Player Comments on Star Wars:Secrets Of the Empire

Oh man, I do love some Star Wars! This story was pretty fun to play through, even when the path I selected was a bit shorter than what I normally like. While this is neither a critique of the story nor praise for it, it must be noted that the main “gimmick/mechanic” (for a lack of better terms) that is the Alignment system plays a heavy role in the outcome of the story, at least from what I gathered in my time enjoying this work. It is definitely an interesting system, and it fits well with the Star Wars universe and theme.

Very slight spoilers ahead: I must agree with some of the other comments I briefly read over: the Nightsister seemed lacking in proper character depth for some of the choices she makes to make sense, and the dialogue we share with her is somewhat off-putting and weird. While I might have wrote it off as a strange chance occurrence if she was further developed as a character, that wasn’t the case. It should be noted I went for the “classic good-boy peacekeeper” route, so maybe I could have explored her character more if I had chosen to be more of an edgy sith asshole, I dunno.

All in all, this little hiccup didn’t drive me away from the story the slightest, and I had quickly forgotten about it (until now) when I was lost in the next page of galactic goodness!
I really did enjoy this, and you’ve certainly hooked me. I’ll definitely need to check out some other stories of yours as I continue to explore the site, and I’ll be on the lookout for the plans of any upcoming adventures you might be drawing up.

Amazing life of a farmer

pretty good, fairly short but interesting

I love everything Star Wars, so it's not surprising that I love this, too.

I really liked this game it followed very much of the star wars lore and was impressive.

It was good fun, but the storyline was a little hard to follow

This was so Awesome!

Really good! I enjoyed it a lot,!

have no words...it's beautifull!

It was great, what more do I need to say?

I enjoyed playing through the story! It seems to be based vaguely both on the Jedi apprentice books and the KOTOR games. It was pretty short which allowed me to enjoy it in one sitting. It felt like there could have been a little more choices at some places in the story, but I liked the fact that there were optional encounters.

I love star wars and reading this has really been a great experience, made me feel like I was in the story, hope you write more star wars stories. 10/10 Definitely recommend.

Excellent, very immersive and enjoyable :D

The Padawan story was actual garbage, this one is so much better. I read every page, thanks for writing it.

This was freakin epic. I wish the movies had been like this. The only thing I didn't like were the capital letter links,
like jeez game if I wound up somewhere I didn't want to be I would just use the back button, you don't have to yell. But I loved the story!

YES

I am newbie to these story games and reviewing/talking about them. Despite this, Star Wars:Secrets Of the Empire was a great introduction.

Great story. I really enjoyed what a force-sensitive protagonist would experience in this journey as well as the cool artifacts. The characters did not feel out of place (except for the Nightsister), the environments were awesome, and the choices did not feel out of place.

My newbie critiques: More dialogue and interactions between the protagonist and the Nightsister would be an improvement. I can’t keep/have my alignment at 5 at the end of the story to obtain the “neither” ending (which I don’t know if it even exists) and my newbie status may be showing. Perhaps adding more choices and content can alleviate that. A few spelling errors here and there but nothing major.

Overall, I had fun and I hope there is still more to come.

This story is a big improvement over the author's original effort (which wasn't bad itself). It's a little rough around the edges as far as punctuation and pacing and the like, and I admit I was a bit skeptical at first...surviving Order 66 is all well and good, but would someone who failed Jedi training have been given a lightsaber in the first place? And then there's Our Hero being like, 'haha, I hope my Jedi robes and this lightsaber won't allow the troopers ordered to kill the Jedi to identify me as a Jedi..' And then somehow they don't.

But the most important thing is that it's just plain fun as an adventure, and so I wasn't bothered much by any of that once I got into it.

To be fair, I have a feeling there might be lore issues here that TRUE STAR WARS FANS will take issue with (since when are Jedi vegetarians?) but happily I'm not one of those. If anything I wish there had been a bit more explanation for those of us not in the know of all the details beyond the main movies...I had no idea what the witch was until I looked it up, when that's something a couple of sentences could have cleared up. Since this is not specifically a fanfic site, I always recommend writing any story like this with the assumption your audience isn't going to be intimately familiar with every detail, and just introduce major setting elements as needed, the same way you would with an original story.

But I also just appreciated this vision of the setting where the Jedi were objectively these peaceful good guys, when at the time of the prequels in the "canon" universe they were more about being wealthy, politically motivated, and killing a whole bunch of people.

The central part of this was the encounter with the trandoshan which I liked quite a bit, the alignment system really came into play there and you had the most varied choices in how to handle things in this section. The story has a lot of nice and immersive imagery and atmosphere as well; the descriptive writing is just plain GOOD and because of this I wish there had been more places to explore and more to discover off the beaten path.

And unfortunately it does seem just like one path is all we get here. The alignment stuff goes a long way in making it feel like choices matter, but the story ultimately railroads you to this same confrontation with the Emperor. Whether you arrive there as an exemplary Jedi or as a a dark side user with an army of droids, there's almost no variance in the encounter. (In fact I think I found a little bug here...at the end there's a reference to 'the chief you slaughtered on Korriban' when in fact I just talked him into leaving. A variable check to see how you handled that with a bit of on page scripting would have fixed this right up...and from what I've seen of your style so far, you'd really benefit in a lot of small ways from a knowledge of scripting. Don't be shy to ask about this stuff on the forum if you can't find what you need in the Help & Info articles.)

But yeah, the linearity is the biggest issue here. Although it doesn't detract from this as a story, it does weaken it as a BRANCHING story. The simplest fix, if you were in the mood to expand this, would be to add some little side adventure leading to its own endings when you go to Manaan. As it is there's zero point to that choice, it just folds you right back into the main plot immediately.

The Nightsister could also use some more focus. A couple more pages of interaction with her at the first encounter would go a long way and be a good place to slip in another choice or two. As it is, the importance placed on her--she's suddenly there at the ending and then featured in every epilogue--seems out of place considering that she's barely in the story at all. The way of 'converting' her is a bit eye rolling as well. It's a cool IDEA, but everything you say to her sounds like it came straight from the text of a Jedivah's Witness pamphlet and none of it like it would actually be convincing for even a second.

"Stop being evil, it's really bad!" *waves Bible*
"...okay, you have a point." *becomes good*

You'd need to give her a bigger part in the story and actually show what the dark side is doing to her, and have the talks be a little more personal and meaningful to be believable.

Anyway, all nitpicking aside, this was a fun little romp and I'd like to see more from this author.