As part of my "Mother of All SWTOR Reviews" I forced ranked the class stories. As I've played around with them more, I've revised that ranking. The reasons for this are twofold; one of them is that as I've been less concerned with picking the "correct" dialogue option that clearly the writers expect you to pick, and which your "girlfriend" character approves of the most, then some of the stuff that was painfully cringy are taken away. A more flippant and slightly (but not too badly) mean-spirited—or at least much less willing to take crap from anyone—smuggler is significantly better than one who meekly acts super simpy and beta around everyone, for instance. I had in particular been disappointed in the smuggler, which I had hoped to like nearly the best, because I like the concept the best, but was really unhappy with the reality of it on my first playthrough. I'm finding on my subsequent playthroughs that I like it better. Quite a bit so, in fact.
The second thing that has impacted my ordering of the classes is my experience with more mechanics. I had only played each class with one of the two options, obviously, when I did it the first time. The double-bladed lightsaber assassin and shadow both ended up being disappointing. And I've also done all kinds of mix and match tech class alternatives. Some are just playing the other class that I didn't play the first time with the original class story that it was paired with; I have a mercenary bounty hunter, a scoundrel smuggler and an operative agent in play right now, for instance. But some of it was being able to take a totally different mechanical set and apply it to a story. I also have a mercenary smuggler, a powertech agent, a powertech smuggler, a sniper trooper, a sniper bounty hunter, a vanguard bounty hunter, and a gunslinger trooper.
And it's not just the tech classes; I alternated on my force classes too and I have two sentinel knights, a sorcerer consular, a sorcerer inquisitor (also my only woman character) and a juggernaut sith warrior. I may yet even do another marauder sith warrior; my original sith warrior romanced (sorta) Jaesa light side and my current one is romancing Vette light side. I might want a romance Jaesa dark side alternative too.)
Anyhoo, this much more varied experience has me now re-ordering the order, at least in some smaller ways. Some of what I said before is still highly relevant, but a few things have changed.
8) The consular is still my least favorite. I actually already played him as a bit cocky and less simpy and stupid, but the cocky dialogue options come across as kind of douchey, to be honest rather than merely "not beta". I still don't think he's a very compelling character, and it was a major waste of Nolan North's obvious voice talents. Why couldn't the consular have been a bit more like Nathan Drake? And I don't really like his companions any better than I did either; although playing as a sorcerer and blasting flesh raiders all around Tython with lightning is kind of fun. To be fair, I seem to see a lot of people doing that.
7) The inquisitor is still in the same place as before too, although I do like 1) the sorcerer better than the assassin (I only use assassin as a second class for force users, in case I need to sneak by trash mobs with his stealth ability) and I think I like 2) the female version better than the male. Usually I don't, and its not a dig on the voice actor who did the male inquisitor; I just think that the inherent borderline farce elements work a little better with a female character. Her attitude comes across as more cute, whereas on the male, it falls a bit flat. Sexism, I guess. Misandry, even. But it's true nonetheless; people are not interchangeable widgets, and some stories work better with a male vs female character, and some vice versa. In general, I obviously think the heroes of swashbuckling space opera action stories are better as men, since that's almost exclusively what I play in this game, but this one is the exception. Plus, the romance options, for what it's worth, are marginally better for the female character. The bratty alien Jedi that makes up the romance option for the male inquisitor is just lame. So lame that it's worth just waiting until you can romance Lana Beniko in the expansions, I think.
6) I'm dropping the trooper down one slot, although that's less because of my impression of the trooper has changed, and more because the smuggler went up. I'm playing the two troopers that I'm doing as kinda mouthy and cocky and disrespectful of authority; I imagine them more as auxiliaries rather than regular troops who are used to doing the sir yes sir obnoxious soldier stuff. It just doesn't make for good storytelling; a more independent type is necessary for it to work. It's entirely possible that the trooper just wasn't even the right concept for BioWare to tackle (especially as they're clearly anti-military liberals), but I still think they did better than I expected with it in a lot of ways.
5) I'm actually dropping the Jedi Knight down to 5 here. I should note that the white space between all of the stories in the top five is extremely small, which is why they can move around quickly. The problem is actually farther back than the story itself, though—SWTOR fairly faithfully represented the Jedi Order the same way Lucas did, especially in the prequels and the Clone Wars show. Of course, that sucks, because the Jedi are almost the villains as much as the Sith are. They really make Tython irritating to play in particular, although the story does improve substantially as you get more in to it. The plank of wood main character played by David "I hate white people" Hayter is a major liability to the Jedi Knight too. But these problems aren't unique to The Old Republic; SWTOR faithfully adapts these problems from the greater Star Wars franchise, you could say.
4) Although I still really love the agent character, the really, really stupid companion characters have really grated on my nerves in subsequent playthroughs, including my Mirialan operative and my new human powertech playing the agent story. I have really come to love the sniper mechanics, though—I've got both a trooper and a bounty hunter using those mechanics. I'm also not a huge fan of the operative. Sneaking around and ambushing is great, but then once you've done that, the combat mechanics aren't super fun. Best plot, great main character, but super-super annoying ensemble cast of characters, make this one of the better classes, but it strikes me more and more as a missed opportunity to be easily the top story. Kaliyo and Vector as the main culprits, but nobody else in the line-up really steps up to improve it until Raina Temple. And even then, I have to switch out her image to feel like she's sufficiently charming to do the job.
3) The Sith Warrior is just a lot of fun, and his laconic sarcasm is better every day. I'm still a bit disappointed that the romance options aren't wonderful. Vette is charming, but she's a weird funky colored alien without any hair. Jaesa is pretty—especially if you stick the blonde or red-head option on her, but the regular darker Mediterranean-looking Jaesa ain't bad either) but is too frosty to be a good romance partner. Although I do think that if you're patient enough, the reunion at the end of Onslaught is a great romance moment for the game. I've seen enough of the dark side Jaesa to think that she's much more interesting here, although ultimately only a crazy person would ever entertain a relationship with a woman like that. But the Sith Warrior is meant to be strong and alpha enough to do it, especially if played dark side. Because my first playthrough ignored Vette and "romanced" light-side Jaesa, which you can't technically do successfully, I found his chaste monk-approach was a bit flat. Because romancing a green (in my case) alien with tentacles instead of hair isn't super great with me, neither is playing around with a psycho, I didn't go for either option the first time. Doing it anyway makes this class a bit more fun than it was my first time out. And it's still very iconic, whether he's light or dark. And honestly, you can still do a fairly light-side Sith Warrior who turns Jaesa dark.
2) As much as my feelings on the smuggler seem ambiguous and I have a complicated relationship, like with a bad girlfriend, I find that I have more smugglers and bounty hunters than any other class story in the works, and not by a small amount either. If that isn't a clear indication that those are my favorite two stories, I don't know what is. And why shouldn't they be? Both are my favorite concepts; I'm a little over the Gary Stu power fantasies that too often make up the Jedi (even in the original movies) and Sith, and find the writing and performances of the Jedi in particular to be really cringe. The smuggler and bounty hunters, as free agents who only nominally answer to anyone in the Republic or Imperial hierarchy, and certainly don't bow and scrape to them just do it right.
And honestly, a lot of the problems I have with the smuggler aren't really with the smuggler per se; some of the exploration and planetary garbage on various planets apply to all of the Republic classes. For some reason, it always seemed to fit with the smuggler the most poorly, though. Especially in areas where the smuggler acts like its shocking to suggest that people break the law. Especially when the smuggler acts like its shocking that people might want to smuggle things that are illegal, like one particularly stupid exploration mission on Coruscant. But we're supposed to be automatically enraged because they are slave collar chips and slavery is the worstest thing ever. In spite of the fact that people who believe that are literally willing and in fact eager to voluntarily enter into slavery in Western Civilization, and then insist that anyone else who doesn't want to be enslaved by hateful tyrants is "a threat to our democracy." Sigh. R-selection is the worst.
But if you could somehow get the XP for the planetary faction stories and exploration missions without doing them, or do them but ignore them, then the smuggler character works much better. Especially if you play him as a bit of a hard-ass who only somewhat reluctantly shows his heart of gold underneath. The Risha romance is a bit simpy too, but that can be minimized somewhat. Do this, and the smuggler jumps from being a little bit disappointing to being nearly my favorite.
1) Regardless of what they are mechanically, the smuggler and the bounty hunter are mirror images of each other in terms of concept; the independent gunfighter wandering around space, consorting with the criminal element as much as with the official element, etc. While I find the Great Hunt concept itself kind of gimmicky, they did the best that they probably could with it, and then the second half of the game is after it's over anyway.
I know, I know—this wasn't feasible, and still isn't even now, but the bounty hunter and smuggler in particular make me really think about why table-top RPGs are inherently superior—or at least have the potential to be—to computer RPGs, because all of the things that they force you to do, or don't even give you a reasonable option to deal with, can be handled however you'd like to. But I just feel like the format leaves something to be desired; you invest in your character, and you want it to do what is the most obvious choice, but you aren't given the options to. It's not the same as reading someone else's novel, but it also kind of is, and the writer of that novel just didn't quite give you the character that best fit the plot he was trying to sell. It just doesn't quite work. But it probably comes closest if you play the smuggler and the bounty hunter, and make them basically good guys, but a little on the hard side, like a good Western hero.
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