Star Wars: Galaxies has come a long way since it first hit retail shelves so long ago. After an outstanding expansion in Jump to Lightspeed, the folks at LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment have released a new expansion to please the masses. Unfortunately, it doesn't even seem as though the expansion was aimed at the masses, which makes you wonder what Sony's aim was here.

The expansion takes place on the planet Mustafar, but oddly enough you can't fly your own ships there. You'll have to take a shuttle that will land you at the planet's mining complex, which also servers as your main base for obtaining missions and doing all of your cloning. The mining complex is located at the far end of the planet, which means that you'll basically be moving in one general direction for every mission. It would've been nice to see the location placed around the center of Mustafar, especially since all of the land masses are chained together in a row. This makes it a bit tedious to get from the mining complex to the far end of the planet.

One very important thing to note is that Trials of Obi-Wan is not for the average Galaxies player. The new expansion was created exclusively for the higher level players (65 and up), and for good reason. Even the top players will have trouble with many of the enemies on Mustafar. It would be in your best interest to take the planet in groups. There are plenty of missions to go around once you hit the mining complex, or you can take to the wilds of the planet for battle experience against insects and other difficult foes.

Most of the missions will have you retrieving lost items, fighting various enemies, fixing things, and also putting your mind to work a bit in solving a few puzzles here and there. A few of the missions provide an option between two different solutions as well. This makes things a bit more interesting, giving you multiple ways to successfully earn your credits in a single mission.

Mustafar is the same planet that serves as the creation point of Darth Vader, and the visuals are quite nice. The planet can be a bit drab at times since the entire thing is one big lava pit, but that's the way plants work in the Star Wars universe. For what Sony Online was going for here, the graphics are top notch and should impress most PC owners out there.

Oddly enough, Trials of Obi-Wan does not relate to the Empire at all. This is actually a nice change of pace, since it can get a bit redundant finding Imperial Soldiers at every single planet and station. Although it would've been nice to see some minor representation of the Empire, keeping Trials of Obi-Wan Empire-free is a refreshing choice from Sony Online.

Trials of Obi-Wan is a solid expansion to the Galaxies universe, but we're still baffled as to why Sony Online chose to limit this expansion to only high level players. In addition, the lack of a space zone so you can at least fly your own ship to the planet, is a bit of a downer. However, overall Trials of Obi-Wan brings a new experience to the aging Galaxies title and should offer plenty of gaming hours for high level Galaxies players.