Forced ranking of class stories; what would I change?

As part of my mother of all SWTOR reviews, I ended up doing a forced ranking of the class stories, least to most favorite. Then I released a modified version of it later. I guess this is the third one, although I'm focusing more on "what would I change" rather than the ranking itself. 

I think with my most recent playthrough, I'm finding that all of the tech classes are preferable to me to force-users. Especially because you can use more varied mechanics to represent them now. That said, that is a personal preference that has little to do with more than the fact that I like guns better than lightsabers. Part of that is the many, many trash mobs you have to face. It's much less tedious, for whatever reason, to engage them by just standing back and plinking at them with the 1 key than it is having to move around and engage them in hand to hand. That's a very esoteric and kind of strange rationale for preferring the techs to the space wizards, but there you have it. It is what it is regardless. If you could take that element out of the picture, I think my previous ranking would still work; least to most favorite: consular, inquisitor, trooper, knight, agent, warrior, smuggler, hunter. With the caveat that the daylight between all of the top 5-6 classes is extremely small, and very minor tweaks could make them move many spots, because they all have essentially the same score, and it comes down to fine-tuning the decimal places. For this post, however, let's just do the force-users first, and the tech classes second, in this order: consular, inquisitor, knight, warrior, trooper, agent, smuggler, hunter. So; what would I change?

First off, let's again reiterate the criteria for why a class story succeeds or fails. There are several elements: 1) main character characterization, 2) the actual plot, 3) companion characters, especially girlfriend options (again, I almost exclusively play male characters). I had mechanics in there, but given the greater flexibility now, I don't think that matters as much. Although clearly I have my favorites in terms of mechanics too (gunslinger, mercenary, powertech, sniper.)

Consular. One of the consular story's biggest weaknesses is the boring main character who has no character. There needs to be a serious rewrite where the concept of the "earnest Jedi who speaks in boring fortune cookie expressions" is replaced with someone who resembles a real person, cracks some better jokes, has some more interesting opinions, etc. This is a systemic problem that affects both Jedi classes, so I won't get into details here, but I think BioWare's writers got caught in the "righteous, liberal vision of a serious hero" paradigm, and the problem is that the character is such a boring cypher with no personality that it's just frustrating to play him.

Of course, the consular's companions are pretty weak too. I never had much interest in Dr. Lizardo, who you have to run around with for several planets as your only option, while he constantly gives you lizard anthropology lectures. The only possible exception is your girlfriend character, who isn't too bad, if a little mouthy, pushy and self-important. Still, she could be much worse, and some of her worst traits come across as more immaturity rather than true character flaws. But she's not really very cute, and you get her very late, so you have no opportunity to have a proper romance with her. Plus, honestly, there's no chemistry between you and her, and that's mostly on the writing of the main character himself.

The plot is also sadly kind of flat. The dark side plague that you run around healing and the Manchurian candidate dark side brainwashing that you encounter has some potential, but it never quite seems to live up to it. They also are very similar and kind of bleed into each other, which amplifies the repetitive nature of it even more than it already is. And your villains aren't very memorable either. The other element that you do as part of your plot, running around with all of these entitled, bratty little princess diplomats, is more tedious and frustrating than fun. Honestly, the entirety of the consular story needs some serious overhaul. The main idea, of a dark side plague of some kind followed by sleeper agents who don't even know that they're sleeper agents, has some potential, but it needs a more interesting character, more interesting companion dynamics, and the adversaries and plot problems to be solved need to be much more lively.

Inquisitor. Here, the main character himself or herself—and this is probably the only class story where I actually think it works a little better as a woman—isn't really too bad. But the companions are mostly pretty lackluster, and the plot is mostly kind of silly. To the point that you wish that they'd committed to making it a farce instead of trying to pretend that we can take it with a straight face. If the whole thing had been more light-hearted, the plot itself could have worked. But the character really needs better companions. If you play a girl, you have a serviceable if pedestrian romance option, but if you play as a guy, all you get is a severely unlikeable weird alien girl. Apparently, Khem Val is romanceable, although only in the Ossus+ expansions where super gay and weird options were something that they made a point of offering. I can't imagine it for either a man or a women; the "morose monster" is, at best, only vaguely humanoid to begin with. You don't get Ashara, the romanceable alien, until you finish Taris, which is not as bad as the consular geting Nadia Grell on Quesh, or wherever it is that you finally pick her up as a companion, but it's still too late, in my opinion. Romanceable characters should be available on the first or second planet.

The villain is also really flat. You never really understand what his beef is with you, or why either of you should care one way or another about each other.

Knight. The Knight actually has a pretty good story, marred by two somewhat glaring problems; 1) lame main character, who really needs a lot more personality and spunk to feel anything at all like a real person (see similar complaint for the other Jedi character noted above). Tython is also a very rough first planet, where you are put in one hoaky moral dilemma after another where the "light side" choices are all stupid and the "dark side" choices are mostly just childish, and no matter what you pick, the stick in the mud Jedi council will lecture you like a Karen hall monitor about it. The story improves tons when you leave Tython, you get a great girlfriend character, probably the best in the game, even, and you get her on the second planet after having already interacted with her a lot on the first planet.

The plot itself is mostly pretty cool, albeit somewhat repetitive, for the first act, but it's a little silly when you're part of a strike team to go kidnap the emperor and bring him to Tython to turn him to the light side. Lolwut? I remember in college hearing about an idea floating around in Kennedy's CIA about sneaking into Cuba and shaving Castro's beard off, thinking that that would cause his government to fail. This idea is only marginally less stupid. Still, the Jedi Knight story mostly delivers interesting swashbuckling action, thrilling heroics, and over-the-top melodrama, which is pretty iconic to the Star Wars franchise, after all.

Warrior. The Sith Warrior is the dark mirror of the Jedi Knight, and if you sometimes have to choose a few dark side options on the Jedi just to not be a ridiculous parody of a liberal hero, you have to mostly choose a lot of light side options as the warrior to not be a tactically obtuse, childish psychopath. I personally find the character most enjoyable when I play him as a kind of reformer, who finds the insane dictates of the worst of the Sith counter-productive to the growth and success of the Empire, not to mention worthy of summary execution for its own right. The Sith are maniacs, and while that's kind of how they're supposed to be, it also begs the question of how their society ever formed in the first place, much less managed to last as long as it has. The early stuff has a kind of rough Spartan agoge feel to it on occasion, which kind of works, but later it's just nothing but insanely counter-productive whims and backstabbery. This weakness carries forward in the faction stories of all of the Imperial classes to a fair degree, but it really only applies as a plot point in the class story that you have to ignore and pretend that it isn't there for the two Sith classes. In the agent class, on the other hand, it's a plot point, but is treated much more reasonably, and the Imperials are constantly careful and cautious and also sometimes kind of resentful of the prominence that the Sith and their stupid ideas are given. For the most part, they do their best to stay out of the Siths' way and ignore them, so that they can competently run an Empire. 

Because the Sith Warrior isn't bound to try and be serious and heroic in the minds of writers who don't understand either dimension, he actually is kind of a likeable character and feels like a real person. This is true whether you play him more dark or more light; he's still a more interesting and likeable character. I prefer him, as noted, a bit more light, but I can understand wanting to do either.

While none of the characters hit five home runs with their companions, the Warrior and the Knight both do pretty well, and have at least three or four pretty good, interesting ones. Quinn isn't exactly likeable, but he is interesting, and has some interesting plot elements inherent in his story. Vette is a likeable girlfriend, and if she wasn't a funky colored alien without any hair, I'd like her quite a bit better. Jaesa is another really interesting character, but if you run her light-side, she disappointingly doesn't offer the romance option that you kind of want from her. The writers, to their credit, took this feedback and added an expansion romance that is very satisfying; kind of suggesting that you had a lot of romantic tension all along that she tried really hard to put aside, but ultimately failed to do. But the expansion is out of scope for this discussion, so I'll say that I was always just a bit disappointed in the romance department with the Sith Warrior. Jaesa having a real romance option was a must, and having Vette be human would have been nice too. 

Trooper. The plot of the trooper is surprisingly good. I think it would be greatly improved if they admitted the obvious; this guy isn't really a soldier, he's more like a spy or hitman; an "asset" as they call them in the Bourne or Bond or Mission Impossible movies. I also feel like the second act when you're recruiting your team falls a little flat; there are a few where you can quite sensibly tell your CO that you don't want this person on your team, but you have to pick him up anyway (Tanno Vik being the most obvious here, but Yuun is also super boring.) The main character himself, again, has the same problem that the Jedi have; the writers want to promote him as a serious yet heroic figure, and they have no idea how to do that without taking out all personality and character, and making the main character that you play super boring. The villains get to have more fun, and the smuggler by his nature, but these three all get really short shrift, because being told what to do by superiors and being good little boys and girls who follow orders without any attitude is what the writers think a good guy hero is, and they can't seem to add anything at all to that without making them boring. But as I said before, the trooper was a pleasant surprise to me; in spite of foreseeing the things that I wouldn't like about it accurately, it turns out that they weren't as bad as I feared, and the other elements were mostly done fairly well. 

Elara Dorn is the romance option, and she's actually quite charming in many ways. I mean, as a real man if she were a real woman, I'd probably get tired of pursuing her with the hard to get attitude that she sometimes has, but that's an artifact of the way the game is structured; you can't have the romance finish up too early, so there's nothing else to do about it other than accept that you need to wait until the right pacing moment in the story.

I also feel like the trooper suffers more than most in terms of losing focus after Act I is done. This is true to some extent for all of the characters, but what follows for the Trooper until you get to the end is worse than most. Also, the second villain you get isn't very well developed or interesting.

Agent. The agent has a really interesting story, and although there is occasionally a loss of agency (no pun intended) inherent in it, the plot is probably among the best of all of the class stories. However, as I've said before, the companions are among the worst in the game. The only one that I really like is Raina Temple, but even then I have to swap her out for a prettier customization, and you get her way too late to have a credible romance with her. Kaliyo, who's supposed to be your romance option, just isn't attractive at all in looks, in personality, and especially in baggage. The idea that any man of value would have an interest in a woman like that is laughable. What's wrong with the writers? Are there not any actual men among them, only really toxic betas and women?

A better romance companion, which you pick up earlier, and better companions in general is the main thing that the agent story needs.

Smuggler. The smuggler struggles a bit with this same problem, but if you stop worrying about trying to fit what the game thinks your characters want to hear and just doing what you should be doing anyway, the smuggler works better. (Ironically, also true in real life.) It's another case study in how the writers don't seem to know jack squat about what alpha males are really like and what women actually want. It's not so bad that they made the successful men into the villains, like in Revenge of the Nerds or Beauty & the Beast, but if you're willing to take a few hits on companion approval and maybe not flirt with every single NPC that it gives you the opportunity to flirt with (most of whom a real man wouldn't be all that interested in anyway) the smuggler is a charming and engaging character to play.

I am a little frustrated that Risha, your default romance option, isn't "officially" a companion until the end of Act I, even though she's on your ship and is an NPC that you interact with a lot. It almost feels like you pick her up at the end of Coruscant, but you don't really do so completely in terms of being able to use her as a companion or customize her appearance. She's also a bit pushy and holds out too long too, but again, there are structural reasons why it has to be this way, even if it doesn't really feel right from a chemistry perspective. And, of course, you have another romanceable option among your companions, but not one that I can take seriously, so I've never pursued it with any of my many smuggler characters, nor do I intend to.

I also feel like the second act where you do privateer work is a bit weak. And the attempted plot twist feels more forced rather than clever or natural. The whole freakin' game I was saying, bring on Rogun "the Butcher", but we're "supposed" to be afraid of him the entire time. Kind of frustrating too. The whole point of a character like the smuggler is that he takes his own destiny in his hands and makes things happen, but you have to be way too much of a follower here. I know; to some degree that's dictated by the structure of the game, but a good writer at least doesn't allow you to notice it so much.

Bounty Hunter. The hunter plot isn't super complex or deep, but it works pretty well. The whole concept of the Great Hunt is a little dubious, but once you accept it, it works fine and some of the hunts in particular are actually fairly interesting. This is especially true for the Eidolon on Nar Shaddaa and Tiresias Lokai on Tatooine. As weak as the Great Hunt motivation is in some ways, it does seem to feel a little better than what follows, where you're still doing hunts, but the motivation for doing them seems even weaker. The Great Hunt contrivance is contrived and forced, a bit, but the Black List is worse. It's a little bit of a shame that the writers couldn't quite manage to rise above what they did and create something that feels just a bit more compelling. Should have probably watched more classic westerns and gangster movies before writing this. There's nothing wrong with what we got, it just feels a little too safe and not quite creative enough somehow. A kind of deja vu, too obvious plot.

I don't really love Torian Cadera as a companion, because I don't really love the standard EU presentation of Mandalorians, but I'm sure that I'm the exception there; I think otherwise that's kind of popular. Mako is one of the best girlfriends in the game, in my opinion, and Gault is pretty fun. Blizz is... whatever, and I don't know why I have to take Skadge at all; in a realistic world, I'd never accept him on my ship; I'd have killed him as quickly as I could in game as a psychopathic criminal and villain who had started targeting me and my crew to scam. Mako is also your first companion, way back on planet one, which is really how most of the girlfriends characters should be, honestly. Kyra being at the end of planet two is the only other acceptable alternative, and all of the other classes who don't do that are doing it wrong.

I'm not sure how they could have done this without making the game quite a bit bigger than it is, but the attraction of the smuggler and hunter in particular is that you kind of want to disassociate them from the faction. The smuggler isn't really a Republic agent, just like the hunter isn't an Imperial one, but you're constantly dragged back in as if by an inescapable event horizon.

SWTOR Character Class Stories ranking

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.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part VII: The Expansions

There were some original add-ons after the class stories; a continuation of the faction story, at least, with some class specific dialogue. I was actually surprised to learn that the original plan was to continue the class stories in the expansions, but when EA cut staffing and left a bunch of bean-counting yes-men (not my term and I'm hearing that second hand if not even... more hands than that, but it sounds eminently believable) it didn't happen. The original stuff that was added was actually in many ways a foreshadowing of the daily area, reputation stuff and group content that there is now a lot of. This includes the Ilum stuff (a beautiful planet, with a fascinating night sky view) which ends on back to back story flashpoints, the Black Hole; a special separate area on Corellia that serves as a weird kind of coda to the stories on that planet. The former is a must-do, but the Black Hole is skippable if you're not interested, and you won't miss much.

There's some other stuff too; Section X, which you need to be subscribed to access (or buy access on the cartel market—a weird experiment, which luckily they didn't try again) along with the seeker droid and macrobinocular missions start off a fascinating sub-story about the Dread Masters, which of course we know from most of the stories on Belsavis, or at least the faction stories. This goes on and on with several little chapters that pop in, but which sadly ends in a series of operations, so solo players will not be able to finish it. There are, however, reputation tracks and unlocks available along this, including for Section X itself, and the follow-up for it on Oricon, the "horror planet" where the Dread Masters showdown takes place (in back to back operations.) It's too bad because the ambiance on Oricon is one of the best, but you have an ongoing cliffhanger, sadly.

This is true for some of the other stuff that starts at this stage too. The Seeker Droid and Macrobinocular quests are quite long, and varied, and kind of interesting, but you can't quite finish them when you get right down to it, unless you do grouping. And finding a group that's still going to do those really old quests is easier said than done. I actually tried to for a while, in spite of my aversion to grouping, but couldn't ever find anyone interested. There's a Czerka planet, CZ-198, which is also pretty interesting, but it also ends on two back to back flashpoints that are not soloable. (I tried. Maybe I'm just not good enough, but it doesn't seem reasonable to play these without a group.) So, you can get introduced to the concept, and go do some dailies on the planet, get some Reputation and buy some interesting unique gear.

There were some other interesting expansions, like Galactic Starfighter and Galactic Strongholds, which are just asides for collectors, in my experience. But the first expansion, and certainly the first "real" expansion, is Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which offers faction story expansion, with some class specific dialogue here and there. It offers a significant story element, as well as a reputation track, and a quite large new planet to explore; quite a bit larger than Oricon or CZ-198, or Ilum, for instance.

However, all of these lack the depth, length and focus of the class stories, which are obviously significantly more meaty. This is especially true of the second and third smaller expansions, starfighter and strongholds, which only add "asides" to do. However, with the fourth expansion, Shadow of Revan, the "main" story really gets started again in a big way. Shadow of Revan includes four back to back (to back to back) soloable flashpoints, with accompanying cut scenes, and three planets (albeit one of them is quite small.) These include the pirate planet of Rishi, Yavin IV and Ziost. All three of them have reputation tracks and dailies. These planets are mostly pretty fun, especially Rishi, which is one of my favorite planets in the game. Rishi also has a class specific small quest for each class; the last time something like that was done. Otherwise, all classes go through the same story, although there are some faction specific stuff. It's clear that the developers basically expect you to play these expansions with a Jedi Knight, or maybe a Sith Warrior, and everyone else fits a little less well.

The flashpoints are also quite interesting; there are invasions of Korriban and Tython, and depending on your faction, you do them differently (needless to say.) Rakata Prime and Manaan, both from Knights of the Old Republic, also make reappearances in the flashpoints. Although the end of the Jedi Knight story is that he kills the Emperor, it turns out that it didn't "take" and he managed to survive his death (much like Sidious, by coincidence, although here it's not nearly as badly and confusedly executed as the sequel trilogy.

There are two big expansions which follow and which kind of serve as back to back parts of the same long story arc. This is Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne. It turns out that the Emperor has, for decades, been living a secret "bigamist" life, as another guy entirely who's also the emperor of Zakuul, a planet lost somewhere out there in the galaxy. However, he's got this crazy fleet of robot starships under his control, as well as his own order of force-using Jedi/Sith analog knights, and he sends his twin sons out to go conquer the galaxy. Which they do, pretty effectively—their force knights and their "Eternal Fleet" basically bring both the Sith Empire and the Republic to their knees. Your own character, along with Darth Marr, ends up going to face this Emperor and recognizes him as the Sith Emperor in a different body. But one of the Emperor's sons kills the Emperor, kills Darth Marr, makes you the scapegoat, and freezes you in carbonite for five years. The next thing you know, some of the characters you know from Shadow of Revan are rescuing you. You find out that the emperor still lives after being killed again, but as a disembodied entity in your head. You've lost all of your companions, but you get new ones, and gradually are able to re-recruit most of your past companions (as well as past companions for many other classes from your faction in particular, but occasionally from others.)

Anyway, you end up becoming the leader of yet a "fourth" super power in the galaxy, the Alliance for the overthrow of Zakuul, with a group made up of Imperial, Republic and criminal elements all out to overthrow the current rulers of the galaxy. This is quite a good story, actually, although it makes the most sense if you play it as a Jedi Knight in my opinion, and because it's exactly the same (for these two expansions anyway) there's not a lot of reason to play it with all of your classes. When its done, the Emperor is dead yet again, your Alliance is in possession of the Eternal Fleet, for a while until that goes caput, and you end up having to pick a side; Republic or Imperial again. This paves the way for more "traditional" Republic/Imperial factions and rivalries going forward.

Both of these expansions play a bit differently than the game had done until this point. You move from chapter to chapter, and each chapter is more like a flashpoint that you play solo than like traditional planetary missions. There are a lot of planets that appear in these chapters, but they aren't open planets that you can go and explore in a traditional sense. 

The next expansion, which is for a little bit longer, the current expansion is Onslaught, works a bit more traditionally. There are a few story missions on small planets, which you can then go back and do dailies on for reputation. There aren't any class stories anymore, but there are faction stories (which; again, seem to assume that you're either a Jedi Knight doing the Republic faction or a Sith Warrior doing the Imperial faction. Anyone else can do them, but they make a little bit less sense and feel much more forced.) There's a final coda to the story of the Emperor, before he's well and fully purged from the galaxy for good for good. You get a fairly detailed biography of him as it goes on, and the three personas that he had. Tenebrae is his original form, where he was "the black-eyed Sith lord", and a member of the Sith Pureblood race. Vitiate is his form known from the original class stories, where he is a human Sith Emperor who looks and acts very much like Sidious/Palpatine from the Star Wars movies. But they talk all through the class stories about how he was often missing in action and hadn't been involved with the Empire in a regular way, if at all, for years. This is because of his third persona, Valkorian, where he was the human emperor of what became the Zakuul Empire, which briefly conquered both the Republic and the Sith Empire.

It's interesting because of the obvious parallels with what Jew Jew Binks (as E;R calls Jar Jar Abrams—see my last post) tried to do with Sidious in Rise of Skywalker, because the ideas are very similar, but one is well developed and reasonably well executed, and one is a slap-dash, obviously thrown together afterthought done for poor reasons and extremely poorly executed. If you're interested in getting the total view of the Emperor's biography, there are some YouTube biographies of him out there here and there, and of course you can read a lengthy discourse about him on Wookiepedia. 

Anyway, as I said, with Onslaught on, we get back to more simple stories; the Empire vs the Republic, small story updates on small planets, and the addition of a flashpoint and operation here and there. All of these new smaller planets have a reputation track and dailies, and special gear that can be unlocked via the reputation system. We get planets like Iokath, Ossus, Mek-Sha, and Onderon. Dantooine makes an appearance as a flashpoint, where we get to explore deja vu style the ruins of the Jedi Enclave from Knights of the Old Republic in an area that's separate from the Dantooine that you see with the pirate event and the swoop bikes event.

Without the Emperor, the threats are more realistic but less focused and obvious. They've tried to use Darth Malgus (the bald guy from the cinematic trailers), first as a stand-in in earlier years for the Sith overall, but later as the kind of overarching bad guy who replaces the Emperor, but it's unclear if the story group for the game is up to the challenge of creating story content that's even a fraction as engaging as the original class stories, or the Valkorian arc.

The good news is that there is no reason to buy the expansions. If you subscribe, even for a single month, then you unlock all of the expansions currently available... forever. (Except for Section X. You need to be subscribed, or buy that with cartel coins, i.e., real money, to play that.)

Legacy of the Sith is the most recently announced expansion. It was supposed to launch next week, but just in the last day or two a delay of two months was announced.

Finally, and this is the last word on the Mother of All SWTOR Reviews, one of the things that I do content wise is the recurring events. About once every other month or so, each of these events comes up for a week in rotation. There are some other events that occur less frequently. Mostly, these include some special areas to explore, daily missions to do and a reputation track. Many of them give out special currencies, which can be spent with special vendors on unique items, some of which are hard to get and indicate a fair amount of effort put into getting them if you see them on someone. Some of these include minigames, like the swoop bike races for the swoop bike event, or some of the weird cooking events on the Feast of Prosperity event. Some of them are more straightforward, like the bounty missions on the bounty hunter week, or the pirate missions on the Dantooine pirates event, or most of the events in the rakghoul caverns for the rakghoul events. The Gree event is, other than swoop bikes, the most unusual of them, as while easy to earn reputation, more or less, as a solo player, its much more difficult to earn the gree currency, gray helixes, without doing either grouping or PvP stuff.

I tend to like these events, and I'm sometimes frustrated at the amount of time in between them. I've been waiting for a few weeks for the bounty hunter event to get announced, as I need some more reputation and currency for some stuff I really want to buy from the bounty hunter vendors. Of course, it was just announced as taking place while I'm out of town, so now instead of weeks, I'm going to have to wait until probably at least February and maybe even March for it to come up at a time when I can play it. Sigh.

And a very newly implemented event, or maybe event isn't quite the right word for it, is galactic seasons. It came out while I was offline, and when I came back, it was just wrapping up. The next season won't start until the expansion launches, so I can't give you much firsthand experience with it, but it's something that I'm excited to try out because it's got loads of pretty cool rewards.

But you see the trend. Reputation. Dailies. A reason to keep coming back and tinkering. That's what they offer now. The story has taken a back seat to just "wander around doing repeatable stuff."

Of course, the story's still there, it's just that there isn't much added to the story these days. Which is probably OK, I suppose, because what they are doing is no doubt easier and cheaper, and SWTOR wasn't the "WoW killer" that many fans thought it would be in advance of its launch. 

Overall impression? I'm not a big video game player in general. I played quite a bit of RDR2, as my back catalog of posts might suggest. I played a lot of Street Fighter (and similar) type games. And I play the BioWare Star Wars games. That's about it. Of them, this is probably my favorite game, and one that if it's still out there, I'll probably keep coming back to for years to come.

However, it's literally celebrating it's 10th anniversary this year. The game engine and graphics weren't really top of the line when it was new; they're certainly not any more. Of course, being even older hasn't made Knights of the Old Republic less of a classic. But, I can't imagine that this will be around forever. All the more reason to record some playthroughs so I can have them archived when the game finally locks up for the last time and closes its virtual doors. It's inevitable that it will happen. Hopefully it's later rather than sooner, but we'll see.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part VIa: Ranking the stories

I'm not going to repeat stuff that I said in my more detailed reviews of each class story, and you can probably glean much of this from reading those anyway, but one of the popular things to do is to forcibly rank the class stories available to the SWTOR player. I do recommend playing all eight of them, actually, because they all add something to the tapestry of the Old Republic, but some of them are clearly better than others. 

I also think it's interesting to compare them to Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the Old Republic II. I'm not going to actually put them in the rankings next to the Old Republic stories, but I'd put KOTOR about smack dab in the middle of the top four stories of SWTOR, and KOTOR 2 as a flawed yet brilliant story that'd be smack dab in the middle of the bottom four stories of SWTOR. SWTOR is, therefore, broader than either game; better when it's at its best than either, and yet worse when it's at its worst than either as well.

8) Someone has to be at the bottom and the Jedi Consular takes this spot. The boring character, the boring or even irritating companions, the confusing plot that didn't live up to its promise, the lackluster romance, and the class mechanics which I didn't even like very much all combined to make this my least favorite of all of the classes to play. (As an aside, it bugs the crap out of me that so many people on YouTube, when talking about the consular, continue to call it the counselor. Or maybe councilor. But not consular. Literacy is a sadly lost art in Current Year. Sigh.)

7) The Sith Inquisitor is the second worst. Confused and messy tone that couldn't figure out what kind of story it was, unlikeable companions, a contrived and silly plot, and the same lackluster mechanics as the consular made this the second worst of the stories for me. It's only saved a bit from the last spot by its humor.

6) The smuggler is next. The character just doesn't ring true or realistic. A cringy beta who's a successful ladies man? I just couldn't ever accept it. I also admit, like I said earlier, that I got kind of bored with the combat mechanics after a while, and I didn't like very many of his companions either.

5) The trooper is next. A boring character with mostly boring companions, saved by a pretty good story with some actually smart moral dilemmas to deal with. I liked the way the mechanics played too. I admit, though, that prior to playing either class my expectations for the smuggler were very high and my expectations for the trooper were fairly low. Had that been otherwise, they'd probably swap places in the ranking with each other.

4) The Sith Warrior is next. It's hard to rank it in comparison to the Jedi Knight; I think the Sith Warrior was a better character, but the Jedi Knight had a marginally better story to deal with. The two are probably mostly equal, but one has to sit on top of the other. Sorry, Sith Warrior. For that matter, all four of the top half are all extremely close to each other in terms of quality, although for different reasons. It wouldn't have taken much nudging to completely reshuffle their order.

3) The Jedi Knight, if he had a more interesting character, could be the top spot, but his boring personality and rocky start on the starting planet drop him slightly below the top two spots.

2) The Agent is just a very well written story, and a good character too. It gets marked down somewhat for being less Star Warsy than you'd probably want, although the fact that there are very Star Warsy options elsewhere in the game makes this more experimental story a welcome change of pace. Terrible companions also bring it down, but what it does do, unexpected though it is, it does very well.

1) The bounty hunter is my favorite. I admit that I like the concept the best, and that makes it rise more than it otherwise would, and people who aren't as in to the concept of the bounty hunter probably don't like it as much as I do. But I think it's mostly just brilliant, only marred by minor flaws like a somewhat lackluster second chapter and a few companions who aren't as cool as the others are.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part VI: The Non-Sith Imperial Classes

For the final time, here's the elements of the story experience review that I believe need to be addressed:

1) The character as written by the writers and performed by the voice actor.

2) The plot and villains/rivals that you have to deal with.

3) The companion characters, in particular, the romanceable options.

4) The mechanics of playing the class.

The non force-using Imperial classes are two that stray a bit from the classic Star Wars story, although the bounty hunter option has now become very iconic within Star Wars thanks to the Mandalorian show. I mean, it was already based on Boba Fett who was an extremely popular character, but the movies gave us very little to work on in terms of what bounty hunter life was to be like in the Star Wars milieu. There were some expanded universe things, of course, but not everybody read everything in the expanded universe, and how well EU stuff actually fit into the Star Wars milieu was sometimes subject to wildly differing interpretations. Arguably, the bounty hunter story as told here was one of the first really good stabs at the idea.

The agent storyline is also very classic, but not in a Star Wars milieu; it's the classic thriller vibe. It's often compared to James Bond, but maybe it's really best compared to three completely different thrillers, that each correspond to a different chapter of the agent story; it starts off more like the show 24 for instance, and gets more complicated from there, with elements of the Manchurian Candidate and more before it's all done.

In spite of their differences from classic Star Wars tropes, both stories are considered very highly among SWTOR fans, especially the agent storyline. I only hesitate to recommend them both first because of their lack of classic Star Wars tropes, but once you've already gotten the classic Star Wars tropes (mostly from the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior) then it's much easier to recommend these two as two atypical Star Wars stories that are very, very good.

BOUNTY HUNTER

Well... the bounty hunter isn't universally loved, I should add. I personally love it, and I think in the wake of the Mandalorian, its popularity has gone up. But many people think it's kind of too straightforward and less interesting than it could be. I can't remember anyone ever really saying that they disliked it, but I think many fans think it's more middle of the road. 

The only real complaint I had with it is that it wanted so badly to be an independent freelancer, but was tied to the Imperial faction because you have to have a faction. It was really interesting and frustrating if you were going back and forth between class story quests and faction story quests on a given planet to go out of your way to point out that you weren't Imperial only to be told in the next quest how Imperial you were.

The gist of the story is that you're a new hunter; high in calibre and talent, but low in experience and name recognition, and you've been recruited by an outside coach to join the Great Hunt, a big Mandalorian-led competition for bounty hunters that allows you to quickly make a grab at fame, fortune and the big time if you're successful. A cheating scumbag murders most of your team in the first few moments of the story; while still on the starter planet of Hutta, actually (known as Nal Hutta in the Clone Wars) and becomes your rival until the end of Chapter 1, where you finish the Great Hunt.

The second half, as in many of the stories, lacks some focus for a while; you've won the Great Hunt, so now what? Big bounties, but they're just kind of all over the place until you find yourself the target of the biggest bounty in the galaxy thanks to corruption in (you probably guessed it) the Jedi order and the highest Republic political echelons, who want you taken down in revenge for other bounties that  you've done in the past. At this point, the plot gets into the kind of tense desperation that makes a good thriller good, and it offers (if you choose to take it, of course) one of the most satisfying conclusions of all of the class stories. 

The voice acting for the bounty hunter is really top notch; a deep, gravelly voice that is perfect for the role. He does, sometimes, say something too frequently that is a variation on "all I care about is getting paid" but as the character develops, if you pick the right options to develop him, this improves significantly. 

The bounty hunter has pretty good rivals too. Your rival in the Great Hunt is not quite as good as Skavak from the smuggler story, but has a similar vibe, and I liked taking him down. I liked, honestly, that I had the option to just leave him to die ignominiously rather than having to kill him, too. The rivals you develop at the end; the rogue Jedi and the Sith Lord who's pulling your strings, are pretty good too. The Sith Lord in particular I hated, and I was itching for an opportunity to take him down after first meeting him and having him choke one of my companions (it was even Mako, I think). Having the option to go take him down and do some freelance for a Republic politician who was willing to clear the air at the cost of his career, was awesome... as well as an interesting piece of the puzzle; in all of the Republic stories, you kind of wondered why the role changed from one character to another. Here, you see why. In fact, it really lived up to the promise of the bounty hunter as a free agent, unattached to the faction, and capable of doing whatever he wanted to. (It helped that by this point, I'd maxed out my character level, so I'd stopped doing the faction stories too. If you're doing the faction stories along with the class stories, you don't get that feel nearly as strongly, because the faction stories keep pulling you back in.)

So that's the character and the plot/rivals. Among my favorite in the game. I admit that the opening premise felt a little contrived, but it picked up quickly and started working very well. Running around in the slums of Hutta trying to curry favor with a Hutt Lord so he'd sponsor you off of his stinking rock felt very "on brand" for the class as well. I don't hesitate to recommend the bounty hunter to anyone and never did (it was the scene of two of my three abortive starts on the game, before I finally figured out how to play properly and not lock myself out of my own story by jumping ahead) so clearly it was one that appealed to me right away.

The bounty hunter also has some of the better companion characters. You start off with Mako, who's also your default love interest, voiced by Lacey Chabert. I'm not sure what she's famous for, but I always think of her as the youngest sister in Party of Five and I think she was one of the two girls who hung around with Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls. She knows her stuff. She's one of the better romanceable partners, in my opinion, although she holds out for "don't get involved with work partners" principle for too long, when you could be seeing more cuteness instead. Still, even so, I thought she was the equal of Kira Carsen in terms of likeable romanceable partners, which puts her at the top of the heap. She's also one of the few romanceable characters who I didn't think there was any need to apply a customization to make her prettier, either. Gault Rennow is also one of my favorite characters, and his comments make him one to bring out with you more often than not (pro tip; I laughed out loud hardest in the entire game because I had Gault with me on Hoth. Be sure and bring him.)

Blizz, the eager to please Jawa tinkerer is kind of a fan favorite, although he feels more like a puppy dog than a companion to me. Torian is fine. He tries too hard to talk about Mandalorianism way too much for my taste, but I get it; a lot of fans really like the Mandalorian ethnography stuff. (Personally, I was amused beyond all get-out to see that the Clone Wars clearly made Mandalorian culture something completely different than the EU had made it, and I was kind of annoyed to see Rebels and the Mandalorian show itself attempt beyond all reason to wrangle the old EU paradigm back into place.) Skadge is the last companion you pick up, and he's usually flagged as one of the worst companions in the entire companion roster of any character period. I agree, but you don't actually get exposed to too much of him, which helps.

I played the game as a powertech, specifically a pyrotech, so I was really, really into the flamethrower stuff. I think that the bounty hunter mechanics work very well with the character, and I enjoyed the area attacks with fire most especially. While you're supposedly supposed to be heavily armed and armored, it may not feel too much like it. A lot of the attacks come from "hidden" accoutrements on your suit, I suppose, but you only actually wield a single pistol. This is probably fine if you get a big enough one (I had a massive piece that I bought on the fleet right after Hutta from the bounty broker vendor. It was so good that I never once felt at all like swapping it out. It really looks the part. I love that gun.) The "other" advanced class, on the other hand, is a duel pistol wielding gunfighter, which seems a little odd given that mechanically he's a mirror of the commando, the trooper that has the big, slung, cannon. I haven't played this version of the bounty hunter, but I did play that version of the trooper. While the animations are clearly going to be different, the mechanics seemed very appropriate for either, I think. Although I never understood why either would be a healer, except that they felt that they needed a healer, I suppose. It's possible  to pick a DPS spec and avoid most of the healer stuff, which for single player, in my opinion, makes the most sense. It also seems to fit the class better too.

IMPERIAL AGENT

While the bounty hunter seems popular enough, I suspect that my esteem for it as literally one of the best character stories is probably unusual. This is not the case with the agent. Most fans of the game will point to this story, and even if it's not to their liking personally, they have to admit that it's one of the better stories. If nothing else, it's got more meaningful options that affect the conclusion of the story than any other class. It cleaves very tightly to the conventions of its genre and what makes its genre so successful (although, again, to be fair, that genre isn't space opera. It's spy movies and other types of thrillers.) It offers some unique perspectives; an actual patriotic Imperial agent who cares about the Empire and believes in its cause for the right reasons, but who has to navigate the craziness of working around the Sith all of the time. (The implicit conflict between the Sith as a caste in Imperial society vs non-Sith is an interesting background vibe that never really completely leaves the Agent's storyline.)

I think it's this actual character trait of the agent that makes it so compelling. The understated, quiet British accent is perfect for the role, and no doubt plays a part in why it is so often compared to James Bond specifically, instead of other spy thrillers like something written by James Patterson or Tom Clancy, even though it invites comparison to them just as readily. The agent is a servant of the Imperial government, but he never once really feels like a villain; he's a sympathetic, likeable and relatable guy who wants to see his people succeed. There's even a bunch of special lines of dialogue available to people who play a non-human agent, and the "iconic" agent was probably envisioned to be a Chiss.

I've already mentioned that the plotlines are probably the strongest point of the class; more than most other classes, it simply doesn't feel like "oh, we have to go to this planet because it's a design parameter of the game to have us go here next, so cram something in and make it fit." The agent class story feels more natural and simply better written than any of the other stories. It also manages to come up with a lot of the natural tension that thrillers have, and keep it there, which is quite a feat given the kind of laissez-faire wander around doing whatever quest is closest to you at the moment feel of the game. Your pulse is never too far from the central issue of the class story, whether it be trying to stop imminent terrorist attacks, trying to undo Manchurian Candidate mental conditioning that is taking away your agency, or trying to stop a shadowy cabal of movers and shakers that no other class story even imagines exists.

However, all is not roses on the agent's front. Unfortunately, in spite of these manifest strengths, the agent has among the worst companions you can get in game. In fact, you're stuck with literally one of the worst ones for a very long time. Luckily for me, I have access from the get-go to some non-story companions, like Shae Viszla and Treek, so I benched Kaliyo, the worst girlfriend in the world, and talked to her as infrequently as possible. She's also supposed to be the default romance option, which is ludicrous, as she's the most unlikeable girl in the entire lineup of frequently unlikeable and unattractive girls. I shut her down hard, and would have loved to not even take her on as a companion at all if I could have. Luckily, there's a late alternate romance option that's not terrible, a girl you pick up on Hoth who's been on assignment to the Chiss. Her voice actress is a blonde Aussie, but the character herself, for some reason, is black. I swapped her out for a much prettier white girl option and romanced her. It was... OK. A little rushed as late-appearing companions always are, but certainly preferable to the bald crazy chick who only makes super beta SJWs excited. Kaliyo is literally the worst. Besides these two romanceable options, the rest of the companions aren't that great either. You spend a fair bit of time with Vector, and I think he's the romanceable option if your character is a girl. Sadly, he's one of those anthropology lesson characters, who just talks about alien culture all the time. Given that he's a human who's been partially "borgified" by a bunch of super creepy bugs, I didn't find him particularly likeable either; in fact, he kind of creeped me out, and if I could have chosen to not take him on at all, I would have done so.

You also get SCORPIO, the completely untrustworthy egomaniacal robot girl with a serious superiority complex. Another iffy choice. And finally, you get Dr. Lokin, a middle-aged scientist with a Bruce Banner "anger management" issue of sorts. It's telling that of all of the companions, he's one of the least offensive to have around. 

I played the agent as a Sniper, which is similar to the smuggler's gunslinger advanced class in terms of mechanics, even though it has a sniper rifle instead of dual pistols. I expect to see more of this in game, actually, once the separation of "combat style" (what used to be advanced class) and story happen in the upcoming expansion in a few weeks. He's the only one who can wield a sniper rifle, and the mechanics work quite well. I actually found that they worked better for this class than they did for the gunslinger, to be honest with you. I felt that it felt more appropriate for a sniper in most respects. Plus, since its the only class that used this option, I felt like I had to do it. However, I admit that the stealth abilities of the Operative seem very appropriate for this class too. A used a collection of crafted sniper rifles for most of his run, updating them once I hit high enough level to do so. I might adopt a different look now that weapons will be part of the outfit designer going forward.

All in all, I can heartily recommend both of these classes. Neither are perfect, but both offer a top-notch experience all the same. The bounty hunter is brought down occasionally by its unfocused "treading water" sections of the plot, and the agent is brought down by the absolutely terrible companion characters. But in spite of those weaknesses, they both still manage to be among my favorite experiences in the game. In part, precisely because they weren't iconic Star Wars stories, but stories from another genre; a western and a thriller, if you will, yet grafted pretty seamlessly on top of the space opera Star Wars setting. 

For the next part, I'll review the storylines of the expansion packs, Knights of the Eternal Throne and Knights of the Fallen Empire, as well as the smaller expansions like Shadow of Revan, Onslaught, etc. at least as far as they go so far, as well as some of the other extra content that you can do once you're no longer doing the class stories, because you've finished them. Then I think we'll be done with what will have turned out to be a seven part Mother of All SWTOR Reviews series.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part V: The Sith Classes

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.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part IV: The Non-Jedi Classes (Republic)

The Jedi classes are obviously tied together, being the Jedi classes, but the other two are just grouped together by convenience, not otherwise really having anything in common. The smuggler and trooper classes both start together on the planet of Ord Mantell. In addition to their starting place, they are notable of course in that they are not force-using classes, and instead of lightsabers, they have guns. I played my smuggler as a gunslinger, with twin pistols, and I played my trooper as a commando with the big cannon-thing that he slings around like Jesse Ventura from Predator. I also had my smuggler become my armstech crafter, so he makes the craftable guns. For what that's worth. My trooper, on the other hand, used a progression of crafted cannons most of his "career" that the smuggler had made and mailed to him. One of the small yet significant upgrades I'm looking forward to in the new expansion that's coming out in about three weeks is the ability to have "cosmetic" weapons in the outfit designer, so the stats and the appearance aren't necessarily tied together anymore.

Anyway, let's go over again briefly the elements that I think contribute to the story playthrough experience: 1) the character himself and his portrayal through the written dialog and its delivery, 2) the plot and villains that you face off against, 3) the companion characters, and the romance options among them, and 4) how well the mechanics of the class contribute to the feel of the character.

SMUGGLER

The premise of the smuggler, of course, is to play as an Old Republic analog to Han Solo. The iconic look for the smuggler is usually even very similar to the classic Han Solo vest or jacket kind of outfit. (Although there's a commonly appearing odd one where you've got one of those neck pillows like you're about to go on a cross-Atlantic flight and want to sleep in your seat.) You even get a wookie companion, although its not the first or most prominent one in your lineup.

In general, I'd say that the smuggler class story is one of the middle of the road experiences. I was excited to play this one, as the concept is one that I really like, but the reality wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. There's a couple of different reasons for this, and I'll get to them below. First off, how is the character itself? I actually think that he's kind of charming most of the time, in a hapless kind of way. The voice actor, Maury Sterling, is perfect for the role, and there's a lot of wit and light-heartedness to the writing. That's the good. The bad is a bit more complicated. See, the smuggler is portrayed as this alpha ladies man. On almost every single planet, there's an opportunity for a romantic fling, for instance. However, what you start to notice after a while is that the smuggler himself is kind of reactionary, passive and even beta. It's like someone tried to write a ladies man character without having the first idea of what a real ladies man is actually like. His flirty options are often kind of cringy and begging-sounding, almost, from girls that a real ladies man wouldn't give a second chance to once she showed her unlikable first front. This problem carries forward more than normal with the actual plot of the story too; the character is somehow unable to make another NPC character give him the information that he needs. There's a poorly conceived fig-leaf for why he'd go along with being strung along like this, but I gotta be honest with you; it never felt very convincing to me.

I know some of that was probably inevitable because of the medium. You can't make characters too proactive with this kind of writing, because otherwise it would be too open ended for a writer to actually write it. But you can and should do a better job of concealing that, by making the character himself feel like he's in the driver's seat even so, and not following along like a puppy dog after some other NPC who holds all of the cards. Even though, as it happens, she held only a couple of the cards and for reasons that I can't divine, we treat her like she holds all of them. I couldn't help but imagine all kinds of ways that I would have gotten around that situation if it were a table-top roleplaying experience as opposed to pre-scripted computer roleplaying experience. Ultimately, that's just not what you're expecting. The Han Solo experience is that he's a capable fellow, independent, and used to making things happen, not a hapless tagalong on his own adventure. I haven't heard a lot of people complain about this in reviews, so maybe it's not a universal problem, but it just wasn't the experience I was expecting for the smuggler, and it ended up being really kind of disappointing.

Similarly, I think the two halves of the story are not created equal. All of the stories have basically two halves; the first one makes up the introduction and Chapter 1, a total of 6 planets, and  the second makes up chapters 2 and 3, so 6 more planets. For each of the stories, you have a rival in the first half and then you graduate to a new rival/enemy and situation. With the exception of being led around too passively, which is the only thing that I don't like about the first half, I thought the treasure hunt stuff and race against Skavak was pretty good. When you go on to become a privateer for the Republic, it kind of loses focus. I don't think the second half of the story is nearly as compelling until you get to nearly the end where it tries to surprise you. I also kind of thought that dragging out an off-hand reference to Rogun the Butcher from Ord Mantell all the way to the end wasn't really credible. I was saying "Bring Rogun on!" from nearly the beginning, and yet I'm supposed to be running scared from him the entire game? The Republic privateer half promised a kind of Errol Flynn in space, but it felt like treading water until they could get to the plot point down the line that they were excited to show at nearly the very end. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure that I loved the idea of being a Republic privateer anyway. I liked the more independent feel of the first half of the story. I know that since everyone converges on the battle of Corellia at the end of their class stories that you can't be too independent, but that was always really the promise of the smuggler and bounty hunter classes in particular, and they didn't do enough to give them some space from the faction, in my opinion. Now, I'm sure it wasn't ever their intention to either, but I think that that independent feel is part of what makes both of those classes appealing as a concept, so they probably should have.

The smuggler has a decent set of companions, I suppose. Corso is the first one you pick up, and he's kind of a dumb bro type of guy. I think he's romanceable if you play a woman smuggler, but he feels a little too dumb for that to make sense to me. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just kind of always focused on some weird small picture item, like his favorite blaster, or something like that. His white-knighting personality starts to get old after a while too. The Chewie equivalent, curiously, is also kind of boring; he's just got the typical wookie former slave kind of thing going on, that we've now seen over and over again, as if it's the only thing any writer knows how to do with wookies. Gus is the last companion you pick up, and he quickly became one of my favorites. He's kind of a hapless Admiral Ackbar-looking failed Jedi swindler who's eager to please. They should have had more of him in the game, in my opinion. The two girls are the romance options, and you can do either, actually. One of them is Risha. Although you interact with her for a long time, on your ship no less, she doesn't officially become a companion until after chapter 1. Given that it was my intention to "recast" her, i.e., apply a customization to a prettier version, I found this kind of annoying. She's the more obvious romance option, but she plays so hard to get that I almost got tired of trying before it was done. I think the writers were going for the witty banter, Hepburn/Tracy kind of thing, but they didn't really do it very well because she was too bossy and ultimately started to veer into unlikableness, and the main character was too helpless against her banter, which I found really strange. It's almost like the writers don't actually have any idea what the relationship between a successful alpha-type man and a pretty girl actually looks like. Nothing about it rang very true to me. The other romanceable option is Akaavi Spar, the big, burly, Darth Maul looking warrior grrl, who is the least feminine "woman" I could ever have imagined. The very idea that anyone would want to romance her jars my suspension of disbelief.

I think the gunslinger option is supposed to represent a kind of Western gunfighter in space. I'm not sure that I ever felt entirely like that, though. The whole notion of needing to get into cover to use some of your abilities didn't feel very gunfighterish to me either, although maybe it makes sense in a more realistic sense. It's probably not really fair to harp on this, but I felt like I was bored with the combat mechanics of the class by the time I was done with it. I never got bored with the Jedi Knight. I will admit, though—for the first several planets, I thought his abilities were pretty cool and fun to use.

TROOPER

I admit that I expected the trooper to be one of my least favorites, and it ended up being better than I expected. The very reasons that I expected not to like it do keep it down, but they ended up not being as bad as I feared. Notably, the fact that you're constantly running around doing errands for some CO who's judgement and motivation you couldn't really trust, but because you're a soldier you don't really have a choice. This is definitely a thing. But there's a lot more going on than just that, which is what I was afraid that there wouldn't be. 

In terms of character, there's not a lot going on with the trooper either. The voice actor turns out a credible job, but I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be seeing. You can kind of pick his attitude; cocky and bragging, dutiful, etc. with the dialog wheel, but since it makes little difference I'm not sure what that accomplishes. Whereas the smuggler has a built in personality, the trooper doesn't really. His playthrough is much more based on plot than on personality.

However, I felt like the moral dilemmas that the trooper was faced with were kind of the only ones that weren't dumb and hoaky. There was actually some decent writing as the trooper had to deal with things like a squad of pilots who'd been thrown under the bus and made the scapegoats for top brass's lack of intelligence, how to deal with entitled, meddling politicians when you didn't necessarily trust the motivations or judgement of your own superiors either, what to do about a senior intelligence officer who seemed to be botching a mission and making the wrong call with some friends of one of your companions, an intelligence officer that you knew and liked but who you had to decide to save vs a whole boatload of other prisoners, etc. In general, I don't appreciate the BioWare moral dilemmas, because they don't usually represent real morality or realistic consequences of much of anything. They just feel preachy and dumb. The trooper, on the other hand, really kind of made them more real. 

Tracking down a collection of traitors makes up the first half of the plot, and as is sadly all too often the case, the first half of the story was well-focused, and the second half lacks focus until you zero in on the ending. I felt like that was true here again for the trooper, as it was for the smuggler, and frankly, for many of the classes. The second half of the story is recruiting your team, and it not only felt unfocused and kind of weird and contrived, but frustrating, as several of the companions aren't really ones that I'd have picked myself, if I could. But I couldn't; I was simply told that this was going to be my team. For most of the companion recruitment for most classes, it's a bit more subtle; here you're just told that you're going to go recruit this companion just because and the whole planetary class story is about recruiting them. When you head to Corellia to confront your second half of the story nemesis, it's actually kind of weird, because you've only just heard of him, and don't really think of him as much of a nemesis. He was unfortunately not sufficiently built up to work.

I really only liked two of the companions, to be honest with you. The one you pick up on Ord Mantell is too grumpy to enjoy; his constant "On your feet!" because he's healing you when you just quick traveled (why does that always prompt the companions to heal you, anyway?) got really annoying, and I put him in the ship after that. Elara Dorne, the Imperial defector, is probably the most likable one. I like taking her also because even in the story she's supposed to be a medic. It made sense for her to run around with heal spec turned on. She's the romanceable option, and she's a relatively cute romanceable companion. A little stuffier than I'd like in real life (OK, a lot stuffier than I'd like in real life) but it works in the context of this character. M1-4X is a kind of walking "buy war bonds!" ad, but I actually didn't mind him from a roleplaying perspective. However, I did find that because he's a bigger companion than most that he often actually got in the way visually, so I didn't end up using him very often either. The two that you recruit in the later stages, the dishonorably discharged demolitions criminal that you are told to bring back "because he's the best!" regardless of his completely unacceptable behavior, just really bugged me, and the strange alien anthropology class is dumb too. There are several characters in the game that exist only to showcase their weird alien culture, and in almost all cases I really don't care for what they bring to the table. 

The mechanics of the commando were really nice. I loved the explosive rounds, which tended to knock people down, and then you'd laser gun them right to the crotch while they were laying there on their backs on the ground. I did start to feel like some of the "trick ammo" variations weren't really all that different from each other, but for the most part, I thought combat with the commando worked really well and felt like what I'd have expected it to feel like. Because I was leapfrogging my commando and my powertech at the same time, going back and forth between them, I often felt like when I was playing one I missed some combat mechanic of the other really badly and vice versa. Because the powertech plays like the vanguard, albeit with different animation, I guess I know what to expect from both the mercenary and vanguard now too. Even though these are the two that I most recently just finished, they're also the ones that I'm in some ways most excited to play again from a mechanics perspective. And I wouldn't even mind seeing the stories again, even though I literally just did. I suppose that's a positive note to end on, even though I'd otherwise say that the somewhat bland personality, more forgettable or even unlikeable companion characters, and unfocused second act of the story make the trooper another middle of the road experience; not the worst one by far, but also not the best one.