Star Wars Uprising was officially released on September 10th. I refrained from downloading it until September 12th. I maxed out my XP and the storyline 11 days later.  This is weird.

Unless it says KOTOR on the box, I’m not much of a gamer. I enjoy playing video games when I have the opportunity but I rarely lose an entire weekend to a new game and I don’t even have a system besides my laptop. So you can see why I was so surprised that I was able to go through the game so fast even with my obsessive and competitive personality.

Uprising is addicting and not what I expected. On the game play front, it’s fairly simple once you get the hang of it and doesn’t require much skill. Essentially, you select which opponent you want to attack and then your character does so. Things get a little more interesting once you can train in skills that take your attacks up a notch. I’m a fan of the dodge and roll and the spray of blaster fire for efficiency. The only planet that keeps giving me trouble is Anoat thanks to the poison and the never-ending onslaught of nek dogs.

At a certain point, the game does tell you in a not so subtle way to chill the hell out and take a break. The main story missions are locked depending on your character level; something that comes into play once you’re closer around level 18 and it’s harder to level up. Every day, you’re offered a Daily Opportunity mission, 5 Assault Missions (that eventually trigger a Sector Battle which is basically a day long free for all that makes you gape at the Victory Points totals some people rack up), and a Daily Credits mission for each planet that you’ve completed the story for. While you can play repeatable missions as often as possible, they don’t offer nearly as much in terms of gear and nothing for XP. Granted, the XP part doesn’t really matter once you hit Level 40 and don’t get XP anymore… (No, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?)

Like many a game, you must pick what you want your character to look like and be named before you can begin play. Thankfully, I pulled one of my old school fanfic OCs out of the memory vaults and could spend minimal time on this. While I seem to recall the early advertising for Uprising proclaiming that you get to choose what your character does, the only option thus far seems to be a smuggler. You do get to pick your gender and species though along with a small amount of customizable features like hair and skin color. I’m fairly content with how my character looks given how small Nicola looks on my screen when I’m playing.  As you can see, I’ve hit a stalling point since upgrading my gear to the Purple 5 Stars takes forever when your player rating isn’t increasing thanks to leveling up and therefore giving you better reward options.

On the NPC front, Uprising has done a fairly good job with their creations. Riley, one of the characters heavily featured in the advertising, ends up being your character’s older sister. (The internet tells me that her species changes depending on what you pick but I can’t seem to find any photo reference.) As a human, her character design is neat and I am digging the half shaved/braided hair style she rocks just as much as I think it’s neat that the creators gave her a serious injury that forces her to wear a cybernetic brace. It’s not only a nice nod to diversity but it makes this galaxy feel more real and lived in. Not everyone gets a shiny new prosthetic limb. I also appreciate that Tam Bastion, leader of the Rebel Alliance within the system, is a black man and that there are plenty of aliens amongst the supporting cast. All of this, alongside the story line, help make the galaxy bigger despite being restricted to a handful of planets in a small sector where the Imperials have such a strong grip that no one’s even heard about the Death Star II’s destruction.

My biggest problem with Uprising (the maxing of the storyline aside) is that there are way too many different types of “currency” to keep track of. I still don’t know what the heck a blueprint really does nor how you can get one to upgrade your crew characters. Also, credits don’t actually seem to be used like you’d expect. They’re mostly used in addition to components and gems for upgrading gear. You can’t, as far as I’ve been able to find, actually buy anything with credits. There are two options for what are essentially blind boxes for gear… but there are two other currencies that you use for them.

So how does Uprising stack up and is it worth your time? The short answer is that it’s a fun way to pass time. Perhaps avoid starting a game if you’re like me and are competitive but have a bunch of work to get done in the near future. Besides that, it’s clearly a game that was created with the on the go person in mind. Once you get the hang of things, you can probably complete a mission in the time it takes you to wait in line at Starbucks for your morning coffee and then another while waiting to actually received said coffee. Like Aftermath, Uprising lets you see how more than just our Rebel Heroes felt about the Empire and how it affected their daily lives. If that’s of interest to you, definitely download and play. Heck, if you’re even vaguely interested in the game, download and play it. Perhaps I’m a little frustrated since I’m impatiently waiting for Bespin to be unlocked with a Sector battle but that certainly didn’t take away from my obsessive playing of the game the first few weeks. (Trust me: I tried to put it down so many times and failed.)