important quest cutscenes) and managed to take a pick of Kxan looking very sensitive and not at all Sith like.

"Aw shucks guys"

So I destroyed Darth Thanaton and was accepted into the Dark Council with the title “Darth Imperius”, I can’t remember what the name meant though. I then had another ceremony where Khem Val of all people announced my ascension to the dark council and my new title with all my companions and some familiar faces I’ve seen on my travels all kneeling.

Hail to the king baby!

Man did I feel honoured though I’ll say it now that I hate the way your companions gear only keeps the “unify colours” feature when you have them summoned as they don’t retain it for cutscenes and look ridiculous.

See what I mean about the colours? and yes Talos' helmet does look a bit ridiculous

At this point my current guild Dawn had made an executive decision to transfer to the Harbinger realm, which had a much higher APAC server population, now I was all for this, my guildmate Shiki guaranteed the facts that group finding finding was quick and pick up groups for raids were always going on, plus there is always heaps of people on fleet. So I just decided to go the gung ho and head in, so I purchased an extra 2400 cartel coins for $20 which coupled with my existing coins was enough to transfer my 3 characters over which I did with minimal trouble. The problem came when I got to Harbinger, due to the higher population my “Jxan” and “Kxan” names were taken (wow they must sound better then “bui”). So I had to go with “Hxan” for my Guardian which sounded ok because he’s “Human” and a “Hero” lol and “Uxan” for my Inquisitor because I couldn’t really think of anything else and “Sxan” sounds too much like “Susanne”

 It was relatively quiet in the Guild after the change, I actually haven’t even been able to find the “Drunk before Dawn” guild or whatever the hell we’re called on Harbinger but goddamn did I feel the difference as soon as I got over there, there is so much more people! On at all times! There’s people doing everywhere going everything it’s so amazingers. But anyway I got back to leveling on Gxan, I was now up to Taris, and met my much anticipated companion Elara Dorne who as you probably guessed is a romance option for the male trooper, though she is not quite as hot as Kira Carsen I liked the difference customizations you could give her, and besides pretty much all females in this game have killer bodies so just going to say I appreciate that and nothing more. She has been an interesting one to romance with her straight-up-the-line-post-Empire-citizen attitude and demeanour but she seems a nice person on the inside which will be fun to play out.

Trooper companion Elara Dorne with customization 4 enabled, yawow she is cute.

 Speaking of companions I must mention that since I’d left Ord Mantell on my merry quest to vanquish the traitorous members of the former Havoc Squad I’ve had Aric Jorgen as my companion who does ranged DPS with an Assault cannon or blaster rifle. I went Trooper Vanguard obviously so it was good to have an assault-cannon wielding commando that I could blast shit up with. Aric interestingly enough is quite obedient to his superiors, I found myself picking darkside options at times where I normally wouldn’t so I wouldn’t lose affection with him as he seemed to be blindly loyal and obedient to the Republic at times even when making choices like keeping a deadly virus to be studied or destroying it, whereas Elara was content to tell sensitive information for the good of the Republic to the SIS against General Garza’s orders (boy was that fun to watch).

Aric Jorgen with customization 3

I finished off Taris and then Nar Shadaa, killing Needles along the way, I dunno who I like better out of the two companions, probably Elara but there was that sort of kick ass bros comradery with Aric, though at the finish of the Nar Shadda, I acquired M1-4X as well who’s pretty much straightforward to the Republic too (man we’re an emotionless bunch lol). It seems I’ve got my work cut out for me here, I’ve got two companions who both use the same armor stat and type that I do making them damn easy to gear up as they can equip my hand-me-downs and well as any quest gear meant for me that I don’t need, and I also do Cybertech which means I can make gear for M1-4X as well, man so many possibilities so little time.

This isn't my photo of M1-4X but it shows how big he is compared to a female Trooper. Going to be kinda fun having a big droid as a companion.

That’s the other issue as once you finish off your story quests there becomes fewer and fewer quests which you can use to raise companion affection especially since you don’t get it while doing operations and flashpoints. I’ve read some posts and information on it and people say that some daily quests offer affection gains and you can always do mission skills or even just purchase companions gifts but it’s an expensive way to do it which is why I’m hoarding all my gifts for the future. Nothing much else happened on Nar Shadaa, apart from story the missions are slightly different when you do them with a different class but not much, I’m liking the B-7 Thunderclap mainly because it’s quite unique and I like the name lol, inside is so non-linear it’s almost confusing and I get lost sometimes, it’s possibly the most original player ship in the game.

The BT-7 Thunderclap, one odd-looking ship

I finished up at level 29 on Gxan, yes I know what you’re saying I should have gone that bit more and got to 30 but screw it I didn’t want to start Tatooine early. So back on to Jxan I go! There wasn’t that much to finish off on Jxan in terms of quests etc I had to do. I finally headed to Oricon to start the “Assault on the Dread Fortress” storyline and the advice I was given was correct you do get given a decent set of “Artifact Quality” level 55 epic armor which includes gloves, helmet, chest, legs and boots so needless to say it’s best to head there as soon as you can, I’m probably going to go as soon as I’ve finished Ilum on my Inquisitor which finishes off the story mode for me.

You finally get a different "ship approaching planet" sequence then the norm for Oricon

 So I finished off that questline which was rather interesting and I got myself up to speed with the story of the Dread masters, I also finally got that bitch the Terror from Beyond down with a PUG of all things, took us a couple of tries on those goddamn “anomalies” bits but we got there. I also went to Tatooine to complete the Czerka corporation mission terminal there as I did on Makeb where you use your trusty Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droid, it’s a great way to see new areas of old planets after finishing those questlines as you can continue to use the toys. I also went there to participate in the Rahkgoul Resurgence even which is actually a continuation of the original Rakghoul Pandemic  event. This is where the T.H.O.R.N faction is located who I know that you can get the “infected companion” customizations from, why you’d want that I wouldn’t know lol maybe it’d make some of them look cool. I recently had to get my security key removed from my account due to me not being able to login but I think I might put it back to get some of the better "companion customizations" it's just pretty annoying to type in all the time though.

The Dread Fortress! *ominous music*

I was in the middle of doing the T.H.O.R.N missions and was travelling to a quest giver then it happened again, I got there and they were nowhere to be seen, this was of course because the event had ended so I was running around like a moron to get to nothing. This has happened before with the Bounty Brokers Association Week and now Relics of the Gree is back again where I once travelled all the way to Ilum just to find the NPC wasn’t there though I really want to do that one cause I orange parallel the way the Gree speak, just remember the dates I guess. One of the last things I did was the Korriban Incursion flashpoint, this was the first time I had finished this one and am looking forward to doing the Empire version of both that one and the Assault on Tython, apparently having now finished both of them there’s something more to this that has just started with the Invasion patch.

"Ahh screw you too!"

I couldn't stop laughing at this guy's "Jedi Cowboy" gear

As a bonus I got the Imperial Korrealis speeder wooo! though to be perfectly honest it’s just another huge impractical speeder that’d rather not use. I just want the Aratech Fire which you need to complete a quest to kill all these bosses from the first 3 operations which I have done though the problem is they have to be finished in friggin story mode which no-one does anymore, I mean seriously why is that restriction there at all?. Too many cool mounts are in the Cartel Market packs then are on the Galactic Trade Network for huge prices.

Well at least this one's two seater.

Well anyway my subscription ran out on the 18^th and funnily enough the Galactic Strongholds Early Access came out a day after, whodathunkit? Well at least I’ll have something more to do when I get back, lookin forward to finally having a house to myself in an MMO, as if personal starships weren’t enough now we have accommodation hah.

Oh Tatooine, one of the lonliest planets ever.

So that wraps up more than a years playing, was a bit brief but we’d be here forever If I was to explain everything, I’ll be back with a potential new character next time I play and will hopefully have a home for each of my characters. Also I hope the Reclaimers guild I’m in gets back up to speed, I seemed to be the only one playing for a bit, oh well, we’ll see, lovin the new realm though.

May the Force be with you bros.

JD

Howdy from Denova, the bluegrass planet, *plays banjo*

For what we've already accomplished, the future looks bright...