Even being a hardcore Star Wars fan couldn't save this game for me. It's just not fun.
SWG is a gameplay-design disaster. Its entirety consists of the most basic of basics. Point and click combat with no inspiration whatsoever is what you'll find here. The combat is boring and repetitive, all of the enemies looking like cookie-cutter cut-outs of the others with very little variation throughout. In fact, variation is hard to find all over SWG. Armor, weapons, and characters all look either identical or exceedingly similar in one way or another. The quests are ridiculous, to be frank. They are all identical in every way except for the text that appears on the screen. Here's a run-down of every quest in the game: Go here, Kill these guys, Go there, Kill those guys, Come back and get some obscure buff item that you don't need. Along with broken combat and quests (the lifeblood of an MMORPG), the crafting skills and other non-combat oriented features of SWG is confusing and underdeveloped. The game goes through no pains in explaining how things work, and you'll find yourself fiddling with eye-sore-menus and horribly-crafted chat logs to figure out some of the basic features. All in all, the game feels like a mod for another, better game.
Graphics:
The graphics are really the one decent thing in Galaxies. Considering it's an MMORPG, a genre in which graphics often have to be sacrificed for the sake of processing stability, the graphics are very good. The character models are high-poly and gifted with some nice bump-mapping effects, and the cities have some good technical features, as well. However, pure polygons does not a good-looking game make. Art direction is almost no where to be found. All of the planets are essentially just a patch of grass, dirt, snow, sand, etc. riddled with ugly foliage and buildings. The "art" is as basic as it can get, especially with such games as Lord of the Rings Online and World of WarCraft with some exceptional art direction on the market. The game looks realistic, to a point, but it's very boring. You'll find yourself looking at miles of the same thing over and over again.
Sound:
Considering it's a Lucasarts game, and has access to Skywalker sound, you'd think SWG would have an amazing soundtrack. Well, sorry folks, but it's not so. There are probably 3 or 4 tracks of music in the ENTIRE GAME, and they hardly ever play. You only hear some music when initiating combat or entering a city, and other than that all you hear is the rolling wind on the hills of Tatooine, or the rolling wind on the hills of Naboo... or the rolling wind on the hills of Coreillia. And even when the music does cue in, it sounds like it was spliced by a five year-old with downs, because it cracks and squeaks into the game at odd intervals. There are 2 or 3 different blaster noises, and you'd better get used to them, because you're going to hear them... A LOT. The voice-acting on the NPCs is sub-par, as well.
Value:
Considering you can get the original, all 3 expansions, bonus content, and a free AT-RT in-game mount for $17.99, it actually is a value, but it's still not worth playing.
Conclusion:
Star Wars Galaxies is just a bad game. Plain and simple. It's tedious, boring, and just plain un-fun. The game feels like a froob-MMO from Korea, not a huge, commercial, Lucasarts, $15-buck-a-month bonanza. Don't get it unless you're rich and can waste the money. Let's face it, no matter how much it may hurt to even think it, this game is no WoW.