I admit, I was a little worried. After all the hubbub surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic's rocky transition to free-to-play and the departure of much of its creative team, I was half prepared to boot up the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion and hear BioWare developers filling in for actor David Hayter's original voice work for the Jedi Knight. Happily, that's not the case. The last year might have been rough for BioWare, but Rise of the Hutt Cartel refuses to flinch on the promise to deliver entertaining, fully voiced stories that shame the writing and production quality of its competitors.
Even better, Hutt Cartel reveals that SWTOR's design team has learned a few important lessons at the gameplay level as well, and while the Force isn't quite with all of ROTHC's individual components, there's certainly enough agreeable content to warrant a return to SWTOR.Yet you can feel how tightly the budget belt's been cinched by the scale of the new content. Gone are the rich storylines lovingly crafted for each character class; in Hutt Cartel there are only two storylines to be played. As a Republic player, I traveled to the new planet of Makeb and teamed with a feisty environmentalist determined to stop the invading Hutts from ripping apart her world in search of the valuable isotope-5; Empire players enjoy a more subtle storyline involving their attempt to nab some isotope-5 for themselves. Much as in the original Star Wars, the proceedings unfold with the melodrama you'd expect from a good space opera, and it managed to keep my attention despite its lack of depth.
Reworked talent trees and class changes have considerably improved the high-level gameplay, particularly for my Jedi Guardian who no longer feels as gimped in damage compared to the dual-wielding Jedi Sentinels (or, if you're Empire, Sith Marauders). New abilities for each class also make their appearance on the way to the level cap, each fitting snugly into the existing gameplay. Indeed, within an hour my Jedi Guardian was using his new ability to reflect ranged projectiles back at the goons who fired them as though he'd always had it.I was a little surprised, though, by how lonely I felt as a result of my NPC combat companions' silence throughout the story. Sometimes you'll see their reputation improve if you choose a dialogue option they prefer, or notice them chime in with a comment on Makeb's scenery, but you'll never hear them express their thoughts in cinematics. I'd never realized how much I'd come to expect their indignant interjections, and I was dismayed to find that their reticence left them feeling no more relatable than a hunter or ranger's companion beast in most other MMORPGs.This is a good thing in some ways, since it allowed me to freely experiment with the new flirty dialogue in the Republic quest's romance option, even while standing right in front of a companion NPC who'd have every reason to run a lightsaber through me for doing so. Ultimately, it mattered little, since completing the new romances (which include same-sex dialogue as a result of popular demand) exude about as much steam as an innocent date at the movies.Thankfully, the planet of Makeb itself goes a long way towards making up for this loneliness. It may be the expansion's only new planet, but it's a doozy. It's brimming with 17 different flightpaths on the Republic side alone, each logically placed throughout a richly detailed landscape that's big enough to make giant land masses like Hoth look like a jawa loitering next to a bantha. Precarious mesas rise up from an unseen surface like habitable stalagmites on every corner of the planet, and cozy villas contrast with soaring industrial mining facilities. Makeb's appeal lies not only in its beauty; more practically, its spacing and quest progression never loses sight of the sense of purpose that often falls by the wayside in the wasted expanses of Corellia or Hoth. This is a leveling journey that's rarely bankrupt of action.
There just doesn't seem to be quite enough of it – or rather, the pacing of the questing content seems to have been designed with a subscriber's XP-gain rate in mind. I started the expansion without a subscription (I'd switched it off last year to experience SWTOR as a free player,) but even after buying experience boosts with the premium Cartel Coin currency, I could sense by level 51 that I'd likely finish the story before I hit the level cap. And I did, far sooner than I expected. Finishing the entire Republic-side storyline left me exactly midway through level 53 out of a level cap of 55, and that progression would have been much less had I not renewed my subscription as well.
On the bright side, a dizzying array of daily and weekly quests can help make up the difference (along with the option to run PvP warzones and instanced flashpoints via the group-finder tool). And to be fair, Rise of the Hutt Cartel's introduction of achievements at least gives you additional objectives to shoot for after the story's done, and some of them provide a way to earn Cartel Coins aside from forking over cash.Hutt Cartel also brings with it new gadget-centered missions involving macrobinoculars and seeker droids, each providing welcome change of pace from Makeb's quests. Yet the gadgets themselves aren't quite so interesting as the questlines that give them meaning. For example, Seeker droids resemble nothing so much as Cataclysm's archaeology equipment, and the actual act of using them suffers from the same drudgery of digging and reorienting yourself, apart from a smart decision to reward even failed digs with vendor loot.
BioWare has the sense to wrap that tiresome task in an engaging storyline that eventually leads to a surprising jaunt to a secret space base stuffed with a simple jumping puzzle and a potentially challenging boss fight. The macrobinocular quests, meanwhile, include satisfyingly tough puzzles to complement the otherwise-simple task of shuttling to different worlds and ogling enemy machinery. These missions smartly reuse previously existing content, and the need to return to old planets goes a long way toward preventing them from rotting into dead zones.
BioWare also tossed in some fun new group content. The new operation (SWTOR-speak for raid) is called Legions of Scum and Villainy, and even in the comparatively easy story mode you can see that BioWare's at least determined to keep raiders happy. The puzzle-based Olak the Shadow encounter, for instance, forces you to plow through rows of tough droids within one minute before a force field deactivates to release more, and occasionally you get to use tokens to buy droids to assist you. Other battles, particularly the final fight against Dread Master Styrak, reveal a similar avoidance of boring tank-and-spank mechanics. On the whole, it walks an agreeable line between fun and challenge.
But that's about it. You'll find no new PvP warzones, space battles, or flashpoints (only new heroic difficulty versions). One operation isn't nearly as much as I expect from a package billed as an expansion, and it doesn't do enough to counter the well-used joke that SWTOR is a single-player MMO. Even with all the hours of new content spread across SWTOR's largest planet to date, Rise of the Hutt Cartel still feels more like an uncommonly meaty content patch than a full-fledged expansion.The good news is that it's priced accordingly, at least if you're already a subscriber. Plunking down $10 for that amount of content should be a no-brainer. It's a tougher call to fork over the $20 for non-subscribers, particularly if you're bothered by the idea of finishing the content long before reaching the level cap.For a few extra thoughts on Rise of the Hutt Cartel, read my review in progress notes.