The first step is character creation. You can choose from quite a few races, everything from human to Wookiee to Mon Calamari. Each has its own pros and cons, of course. Then it's time to pick a starting profession: artisan, brawler, scout, marksman, entertainerand medic. Don't worry if you can't decide or change your mind later. Skills can be unlearned, and other skills or professions taken up.

Then we get to a short tutorial, which does a respectable job with the basics. It doesn't answer all the questions, but official "helper" player characters are easily found in every city, and will provide both information and often free training. Other players are helpful and friendly so far, with a sort of pay it forward system: Learn skills for free (as opposed to paying an NPC trainer), and teach future newbies for free. (Which actually provides an XP boost to the teacher.)

Galaxies is amazingly interdependent, to its credit. You can't just pop down to the corner store for a new pistol; someone's gonna have to make it for you. It's easy to solo delivery missions, but for destroy missions, you're gonna need to team up (at least at the outset). Fatigued after a battle? You'll need to pop down to the local cantina and hope another player is performing. Got wounds? Better find someone trained as a medic.

This strategy has paid off; cantinas and medical centers are popular gathering places, with players going not only to heal but also to trade stories, put together hunting groups, trade, teach skills...

Skills, as mentioned before, start with the player choosing a profession. Each profession has a huge skill tree of four subskills, most leading to master-level skills with their own skill trees in turn. Experience comes from both specific activities -- use of a certain weapon -- and general activities like combat or crafting. Once you're able to level up in a certain skill, you can hit up an NPC trainer (which costs cash and a whole lot of XP) or hope to find a player willing to teach (which costs half the XP and can be free, depending on the player).

Combat isn't an elaborate affair. Really, you point and click, and sit back (or dodge around). Yes, special moves or attacks are available as you get more experienced. Add 'em to a hot-button list or macro, but combat is still fairly hands-off. That said, combat skills are absolutely necessary, even for non-combat professions. There's just too much exposure to hostiles even in cities to go without.

Are there growing pains? Of course there are. We'll ignore the first-day lag horror -- nowadays, lag is only occasionally bad at peak hours, and rarely is it bad enough to disrupt gameplay. No, my major beef is with missions. Some are outright broken. Objectives don't appear, or aren't provided from the outset. Some make no sense; I had to deliver one item to a contact swimming -- no kidding here -- wayyyyyyyyyyyy out in the middle of a lake. Destroy missions are just too difficult for newbies. Yeah, it encourages teaming up, but that's not always an option. (There are still off-peak times when the cities look like ghost towns as far as player characters.)

Also, city-to-city travel on planets without a shuttle system is a long, tedious process of walking (and for newbies, avoiding wildlife -- sometimes hard when it spawns in close by).

The good thing? All of this can be fixed. A vehicle expansion, for example, is already under construction, which will reduce travel times.

Graphics are breathtaking, from player emotes to the scenery. While I mentioned tedious walking times, some of that is alleviated by the fields of waving plant life or hidden valleys and towering mountains. Wildlife isn't quite as interactive as promised -- I have yet to see NPC wildlife hunting -- but planets have distinctive graphics, and sometimes even different cities on the same planet have distinctive looks.

Sound is, compared to that, just good. Yeah, it's thrilling to hear the familiar twang of blasters, but I'm sad NPCs and player characters make no noise. I'd love to hear the roar of Wookiees or jabbering of Rodians or gravelly Mon Cal take on Basic. ("It's a trap!") No luck so far. Also, music plays in just short bursts, aside from that heard at cantinas, where you'll find player characters blasting everything from the familiar Mos Eisley theme to jazzy takes on, for example, the Imperial March.

By the way, I'm not even going to touch on the Jedi issue. The devs have already publically announced just how rare and difficult it'll be to become a Jedi. My advice is to just forget it's an option. Play the game, and if you happen to unlock the force-sensitive slot, great. But you may as well play the Mega Millions lottery while you're at it. Your odds are similar.

Yeah, there are power-levelers, but that's not the target audience here. You don't have to be a fan of Star Wars, but you should be a fan of RPGs and ready to spend at least a couple of hours a week exploring the worlds and the society. Even if you love to play solo, there's a lot here. I'm absolutely hooked; I'll happily recommend Galaxies at every opportunity.