Once again, the class stories, which are the real meat and potatoes of any BioWare game, including Old Republic, are the most important single elements, and I've decided that they include four constituent parts needed to evaluate them. These are 1) the main character, and his portrayal by the writers and voice actor, 2) the plot and villains/rivals, 3) the companion characters, including the romanceable options, and 4) the class mechanics.
Again, to really be a true mother of all SWTOR reviews, I'd need to play each class story twice; so that I could see both advanced class options and both the male and female voice actor performances. I've only done each of them once, however, with a male voice actor on all classes.
Let's talk today about the Sith classes. Like the Jedi, there are two options, the Sith Warrior (with a Juggernaut 1-lightsaber option and a Marauder 2-lightsaber option, that correspond with the Jedi Knight) and the Sith Inquisitor (with a double lightsaber and stealth option called the Assassin and a single lightsaber and loads of lightning powers called a Sorcerer. These correspond to the Jedi Consular Shadow and Sage respectively.) Both Sith classes start on the planet Korriban (called Moraband in the Clone Wars) which is kind of a combination of a space opera rendition of Mars with Old Egyptian-like architecture and ruins all over the place. Korriban as portrayed here could be Eric John Stark's Mars in almost every way.
(As an aside, if you haven't read the double book that includes "People of the Talisman" and "The Secret of Sinharat" before, you absolutely should. It's fantastic, even though it's a good 70+ years old now. My copy is the 1982 printing called Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars, but there are other printings, including the Ace Double Book, which have the exact same text.)
SITH WARRIOR
The Sith Warrior is the second most iconic of all of the class stories, and serves as a kind of dark mirror in many ways to the most iconic, which is the Jedi Knight. The Sith Warrior seems to be a kind of aristocratic Sith Warrior, although of course he has to prove himself at the Sith Academy on Korriban, and there are many places in his career where he could have been killed ignominiously. The voice actor is British and does a fantastic job. My Sith Warrior was a human male, which seems in some ways the most appropriate, and the story is absolutely fantastic.
I also played the Sith Warrior as a kind of reformer of sorts, who didn't really do the ridiculous "dark side" option all that often when I had a chance to do something more sensible. I suspect that most people who play the Sith Warrior do something similar; picking light side options as often as not. The character himself is fairly serious, although there are definitely some moments of dry wit that make me laugh out loud. In many respects, I thought he was a more interesting character than his Jedi counterpart, although I admit that the Sith story and the Imperial faction stories in general didn't grip me quite as much because of its ridiculous cartoon villainy that you have to accept more than you'd probably like. I've heard him compared as a character specifically with the Clone Wars era Obiwan Kenobi, in terms of his sarcasm and wit, in particular.
The plot here is also one of the better ones. Darth Baras is the Sith Lord's master for a big chunk of the story, although it's hardly a spoiler to point out that eventually he becomes the final rival that must be defeated at the end of the arc. There's a lot of spy stuff going on, and a frankly kind of silly idea that there's this super special Jedi girl who has a super special power that would wreak havoc on Imperial agents all over the galaxy. While I found this concept a bit McGuffinish in a silly way, the story is otherwise really good. It also involves the high level Imperial politics and what's going on with the Emperor specifically, which is why it's an interesting dark mirror to the Jedi Knight, and the only one (of two) class stories that actually flows in a good way into the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne storylines. The interaction between the Sith Warrior and Darth Baras, who is the third act villain, unsurprisingly, is also extremely well done. I actually thought that in terms of very clear focus prior to Darth Baras' inevitable betrayal, that it probably could have been a little better. Darth Baras' Jedi counterpart and rival was not nearly as compelling a figure, although it did allow for an exploration of the corruption and hypocrisy of the Jedi code and the Jedi structure in general. One of my personal favorite topics in Star Wars, if done well, because it increasingly becomes clear that Lucas' interpretation of the Jedi is flawed and absurd. This theme is even very apparent if the Sith Warrior is a reformer and a light-sider (mostly) seeking to make the Sith more reasonable and effective rather than cartoonishly villainous.
The Sith Warrior has a decent collection of companions, compared to some of the ones we've seen before. By this I basically mean that about half of the companions are likeable, and the other half I could take or leave. Vette, the sassy twi'lek girl is the first one you get, and the default romanceable option for male Sith Warriors. I actually didn't romance Vette, because she's a weird blue-skinned alien with tentacles instead of hair, and my Sith Warrior was a good looking human male. He has better options! Or, at least he should, although the game doesn't really provide them. I suspect that its a good romance, because Vette is a charming character, but her alien-ness just kind of turned me off. Jaesa is a human female; the former Jedi padawan that you take as your apprentice. You can go dark or light side with her, and I did light-side. The romance with her doesn't progress very well in the normal story; you get to a platonic understanding that having children together would be logical, and that's about it. However, at the end of the expansions, you can have an actual romantic reunion with her that is probably worth the payoff. It's a shame that this wasn't developed, though, as for me, it was a much more likely scenario than a sassy teenaged alien. I'll probably replay this again as an alien character (Chiss or Miralian or Zabrak or something) and since my character will be an alien too, I'll probably feel better romancing an alien girl. It might also be worth doing the dark side Jaesa option just to see how different it is, because it is a completely different type of relationship compared to the light side Jaesa, and makes her character strikingly different.
Quinn is the next most important character, and he's interesting because he offers some unique moral dilemmas. He's not exactly a likeable character in his own right, but he's an interesting one in terms of what he brings to the story. Pierce, on the other hand, is just the Imperial version of a trooper, and has a kind of boring military story going on, and Broonmark is nothing more than an extra violent Chewbacca or something; he brings very little to the table, and I don't care about him in the least.
The Marauder is a pretty classic Sith feeling mechanicals. It's in-your-face aggressive, and very much to my style
In fact, I think the Marauder in particular is considered by many fans to be one of the funnest mechanical sets to play, and very well-suited to the Sith Warrior.
I'd rank the Sith Warrior as one of the better experiences in the game. If you only play one character story, I recommend the Jedi Knight, probably the Guardian with one lightsaber being the most iconic mechanical advanced class option. But if you play two, I probably would recommend the Sith Warrior, specifically as a Marauder as the second most iconically Star Warsian story to play. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that I think that the Sith Warrior or the Jedi Knight is literally the best story, just that its combination of being iconic along with being really good makes them the ones that you should play. And they are among the best stories, no matter how you cut it, although a case can be made (and I'll do that in my next post) that the non-Force using Imperials classes are perhaps the "best" stories.
SITH INQUISITOR
The Sith Inquisitor, on the other hand, is one of the poorer experiences. Perhaps a little better than the Jedi Consular, but not a lot. The character itself and his performance is fine; actually mostly fairly well done. The character isn't really one of the more serious ones, in fact, the cartoony cape-swirling villainy is frequently played up for laughs, and he's frequently put in absurd situations where there's allegedly humor in the absurdity. Sometimes this works OK, sometimes it just makes the whole Inquisitor experience feel like a dumb joke. The character himself is billed as a manipulative, darkly magical analog to Darth Sidious, but he's more like Darth Sidious' retarded older brother who only succeeded at much of anything due to insanely unbelievable levels of dumb luck. Even when the character is repeatedly told quite clearly what's happening, he stumbles right into blatantly obvious traps and insanely stupid hijinks. The Sith Inquisitor class story documents the Team Rocket of Sith Lords.
If the story were billed as a farce, it might have been a little more palatable. As it is, I cringed way too often, and laughed way too infrequently for that to have been successful either. I think it needed to commit to being a farce and gone all in on it.
In any case, the story itself is OK, especially for the first half. Running around binding Sith ghosts wasn't a terrible idea (although, of course, as it turns out, it was a terrible idea, the main character was just too stupid to have figured that out until he'd already done it.) However, the second half of the story it kind of falls apart. Some other Sith Lord takes your dumb luck ascension personally, or so it seems, and becomes your rival, but you never really understand exactly why he cares one way or another, making the entire second half feel extremely forced and plot devicey in a completely unconvincing manner.
The story could maybe have been saved if the companions were cool, but this is actually one of the weaker companion collections out there as well. In fact, for a very long time, the only companion you have is Khem Val, your "morose monster." While not a terrible character, he's pretty one dimensional until a second personality is sucked into the body, at which point, he really becomes the only character in the entire retinue that's actually very interesting. Andronikos Revel, the space pirate, is fine, I suppose, although he's a little too predictable as a generic pirate to really be as interesting as he should be. I believe he's the romance option if you play as a female inquisitor, which according to many, is the better way to do it. Not that the male voice actor failed in any way at doing a good job, just that the dry farce nature of the story seems somehow to work better on a girl. Talos Drellik, the Sith archaeologist doesn't offend at least in a boring professor kind of way, and Xalek, who becomes your bone-faced apprentice is a complete cipher who gets no development at all whatsoever. And finally, you have your love interest, a failed Jedi girl named Ashara Zavros, who's Togruta. She's kind of pushy and unlikeable herself, and her motivation for being on your team never feels convincing. She's one of the weaker romance options, yet she's the only one you get. Not only is she a weird looking alien, but she's not even likeable as a girl. Vette at least has that going for her.
Finally, I didn't really enjoy the Sith Assassin, pretty much for the same reason that I didn't much enjoy the Jedi Shadow. I liked the stealth ability... a lot... but actual combat never felt very interesting or varied, and I ended up button mashing just a few abilities over and over again most of the time. I think that the sorcerer is a more iconic use of the class, all the lightning abilities and whatnot, but sadly, that's not the one that I played. Given that I didn't love the story all that much, I'm not likely to want to play it again too soon either; I've got plenty of other characters that I'd rather replay with a different advanced class before I get around to this one.
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