Good points, let me add a few. First, did Bioware want the crafting system to get used? I seem to remember a lot of advertisement of the wonderful crew skill system once upon a time. Gear out your companions, gain affection with them, send them out to gather and craft, it will be fun. While it is fairly enjoyable during leveling, the fun sort of drops off at endgame. You can spend considerable time and/or credits gathering huge piles of materials, then reverse engineer like mad in the hopes that you will get a recipe unlock that you actually want. You can spend hours and hours leveling your crafting skills, all sorts of time investment that is fairly monotonous after the first few days. Then maybe, if you've been very diligent and lucky with the RNG, you can craft something that is almost as good as what you can buy for doing a few hardmode flashpoints. Why are we crafting in this game again? Second, what is the point of the Legacy system? Where am I going with this? I'll tell you. As far as I can guess, the Legacy system is meant to reward people leveling alts and seeing the storylines and companion arcs for all of the classes. Now, if a person levels a bunch of alts, are they going to want to raid with every one of them? Maybe some will. I don't. I have one or two alts that I raid with, the rest I really don't want to go through all of that again for. But I craft with all of my alts, and manage to get them into some semblance of crafted endgame gear between all of the collective crafting. Of course, I don't really craft much of anything for my raiding characters. Why? Because I got better gear for them after maybe half a dozen ops. To get to the point then, I would think that crafting would work better for gearing multiple alts than raiding and re-raiding. So if Bioware wants us to have multiple alts, see the Legacy system, why on earth do they make crafting so much less rewarding than raiding? I'm not saying that crafters should be able to craft up rakata or black hole gear, but can we at least get to columi level? Hell, even tionese level for things like armor plates, mods, and enhancements? Finally, what is the point of companions in the game? Certainly the Legacy system rewards would imply that Bioware wants us to get to maximum affection with our companions, and see their various story arcs. But if endgame is all about group content and PvP, then are companions supposed to be discarded at endgame? After all of that investment? What is a fully realized companion good for? Well, crafting maybe. But oh, right, crafting output is virtually useless next to group content rewards at endgame. So long compies, it was fun, now go wait on the ship until the next content update. Maybe I'll bring you out to do dailies if I need credits... for materials... to try another 20 attempts to unlock that one recipe again.

To Finally Conclude I found the consular story and companions to have their good moments and aspects, yes. Throughout the story there are moments where you can think or negotiate your way through obstacles, rather than fighting. Of course sometimes you just have to fight, but that seems reasonable enough to me. However, the story felt reactive and was often unduly aggravating to me. How many times can you be there too late and be left to clean up a mess? I would think that a “wise” Jedi should be able to have enough foresight to not end up in this position most of the time. I can tell that a lot of work was put into the companions and their stories, and I think a lot of them would go well with other classes. However, Nadia is the only companion I can see really fitting with a consular. People may bring up Han Solo working with Luke and Obi Wan back in “A New Hope.” To that I would say that Han was their only alternative at that point. They were in hiding, on the run from the Empire, and they had to take what they could find. The consular is not in hiding here, and they would theoretically have the backing of the entire Jedi order (hidden emperor’s children aside I guess). So why does the consular end up with these rejects? Yes, I said rejects. Qyzen has a fall from grace on Tython, Tharan leaves his “job” on Nar Shadaa, Zenith is dumped on you because Balmorra doesn’t want him, and Iresso joins up with you because other soldiers don’t trust him thanks to that Sith library in his head. Even Nadia is feared and shunned by her people because they aren’t used to people with force abilities. That’s largely why she was traveling with her father off world in the first place. Furthermore, Qyzen and Iresso were boring to me. Tharan was an arrogant idiot pretending to be a genius. Zenith was just vile in the end. Nadia was horribly traumatized, but at least her story had her recovering from that. So in the end, for me at least, the consular story had more fail than win. But I still love the game, and intend to play SWTOR for a good long time if I can. There are things that I like about the consular, and in spite of all of the nonsense in the story, I do like how my character turned out. I hope that, at some point in the future, we have the chance to choose our companions a bit more. I would probably get rid of most of mine and take on a completely new set if the opportunity were presented, even after getting a full 10,000/10,000 affection for all of them. It is also my hope that, whenever Bioware implements chapter 4 for their classes, they take the consular in a better direction. I would like the story to be more consistent with a Jedi that is wise in the mysteries of the force, and can foresee and prevent calamities rather than arriving too late and reacting to them all the time. I would also be very glad to see more of the Esh-kha and the Voss, perhaps even as companions. Until then, I guess there are other class stories to play through.

Companion stories and how they end. (obviously lots of spoilers here) Qyzen While he’s dealing with middle age, you uncover a plot where a wookiee is killing off middle-aged trandoshans. Turns out he’s working with a trandoshan who wants to eliminate his rivals. So you kill this dishonorable lizard and then his ex-followers want Qyzen to lead them. I really didn’t care about any of this. I was tempted to side with the wookiee, to be honest. One fun aspect of this story though, Qyzen used to hunt with Braden for a little bit. If you don’t know who Braden is, run a bounty hunter through the first bit of Hutta. At one point we had a conversation with Mako via holo, as she apparently owed Qyzen a favor and so helped us track down this shady trandoshan. It was fun to see Mako from another class, but it kind of left me wishing the consular could have her as a companion rather than Qyzen or Tharan. Tharan He tries to make a super duper tech device of some kind to win at a symposium for elitist smart people. What does it do? Not sure and don’t care. Most of his story has to do with his working on the device but, at the end, he realizes that he can use it to improve Holiday’s mental capacity and overall sentience. But it has such a limited run time that he won’t be able to use it at the symposium if he does so. So he has to choose between his own ego and his electric girlfriend. In the end he chooses Holiday, and is laughed off the stage at the symposium when he doesn’t fire up the technowhatsit. Touching, right? One problem. Why didn’t he use it to improve Holiday while at the symposium? Activate it in front of all of these would-be colleagues as he uses it for Holiday. And here I thought he was supposed to be a genius. Personally I’m starting to think that Holiday actually does all of the thinking and technical work, and he just takes the credit. Zenith The further I got in Zenith’s story, the more I came to despise him. He has an old journal from his mentor Gray Star, written in code. Apparently he wanted it destroyed after he died, but what does Zenith do? He starts decoding it. At the same time, he is working on getting elected to a position of leadership on Balmorra. The planet that doesn’t want him around because he’s too Imperial in his attitudes and methods. Probably every other conversation it seemed like my consular had to talk him out of some form of dirty trick to discredit his competitor. But the worst was near the end. In the journal, he finds out about a bunch of people that his old mentor smuggled off of Balmorra during the occupation. He can tell them it’s time to come back, and they will vote for him. Later, he finds out why they were smuggled away. They apparently aided the empire in some small way during the occupation. Probably had no other choice, were starving et cetera, so his mentor decided they should be moved off world for their own protection. What does Zenith do? He has them all arrested. So first “it’s safe to come back, the occupation is ended.” And when they arrive “you’re under arrest.” There are words for what Zenith is, and they are all too pungent and foul for me to utter here. He wins the election because of this, and decides to stay on the ship with you and rule from afar. Why do I have to have this creep on my ship still? Iresso I didn’t take any romance options with this guy, so I can’t speak to any romantic aspect of the story. Basically you find out that he was experimented on by the empire while he was their prisoner. He had the contents of a Sith holocron locked away into his brain somehow. He can’t access them, but I was more than a little creeped out having that just walking blithely around my ship. No telling what would happen if that information ever crept into his conscious mind, after all. And this is the romance option for female consulars? I guess he is better than the other three guys you have as companions, all things considered. Nadia The only companion that felt appropriate for a consular. I didn’t take any romance options with her, so I can’t speak to any romantic aspect of her story either. Romance aside, her story is a combination of you training her and teaching her Jedi philosophy, her recovering from the grief of her father’s death, and her acting as a sort of emissary between the republic and her home planet since her father is gone. I got a sense of her growth and progression as a character during all of this. Overall I thought it was a good story, and in the final conversation she talks about experiencing a force bond with you during a recent fight you were in together. She was apparently able to feel your injuries and your use of the force as well as her own. So that was kind of neat, but that’s pretty much where things are left. Not very exciting, but at least appropriate to what should be a fairly mystical and force-heavy class.

Chapter 3, the rest of it. (with lots of spoilers) This chapter was probably the best overall, for me at least. Of course, compared to chapters 1 and 2 that is a pretty low standard to beat. Once again, the Belsavis arc was interesting except for the emperor’s child being annoying throughout. The Voss arc was better because the emperor’s child doesn’t come out in the open until she ambushes you on the way back to your ship. Sure, I had already figured out who she was pretty much on first sight, based on how the story had gone so far. The things that I liked about the Belsavis and Voss stories for the consular were the Esh-kha and the Voss. Both species were very interesting to me. Indeed, I would like to see a companion of either or both of those species available for the consular someday. I find it a pity that they were not among the companions gained so far, to be honest. Anyways, you’ve got your army of Esh-kha and your elite Voss strike force led by a new mystic that you helped through the trials. You’ve also got the Balmorra supply of war droids at your disposal. So, naturally, there’s some big threat that you need to go deal with. It’s a dreadnaught. At first it’s actually kind of cool going from point to point inside, calling members of your crew up on holo as they take down key systems elsewhere on the giant ship. But, remember, this is the consular’s story. Which means you’ve been outwitted. Again. You run across a droid that seems very proud of the task he just recently completed. Setting explosives all over the dreadnaught. It’s a trap, and there isn’t even a Mon Calamari there to tell you so. So you run around trying desperately to shut down at least some of the explosives so your own ship doesn’t get obliterated. As the dreadnaught starts to blow up, it’s time to leave. So you tell your people to get out, but (in my case at least) Iresso is staying around just a bit longer. Seems he’s got some sensitive computer files to download before the place turns to space dust. Your next mission then is to track down the escape pod he left in and rescue him where he crash-landed on Corellia. It was made to seem all dramatic, but I really didn’t feel much drama. I was tempted to look for a “right, and who are you again?” option when Iresso was saying he had to stay behind for the data files. Well it’s a good thing that he did, apparently. Thanks to a bit of computer decryption by Holiday (and she was actually pretty competent in that cutscene), you finally find out the identity of the First Son. Master Syo, of all people. Sure it’s supposed to be all dramatic again, but I just found it aggravating. Mostly because there are apparently a series of hidden fortresses on Corellia that he had been left in charge of. So guess what. The emperor’s children have them now, and your entire mission on Corellia is taking them back. So once more, you have arrived too late. Things are completely screwed up and it’s up to you and you alone to fix them. And, as with the other emperor’s children, even the wisest consular can’t even figure out who they are ahead of time. Sure they’re supposed to be the completely undetectable sleeper agents, but come on. After running into them how many times, you might at least be able to notice a pattern after a while. Never mind the force, why don’t we just go with common sense even. But no, you’ve been fooled yet again. On the positive side, by about halfway through the story things do seem to be looking up a bit. You’ve got an army with you, after all, and although it’s mostly indirectly implied, you do work with them and deploy them to aid your retaking of the various fortresses. Of course there’s the end. Now I was seriously laughing out loud for this part. You have just retaken the final fortress and Syo is downstairs in a cave. Your army is depleted and otherwise tied up with holding objectives, so they can’t help you anymore. You and ALL of your companions are standing around near the hatch to the cave below. So your band of rejects has a sort of warm touchy-feely moment where they wish you good luck, BEFORE LEAVING. “We’ll be on the ship. If we don’t see you again, it’s been an honor.” It was meant to be one of those epic story moments, with the inspiring music swelling in the background and that last moment with good friends (most of whom I have grown to loathe and despise) before they send you off to your likely demise. I should have been annoyed, but at this point I had started to get used to these losers, so in the end it was just me and Nadia going down into the cave to confront our final fate. As an aside, in case anybody is wondering, I play as a healing sage, so I’ve found Nadia’s DPS to work well with that play style. Well, being light side, I spared Syo in the end and got him to unmask all those hidden emperor’s children. Of course he tells me to leave him alone to think about things in the cave for a while. The First Son who has caused all of this horror and misery, still conscious in his head, and probably quite thoroughly angry, and he wants to be left alone for a while. No option to do otherwise. Does anybody else think this is a stupid idea? Anyways, Syo gets taken away eventually by the Jedi council. The Esh-kha go to start a colony somewhere and probably worry their neighbors just a bit in the process. The group of Voss goes to train the Jedi and exchange their understanding of the force, making the Jedi council distinctly nervous in the process. My consular gets put on the council, as the only Jedi that has shown the least bit of real competence throughout the entire story arc. So it’s just me and my companions again, ready to go off and look into whatever seems to be wrong on Ilum.

First of all, thank you very much everybody for your replies so far. As far as agreements, thanks for the support. As far as the disagreements, thanks for explaining them along the way and being civil about the whole thing. Since my original post, I decided to pick up the consular story again. I figure if I’m going to criticize the entire story, I should at least play through the entire story. I also managed to maximize affection with all of my companions so I could see their individual story arcs through to the end. So now I’ll be posting what I think of the rest of the stories for the consular. Again, there will be no shortage of spoilers. You have been warned.

In Conclusion. The consular plays well as a class. The game mechanics are enjoyable for me, and fit well with my preferred style of play. The armor options are pretty bad, for the most part, and don’t feel right for a wise Jedi master. Maybe suitable for the Naboo royal family though. That or some of those pompous nobles over on Alderaan. The story for the consular is uninspiring. It underscores the incompetence of the Jedi order and leaves the character feeling like the galaxy’s doormat. It also feels repetitive, with one insane Jedi master after another and later one insane Emperor’s Child after another. In spite of the repetitive feeling, the chapters actually feel like they have very little to do with each other. In other classes I’ve played so far each chapter seems to proceed naturally from the previous one. The consular, on the other hand, is pretty much sent here and there at the whim of the Jedi council. Overall, playing the Sith inquisitor felt like watching The Empire Strikes Back. Playing the Jedi consular felt like watching Attack of the Clones. The companions for the consular do not fit, for the most part. Only Nadia feels like she should be there. Qyzen and Tharan should have left a long time ago, and Zenith was pretty much dumped on you. The Lieutenant is so brain-scrambled he should probably be under observation on Coruscant. Even Nadia is so traumatized that you wonder if she shouldn’t get some form of grief counseling before trying to follow the path of the Jedi order. At least with the inquisitor, it felt like the companions were all there for a realistic reason. The Dashade, perfect pet monster for an inquisitor, bound to you with its defeat. The pirate, a little iffy but I could see him wanting to follow a Sith around for adventure and a chance to hurt people. The fallen Jedi padawan would have nowhere else to go after you massacre her masters. That and she had issues with the order anyway. The archaeologist would have a definite interest in working with a Sith who has spent half their story digging up artifacts and apparitions. The second apprentice, well, he went through the same training program you did on Korriban and it’s sort of normal Sith procedure to take another apprentice or two now and then. The consular is more aggravating than anything else if you try to play as a light side character. Sure you want options to go neutral or even dark side, but does the light side really need to be this annoying? It should be the most natural alignment for a Jedi to play as, not the most painful. So the bottom line, a few requests to Bioware for future consular content. Please let us get rid of Tharan and replace him with a healer that actually fits with a Jedi. Please let us either get rid of Qyzen or at least convince him to respect Jedi tradition now and then after expecting us to respect trandoshan tradition. Please let us actually prevent a disaster or two, rather than have to always clean up after them after arriving too late. Please make the consular feel like a wise, enlightened Jedi, rather than a customer service representative in a bathrobe. Please give us just one simple brown robe without any unnecessary additions. Please don’t ever have us have to deal with some lame recurring plot device like the emperor’s children ever again. Please make it realistic to go with the light side of the force as a Jedi, rather than having it actually be easier to go with the light side of the force as a Sith.

Alignment and the Consular. I could be wrong about this, but it is my opinion that the Sith classes should be most easily played dark side, and there should be options for neutral or light side. This is what I have seen, particularly with the inquisitor. Shocking people is fun. One of the perks of playing that class. Yet a light side inquisitor is, for me, a very compelling character, and it fits given their character background. An independent sort who was a slave, was treated like filth by the Empire, and now has a chance to climb the ranks. I could almost go with the light side of the force out of spite, with that backstory. On the other hand, I would think that the Jedi classes should be most easily played light side, but there should be options for neutral or dark side. What little I’ve seen of the Jedi Knight, this seems to be the case. As for the consular, I’m not at all sure. If you play light side, you get continual aggravation. Not just from various NPCs, but from your early companions as well. The lizard doesn’t like mercy, and the lecherous creep doesn’t approve of the force. Why the hell are these your first companions? More than that, consider the crazy Jedi masters you face throughout chapter 1. I’m not sure it should be quite that tempting to kill each and every one of them as a dark side option. And what do you get for all of your hard work saving the Jedi order? Babysitting duty for a bunch of entitled diplomats. Half of those losers made me want to turn to the dark side after the first few conversations. I have heard it said by some that the consular plays much better if you go with the dark side, or even the neutral option. Was this the intent? Was this how it was written? Are none of the Jedi players expected to go to the light side? I’m sure that the light side of the force is supposed to be the harder path, requiring patience and self-mastery. Fine, but it’s getting a bit overdone in this storyline. It doesn’t feel like a game so much as a job after a while. It’s like being stuck in customer service or something. I should not find it easier and more satisfying to play a light side Sith than a light side Jedi.

The Companions. Qyzen Your first companion, picked up on Tython. A trandoshan who is such an effective hunter that he gets himself captured and has a huge fall from grace in the eyes of his goddess as a result. So he decides to start following you around, since you apparently kick a fair amount of posterior and he thinks you’re the “herald” of his goddess. Yes, really. And his ongoing story is pretty much hitting the trandoshan version of middle age. So there will be ritual starvation, poisoning, and forced molting. Really want to be there for that. Oh and, by the way, he dislikes it when you show compassion to others. But what good Jedi shows compassion, right? Tharan Your second companion, picked up on Nar Shadaa. I cannot adequately express how much I despise this character. Especially since, as your healer companion, he is probably the most useful to do missions with unless you decide to play as a healing sage. I cannot fault the gameplay with him. He does his job well. The problem is, every single time you say anything positive about the force in a conversation, you get a reliable -1 affection from him. This is the miscreant who invites himself aboard your ship, tries to bum money and/or signatures off of you as part of his character story, and reminds people that he’s a pacifist while he’s shooting them. He chooses to travel with a Jedi, and yet gets all irritated when they express any faith in the force. That’s kind of like being roommates with an engineer and being outraged whenever they do math. There is no logical reason for this character to be on your ship. The same goes for the overgrown lizard, for that matter, although to a lesser extent. Holiday is funny, and she might work better as a companion in her own right, but even she would probably fit better with a smuggler than a consular. Zenith Third companion, found on Balmorra while you’re running errands for your pet diplomats. A twi’lek with a huge chip on his shoulder who has less to say than some geological formations. But at least he has a code of honor, sort of. Sure one of your first interactions with him is deciding whether or not he should end a person’s life with his sniper rifle. Might want to sleep with the door locked for a while. How does he come to join your crew? The new leader of Balmorra doesn’t want him around because he’s too violent. So let’s just let him stay with our errand runner, the Jedi over here. That way everybody’s happy. Or at least everybody who matters. The Lieutenant The fourth companion, picked up on Hoth, and the love interest for female characters. Never mind that he spends most of his time whining about having a holocron screw his mind up and cause him to lose a week back when he was an imperial prisoner. Really want to trust this guy? Didn’t think so. Nadia The final companion, picked up after Belsavis, and the love interest for male characters. Poor little Nadia. Nice kid, had some rough times. I’ve already gone over just how she ends up on your crew, and as your padawan. I really like the character development, and her personality is fun. Also, much of the dialogue in her character story has to do with you training her, so that feels very appropriate to the class. But if you romance her, given what is going on in her life, I just think that’s beyond creepy. Not really a good love interest for the sane player, but that’s just my opinion. Also, just as an aside, why do consulars get their padawan as companion 5, while knights get their padawan as companion 2? Even inquisitors get their first apprentice as companion 3, as do warriors.

The Story. A quick overview and comparisons. With the consular story you are continually too late, outwitted, and generally cleaning up messes. It is all reactive. There is nothing proactive or heroic that I could really see. Maybe the Belsavis and Voss quests to aid the war, but the Emperor’s Children are so annoying that it really damages the value of the story. A Jedi consular should be wise in the ways of the force. Instead they seem to be the designated janitor and/or laughingstock for the Republic. Let’s compare this to the Sith inquisitor for just a moment. With the inquisitor, you rise from slavery to eventually be on the dark council. At every turn, you have other Sith trying to kill you, or take over your body, or some other such thing that Sith seem to enjoy doing. But you aren’t just reacting. You aren’t there too late. You are taking measures of your own, and taking your fate into your own hands. At least it feels that way, the way the story plays out. Sure in chapter 1 you’re digging up artifacts for your master, which will eventually be used by her in an attempt to basically kill you and take your body for her own. So that’s a bit slow, but finding each artifact is interesting. It’s like some sort of deranged Sith Indiana Jones movie. Fun and engaging, in other words. Then your old master gets trapped in your pet Dashade, and you’ve got all of the interesting developments that come from that. You find that you have a weird connection to the Sith ghosts, and your long lost ancestor comes in now and then to help you out as a sort of advisor/guardian angel. This ancestor is a unique and, in my opinion, fairly awesome character to have show up now and then to lend you a hand. It also deepens your own character’s background and makes them more than just a simple slave. Anyways, you collect various Sith ghosts to defeat Thanaton, who has tried to have you killed, but all of that power essentially shorts you out and you need to go fix yourself during chapter 3. Along the way, you see all kinds of cool stuff on Belsavis and Voss. Lore that any consular would be glad to encounter, I would think. When you face Thanaton again on Corellia, you beat him so badly that he runs away to Korriban. You get to chase him there and pretty well clean his clock. This story felt like an adventure. More than that, each chapter proceeded naturally from the prior chapters. There is not the same sense of continuity in the consular story. The consular story felt like being stuck in a job as a Wal-Mart greeter, and the chapters felt arbitrary by comparison. Chapter 1 to 2 is “okay, you’ve solved that problem. Now the council needs you over here.” Chapter 2 to 3 is, guess what, the same thing.

The Story. Chapter 3. So as chapter 3 begins, war erupts across the galaxy once more, and your little band of diplomats is apparently the only hope for the Republic to avoid being completely crushed by yet another Sith offensive. What do you do? Go to Belsavis to find an army of aliens that’s been asleep for a few millennia. Now let me say quite plainly that I actually loved this part of the story. I enjoyed the aliens in question and found the entire Belsavis arc fun and engaging. Well, with one exception. One of the Emperor’s Children has surfaced and keeps trying to kill you the whole time. Did I mention this particular individual looks like Jesse Ventura wearing heavy eyeshadow? Now lest you enjoyed Belsavis too much, at the end of that part of the story you find that Nadia’s father, Senator Grell, has been captured. This guy was just about the only diplomat that I actually liked having around. As characters go, he was very likeable and between him and Nadia, chapter 2 was at least tolerable. It was interesting to get to know both of these characters. I thought they were both very well done, and very likeable. So you go rushing off to save him with Nadia at your side and, well, guess what. He’s been tortured to death by another one of the Emperor’s Children. Yay. This game is so much fun. So now your fifth companion, your padawan, thanks to Senator Grell’s dying request (well his post-humous request as a hologram anyway), has just had the splendid experience of finding her father’s corpse. And he didn’t die peacefully. And you never hear anything about her mother, so it can be assumed that she is most likely long since dead. So your padawan is a young, impressionable woman who has just been violently orphaned in spite of your efforts to the contrary. This is your romanceable companion, guys. Anybody else creeped out by this turn of events? Would you want to seduce somebody who had just been through that? You would? Are you sure you shouldn’t be playing for the Empire? Anyways, off to Voss in search of mystics who might be able to dig the Republic out of the apparently deep hole that they’ve found themselves in. It was at this point that I pretty much put the consular on hold. From what I have been able to find out, you keep having Emperor’s Children pop up annoyingly to ruin lives while you watch helplessly. Then, at the end, spoiler alert, the First Son, the biggest sleeper agent of them all, guess who it is? That’s right, it’s master Syo, the guy with the abhorrent hairstyle that you have been having to report to for the entire story arc. No wonder the Jedi council kept screwing up. They had this guy at the helm. So Jedi knights get to fight and (maybe) kill the Emperor of the Sith Empire. We get to kill a twisted fruitcake with bad hair who has been several steps ahead of us for the entire game so far. I am not inspired by this ending, even if the consular ends up on the Jedi Council. Given how competent the Jedi are shown to be, it would probably be a greater honor to be appointed head of the Nar Shadaa guild of toilet cleaners.

The Story. Chapter 2. Chapter 2 begins then with you meeting a handful of diplomats from a group of worlds that really dislike the Republic and are thinking of leaving. You shoot people of that sort on Ord Mantell. Here, you just kiss up to them and end up doing their every whim just to keep them from leaving the party. And this is AFTER you save all of their lives from a nasty little Sith attack, and they all end up living on your ship. Did I mention that you get a press release in the mail where the diplomats complain about how incompetent the Republic is for letting the attack happen in the first place? This is where you first meet Nadia, who will eventually be your fifth companion, as well as her father, Senator Grell. These two are okay as characters go, but the rest of the diplomats. How to explain? Basically they’re like the drunken friend who crashes at your place after a particularly rough night of partying, and gets Dorito crumbs all over your couch while they monopolize your X-Box. And these are the people that you are helping throughout chapter 2. That’s the story. So after running a few errands for this live-in alliance you’re trying to appease, you find out that one of them has been sending messages to the Sith Empire. Of course you’re a very wise Jedi who is extremely strong with the force and highly skilled, proven in battle and well-versed in the mysteries of Jedi lore. So how do you find out about this? Nadia notices something amiss in the radio traffic. Wow, Jedi are wise aren’t they. It is at this point that you find out about the Emperor’s Children. You know, the sleeper agents that the Jedi Knight knew about several planets ago already. You manage to come to the aid of the royal family from Nadia’s home world just in time to save the king and queen, but very much not in time to save the small army that they were going to provide to help the Republic out with the war. That seems to happen a lot with the consular. You keep showing up after the damage has already been done, and you end up needing to either apologize or fix things enough to keep everybody from joining the seperatists. Really makes you feel heroic after a while. Maybe not.

The Story. Prologue and Chapter 1. Ah Tython, such a lovely world with its scenic forests crawling with flesh raiders and other ugly things that want to kill and/or eat you. I enjoyed this particular world, and found the story pretty decent for starters. Lots of reference to the sort of old Jedi lore that a consular would probably be interested in. That and the cutscene where you get your light saber is far more awesome than the inquisitor version of “here apprentice, have my old light saber” courtesy of your new master. Back to the consular. It’s all smiles and happy times, but then your master collapses while giving you the rank of Jedi, and we start off chapter 1. For some reason, the enlightened Jedi council decides to send somebody who was a padawan yesterday off in search of a cure for their ailing master. Flattering, but really? I know there’s a war on, but were there no more seasoned Jedi that could be spared. I mean, a Jedi master has just collapsed due to a mysterious plague that seems to be tied strongly to the dark side of the force. Might want to spare a few more resources than a single person who is greener than the giant lizard that seems to have decided to start following them around. You find a cure on Coruscant and manage to save your master, sort of. But there may be other Jedi masters that have gone a bit off the deep end. Since the council didn’t send anybody along to help you, the cure was basically destroyed (for now anyway) and only you know how to save Jedi from this plague. So you go from world to world, and sure enough, on each world there’s a Jedi master who has gone completely nuts and started killing innocents and ruining lives. Naturally you get there after most of the horror and senseless violence has already happened, and you get to try to talk down a raving lunatic with a light saber. Of course they never listen to you. Well, there is one Jedi who has at least a little more sense than a garden vegetable, so you manage to talk her out of an airlock, but the masters? Totally gone. And sure it’s a fun little gimmick for the first couple of worlds, but the masters get more and more annoying. Playing light side, I found myself very hard-pressed to avoid killing them by the end. Then you go find the person who is behind it all, a former Jedi who got himself possessed by a Sith ghost and started plaguing the order for giggles. Better still, all those masters you saved (or didn’t, depending on how you do things), turns out they all left him for dead a while back and their past has caught up with them. When did we leave Star Wars and enter “I know what you did last summer” anyway? So that ends chapter one, you get a nice little “warden” title. One of only three in the whole history of the Jedi order, or so you’re told. This makes it all the more amusing to see half a dozen consulars run past you wearing the title next time you’re at the fleet. But that I can forgive. MMOs have that sort of problem no matter what.

Consular Skills and Equipment Okay, you’re on the light armor class. The class that takes a fair amount of skill to play, in my personal opinion. If you go all DPS, you will probably need a tank or a healer with you. You have a lot of interrupts and stuns to work with, but you need to coordinate their use. If you go sage, you need to know when to heal and when to attack. If you go shadow, you need to know when to sneak around and how to pick your battles. That or, if you’re going to try to tank, you’d better keep your various buffs in place. One good hit and, guess what, it’s light armor. What do the other two tankable classes wear? Oh, right. I enjoy the consular gameplay, and the inquisitor gameplay for that matter. I enjoy needing to be a little more careful and strategic. As for the animations, I like both sets. Sure the purple lightning and purple smoke get a little monotonous on the inquisitor, but they’re still fun. And the golden glows and various chunks of rock for the consular are also fun. People who laugh at the pebble attack, I see no problem with it personally. Pebbles hurt when they hit you with enough velocity. Double light sabers are neat. They just are. I went with a sorcerer and a sage and I still like them better. I just like ranged attacks even more is all. As for rest of the equipment appearance, well, not really a big fan of either class here. The inquisitor options look mostly like emo borg drones in skirts. I guess that’s okay if you’re into that kind of thing, but it just never really worked for me. One of the things I was most looking forward to when I started my consular was some wardrobe options that would look a little less garish. Now I will say that the consular does dress like a Jedi. The problem is, they dress like a Jedi in much the same way that a rodeo clown dresses like a cowboy. Would a simple brown robe without various geometric designs or elaborate shoulder garb really be too much to ask for? Just about the best option I’ve seen has been the stuff from Tython and the Esseles. Not a good sign when your best outfits are outleveled (orange gear aside) by the time you reach Chapter 1 of your class story.

For those who are wondering what this thread is, it’s a list of my issues with the Jedi consular. Most of these issues are more to do with the class story than any of the actual game mechanics. I should be clear that, on the whole, I love playing SWTOR and have been extremely impressed with how good the game is. Even with the consular, there have been a lot of good things. However, I have been greatly irritated by several aspects of the consular and I figured I might as well outline my grievances in a forum thread. After all, if others feel the same way I do, they can add their support. If people disagree, hopefully this can start some interesting discussions. Either way, it’s something that will hopefully be of some use to Bioware as far as feedback goes. To avoid the wall of text, or at least mitigate it a bit, I’m breaking this analysis of mine into several posts. I hope that this will be a worthwhile read, or at least entertaining. Maybe even cathartic for those players who have encountered similar problems while playing this class. First, a bit of background. The experience behind my opinions. I started playing SWTOR during the pre-release. I leveled a Sith inquisitor to the cap, light side aligned, and did just about every PvE quest available. I loved the class story, and yet I found some of the general imperial quests to be a bit depressing. So I decided to try a Jedi consular, since the mechanics would be nearly identical, and I was excited to see how the Jedi story would play out. I should note that I have also played some of the other classes through the first chapter, and all of them at least through the starting planet. While the gameplay on the consular was nearly equivalent to that on the inquisitor, I found the story and the companions to be severely lacking by comparison. In fact, after finishing the Belsavis story for the consular and acquiring the fifth companion, I put the class on hold and went back to playing on my inquisitor and other alts. So I am writing this thread to lay out my problems with the consular, though I will try to point out positive aspects where I found them. If you disagree with any of my statements, feel free to say so, but please say why. In any case, I’m not looking for an argument, I just want to give my honest feedback to Bioware. Also, this thread will express my opinions, based upon the facts as I see them. If your opinions are different, that’s fine. I’m speaking for myself here, not for you (at least not unless you happen to agree with me, then I guess I kind of am by default). There will be a fair number of comparisons with the inquisitor, as the mirror class to the consular. Other classes will be compared to a lesser extent where applicable. Please note that there will be spoilers throughout the following text for the consular as well as other classes in the game now and then. Continue at your own risk.