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Class Comparisons


ekimmak

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This is a mildly biased comparison of all the classes, advanced classes, and skill specs in the game. I'm hoping it can help people to pick what they'd like to play, but by no means am I saying this is in concrete. I'll start with the class stories.

Agent

The agent storyline seems to be a favourite for most people. Mystery, intrigue, decisions that actually matter, and a character that isn’t praised from start to finish, all seem to add up well together.

Prologue

 

The prologue for agents is a good indication of what the rest of the story will be like. You aren’t a chosen one, some irreplaceable superhuman, just very good at what you do. You have your superiors, and there will be complications. But it also does a very good job of setting up act 1. The final mission is real shocker, and sets up your enemy as someone who both light and dark agents want shutdown.

 

 

Act 1

 

I think the worst part of act 1 is that you have to put up with Kaliyo for most of it. If you get along, that’s swell, but if she doesn’t, you’re in for a long trip. Each mission ties back to the same goal (shut down the terrorists) but are different enough that each one feels unique. The mid act mission reminds you that yes, you do have a sith peering over your shoulders, and yes, she is insane. Be afraid.

By the end of the act, you’re all ready to take down the last of the terrorists, and their leader. But, turns out that he isn’t the act 1 boss. So, you now have to go hunt down the true mastermind. The light/dark choice is a real whopper, as you can’t tell whether you’ve just set up for an even bigger disaster down the road, or if watcher two was overthinking things. After all, you stopped him this time, perhaps you could stop him again?

The last boss is pretty nasty, because he uses a lot of force attacks, stuns, and knockback, all of which neither operatives nor snipers are really prepared to take at this stage. So, you might just want to skip the boss completely. Take the darkside choice, and you can either join the monster, or even talk him into standing down. Watcher was just as surprised.

 

Act 2

 

This act truly drives home just how little the sith think of the imperials. Your mission is to infiltrate the SIS, and take down one of their biggest players. But there’s one of those agent twists again. Taris is about a jedi who’s gotten too big for their boots, and the SIS is using your imperial status to take care of her silently.

Quesh is focusing on removing the threat that’s been hanging over you ever since you ‘defected’ to the republic.

Hoth is about hunting down an imperial traitor, with the aid of the Chiss Ascendancy. Nothing too impressive, until you consider the light/dark choice. No one is influencing your choice there, so is your Agent the sort who takes the easy way out, or sticks by their allies?

The end of Act 2 lets your agent break their cover and either get revenge on the SIS for manipulating you, or revenge on the imperials for greatly spoilericious reasons by ignoring the mission. Either way can alter the end of the class story, but the choice is insignificant for the setup to act 3: How did they get their hands on the information?

 

Act 3

 

You now have an enemy that is both outside the republic and the empire, a conspiracy that has been around a lot longer than can be proven. Belsavis is about the heist of a century, where you recruit prisoners to help you jack into a super secret security vault. And incidentally, don't pay up when the guy threatens the slicer, he's bluffing. I think. Oh, and eavesdropping on your enemies may not have been such a smart idea, as another mysterious appearance from watcher X gets all your watchers (and keeper) shut down HARD! You get sent to voss to track down the one lead you still have, after that, the Sith decide that intelligence has outlived it's usefulness, and your agent is assimilated into the military on Corellia. Your agent is reminded of just how unpleasant the Sith can be, while a mysterious voice is promising that you won’t be killed on the front lines like this.

Surprise! Intelligence is back!

Your final mission is about exposing the conspiracy for who they are, to the galaxy. The final boss is the rival you’ve had since act 2, and they make a relatively good fight, if unimaginative. The choices you can make after the final battle are altered by choices you made earlier in the game, but in the end, your agent is now free to make their own decisions.

 

Consular

Sadly, the consular is considered the worst storyline of all. I don’t like to think in such negative terms, but I agree that it can be a little dull. A lot of this revolves around politics and diplomacy, but there are a few benefits. Seemingly pointless conversations or missions can actually be providing clues that make your later missions easier if you’ve been paying attention. This storyline does not work well with dark side characters, and male consular have a questionable romance companion.

Prologue

 

The first thing you’re told before you can even start playing, is that you’re very gifted in the force. This is a turnoff for me. Instead of Jedi trials, like every other padawan gets, you instead get tasked with retrieving artefacts from a battlefield, and when one has been stolen, that’s bad. Because it’s the artefact of a fallen Jedi, and will be corrupted. So, you spend most of your time on Tython hunting for this scavenger, looking through ancient ruins of the fallen Jedi, and if you haven’t been paying attention, falling to most of his traps. In the end, you get to take down the thief, and are told that means you are good enough to be a full Jedi.

But wait! Your master is sick!

So, your time on Coruscant is spent trying to figure out what is wrong with her, and how to cure her. There’s another ‘pay attention’ puzzle involved, but it also takes a little logic to solve, as the final question doesn’t get any forewarning. In the end, the consular learns the cure, but the prologue boss intervenes, and destroys any chance of teaching more people. So, only YOU can cure her. And after doing so, the council wonders if perhaps any other Jedi masters might have caught this plague, and send you off to cure them as well.

 

Act 1

 

This is fairly dull, unfortunately. You tend to show up just a little too late, as the Jedi masters you’ve been sent to check on are both infected, out of your reach, and in the position to do some serious damage. You manage to stop them, and this is where it gets rather foolish. Light side consular cure them, dark side consular kill them (or as good as kill). So why do they keep getting sent out to save them? And on the light hand side, it’s been said that curing people is supposed to drain your strength, but you never see any indication of that. At all. Apart from people telling you that you’re losing strength. The choices really don’t matter.

The mid act mission gives you a good hint of who the plague master actually is, but frankly, you could have figured it out by the end of Taris. When you reach the end mission, it really shouldn’t be a shock. Except, the twist is, it’s actually the guy who first invented the plague, possessing the Jedi ‘who was supposed to be dead but kept getting brought up by infected masters’… and such. Light side choice is to cure him, and let the Sith go free, or to kill him, and in the process, kill everyone who is, or has been, infected.

 

Act 2

 

After a short rest, the Jedi Council has called a meeting. Apparently, there’s a group of influential planets that are threatening to withdraw from the republic, unless their list of demands are met. The republic wants a Jedi master to deal with this, but no one on the council has the time for it. So, they give you a promotion so you can deal with it.

I really don’t know what could be worse, that they think that you’re such an awesome Jedi that you deserve this honour after a few (arguably important) missions, or that they can’t be bothered so they hand out promotions so less important people can deal with it without offending anyone. Either way, it’s annoying.

Balmorra demands that you return control to its people, by getting someone elected governor. Apparently, the fact that there’s a peace treaty doesn’t dissuade the republic from intervening, but that’s a different problem. The real problem, is that at the end, you have to either destroy a broken man to ‘officially’ give control to your friends, or hope that you can talk the people into taking up arms anyway, even if it wasn’t official.

Quesh is about picking up the pieces from a destroyed operation, that was being conducted without anyone telling you. It also shows that one of the ambassadors (or more accurately, his daughter) is more than they appear.

Hoth is where you’ve been tasked with taking out an immortal pirate, that has apparently been causing all sorts of grief for your ‘friends’. You finish off the guy in the first mission, but wait! He’s immortal! You didn’t really kill him, and now he’s going to do even more damage! So, you have to deal with mutinous soldiers and unpleasant imperials to track the guy down, and either take him into custody, or employ his services after stripping him of his ‘immortality’.

 

Act 3

 

This is plausibly the most interesting of all the acts. You’ve received word that there are secret spies in the republic, called Children of the Emperor. But, the galaxy is at war, and all conventional troops are deployed in normal conflict, so you need to come up with a way to tip the balance in your favour.

Your first mission is going to Belsavis to find some warriors hidden there. After all, imperials wouldn’t think of you pulling an army out of a prison planet, right? Oh, no, there was a child of the emperor. Looks like they’ll know about your secret army. And not only is your secret exposed, but the child gets killed, so you can’t interrogate them.

Then, you go to Voss, to try and get another one. Because two armies are better than one, right? You get to oversee the full training of a Voss Mystic, instead of just the haphazard rush everyone gets in the planet arc. At the end of it, he decides to come with you, and bring his personal army with him. Oh, look, another child of the emperor! And she wants to take your mystic away! Nope, not happening. And because she broke the rules on Voss, her punishment is to leave Voss. Over a cliff. So no, you can’t interrogate her.

Finally, you bring all your forces together on Corellia. Except, you didn’t need to because that Jedi master guy (who is apparently your real master, not the girl you were trying to cure in the prologue) has set up strongholds all over Corellia that can hold back the imperials easily... Oh, so that’s who the first son of the emperor was. And he’s given those strongholds to other children of the emperor, so you’ve now got to take them back, one place at a time. And as you do so, he’ll mock you that you didn’t try to convert the children, you just killed them.

It seriously annoys me when I’m mocked for not being able to make choices outside the system.

The final boss is mildly interesting. But, it’s also a major grind, so unless either you or your companion can heal, there’s not much you can do. And I’m pretty sure he has a one-hit KO skill, but there’s plenty of time to interrupt that, so difficulty isn’t really an issue.

After that, you get a place on the Jedi Council. Because you’ve proven yourself to be sufficiently awesome, and your old master had to give up his seat, because he was secretly evil. All your allies get special rewards, but what gets me is this. At the end, the alliance from act 2 tries to figure out who should be in charge. Three people volunteer for the place, and then they all ask you who should run things. I had no idea who they were. I never visited their planets, and only one of them had enough character development for me to actually remember her. And I remembered enough that I did NOT want to pick her. For a decision that could potentially affect millions of lives, there didn’t seem to be any consequences to it. Or any basis to even make that decision.

 

Bounty Hunter

The bounty hunter is unfortunate. They have some interesting companions (save one, the most loathed in the game). But they have a lot less choice than advertised. It’s basically been decided that you’re going to be an empire supporter, and that you finish any major bounty you’ve been given, whether or not your character would actually make those choices. I wish light side had been more like Mira from KOTOR 2, “The good bounty hunters can bring their targets in alive”. Now, certain choices actually make killing the target more attractive (Handing people over to the huts is never a pleasant thought), and occasionally you can hoodwink your employer instead of play the contract straight. In fact, one is mandatory. But these occasions are rare, and more often than not, you kill your target. And those consequences will haunt you.

Prologue

 

You start out as a hired gun on Nal Hutta. Turns out that you’ve been picked up by and old veteran bounty hunter, who thinks that you have a shot at winning the Great Hunt, a bounty hunting tournament that brings riches and glory to the victor. Sounds great. But, to qualify, you need either to be a Mandalorian (which will take too long) or to be sponsored by a crime lord. So, looks like you have to suck up to a hutt.

While your team is spreading rumours about how awesome you are (which is better than being told “you’re awesome” repeatedly like in the force user stories) you hunt down the toughest bounty on Nal Hutta. A guy who apparently can rob an imperial tax exchange, but can get outshot by someone wearing old scrap armour. AKA You. So, when you get back, you’ll get your introduction to a hutt, and all smiles, right?

Wrong. Turns out, a competitor in the hunt doesn’t feel like playing fair, so he’s going around indirectly sabotaging any competitors that aren’t mandalorian, and to sabotage you, he kills your team. Except one. Who manages to get you that meeting with the hutt, who then says that you have to get a few more bounties, before he’ll give you the sponsorship. Said bounties are all way into the darkside, but you have the opportunity to cheat him and still get his favour. And after you do all that, he’s given it to someone else! So, you have to go hunt them down and get it back.

After all that, you head to the imperial capital. And, it turns out that there’s only one place left, so if you want to get it, you’ll have to compete. By hunting three bounties on a planet of by-the-book sticklers. Impossible? Probably. But, sadly enough, your rival, in an attempt to sabotage you again, gives you bounties that won’t get you arrested. They’re supposedly supposed to get you killed, but only one of them is illegal, and because it’s for imperial intelligence, only the employer knows that you broke the rules. The big melee, which consists of everyone who scored their triple bounties, is supposedly with no assistants, but that doesn’t stop your friend from throwing heals around. Minor quibble, so I’ll let it pass.

When you win, your rival then complains that you’re a disgrace, and should be kicked out immediately. But, the guy who runs the hunt says otherwise, and his word trumps the rival. So, off on the great hunt in your new (stolen) starship!

 

Act 1

 

The best of the bounty hunter storyline. But it brings up the darkside focus quite clearly. You have to hunt down bounties on each planet, competing with a rival hunter. You’re supposed to kill the other hunter for a bounty, but you can take a plea for surrender instead. Only once, are you actually given this choice. All other times, said hunter is either going straight for the shootout or already dealt with. And, it seems like the bounty hunter has ‘kill target’ written into their contract in large capital letters. Only once, are they given a choice in the matter, and that’s where the situation is reversed, killing them would be more merciful than the torture that they have lined up in a cell. Other times, the choice has already been made for you.

Several times, you find your old rival trying to sabotage your hunt. In fact, the mid arc mission is about a mass sabotage against every other competitor, where the evidence is clear that he’s responsible, but no one does anything, because it isn’t ‘concrete’ enough.

The final mission of act 1 involves taking down a major target. A Jedi master, responsible for the death of many a Mandalorian, and only one competitor has gotten this far. Your rival. So, it’s a race to blow up a republic cruiser and kill a jedi master. As soon as you get there, it’s clear that they know who you are and what you plan. And you pull it off anyway.

I found this mission rather annoying, to be honest, because there’s more than once where strongs are standing in the same group, and there’s one enemy type that has a resistance to fire damage. Guess what? That’s the main elemental damage that bounty hunters deal.

Your rival presents an interesting morality choice. He’s locked in a cell, and will definitely die when you blow the ship. But, he’s challenging your honour, and has been a right pain in the backside since mission 3. So, what do you do? It presents quite a few little morality quibbles: Leave him in the cage, let him out and shoot him , or let him out, let him get his gear, and then kill him, proving who was the best hunter all along.

After dealing with that, you then have the Jedi master (and his padawan) to deal with. This is the final boss for act 1, and I’m uncertain about it. Fighting an elite and a strong (I think) is no easy feat, and they seem to rely a lot on abilities you may not be ready to handle. I certainly know that force effects are not cleansable by neither mercenaries nor the healing companion.

After beating the boss, the light side choice is to follow the contract and kill him, but spare the padawan, while the dark side choice is to attack him mid conversation, and cutting down the padawan while she’s helpless.

And then you set the ship to explode, and kill anyone who’s between you and your ship as you escape.

And you win the great hunt. Hurray. Everyone agrees that you’re one of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy.

 

edit: I forgot to mention, final mission has a lot of strongs with resistance to fire damage. Guess where the most damage from BH abilities comes from? Yeah, that was a cheap move.

 

 

Act 2

 

Sadly, after act 1, the plot slows down a lot. Without a rival or master villain to focus on, it loses a lot of drive. You still hunt bounties, but they don’t seem to have as much to them.

Mandalore wants a word. You know, the guy in charge of all mandalorians and who runs the great hunt. He wants you to kill a monster on dromond kaas. So, you kill it, and then he says that you’re a mandalorian now. Oh, and BTW, all people who win the great hunt are part of a secret club, with an awesome bounty list, and because he needs to run the mandalorians for the upcoming war, you have to take his place in the club, because there always has to be a mandalorian in there.

Your first hunt is a tradition for all new members. There’s a guy on Taris who has never been caught, but people try anyway, because it’s tradition. And you catch him.

Quesh is a distraction. You’ve been offered a place as a spokesperson for a stim company… no, wait, it’s a trap! Turns out, the republic really doesn’t like people killing their Jedi masters. You can’t talk your way out of it, and if you spared the padawan in act 1, you have to kill her now. You don’t get a choice to tell her to scram. And the Jedi master in charge of the whole thing says that “you’re going to get it now”.

Then to Hoth. A pirate is attacking the Chiss, so they want a tough bounty hunter to capture him. But said pirate doesn’t care about you. He just walks off when you show up. So, you have to impress him, by killing all the other white maw captains. Or all but one, if you’re lightsided. And because the pirate you’ve been chasing is Trandoshan, killing him is a lightside choice, and capturing is a darkside choice. At the end, the Chiss guy says that you’ll get the bonus for capturing him, whether or not you actually captured him, but also mentions he’ll be killing the pirate that’s been helping you with your bounty. While I liked the guy, you’re forced to swap your bounty for the guy, you don’t get a choice. And considering I wasn’t supposed to get the bounty in the first place, because I killed instead of captured, it felt very inconsequential.

The end of act 2 has all your friends from the club throwing a massive party for you… but the republic attacks and kills them. Because they knew you, and you’re evil. After fighting your way through all that, you find out that the republic has put a massive bounty on your head, with a massive list of crimes (only some of which you actually did), and everyone is out to get you. And now a sith wants to talk…

 

Act 3

 

That Sith guy? Yeah, first thing he does is have his guards try to disarm you. That ends badly. But, you talk it out, and the guy who set up the bounty is actually a friend of the guy who set up the ambush on Quesh. If you want to kill the ambusher, you should work for this sith, who’s going to have you do a lot of the Empire’s dirty work.

Through most of the acts, you end up as a sith stooge, with no choice in the matter. Your actions on Corellia are to capture leaders for the resistance effort, so that he can take over easy. And your sith overlord says “Hey, here’s that Jedi master. You know, THE Jedi master. The one that hates you for almost no reason. Yeah, you can go kill him now. But you owe me.” After dealing with the jedi, he reveals that “while you were killing me, my friends were saving all those leaders you caught. I win.” And then the Sith says “Right, help out on Corellia, then come see me. I want you to kill someone.”

After all that, you get sent to take out, who I presume, is the leader of the entire republic. But, when you get to the end, he says “I’m sorry, didn’t realize that most of the crimes were made up, I’ve taken it all back.” Then, you get the light/dark choice of, either turning on your sith who is being very mean to all the conquered planets, or killing the republic guy and fulfilling the contract. Either way, everyone knows that you are not a bounty hunter to mess with.

To be honest, the whole pro-empire thing feels a bit forced, and while it’s great to have a choice in the end, it came way too late. Like, three acts too late.

 

Inquisitor

I find the inquisitor storyline to be somewhat of an annoyance. On one hand, the prologue has a lot less of “You’re the best force user since sliced bread!” for the starting planet, but the story on the whole has a lot of stupid decisions, listening to people that don’t have your best interests in mind, and for someone who doesn’t have anyone telling them what to do… you certainly seem to have a lot less choice.

Prologue

 

So, first thing when you get there, is that you get told that you’re an expendable. Force users become sith, but you people used to be slaves, and it’s unlikely you’ll be any good. Your overseer makes a pretty good enemy, because he spends all his time tweaking the odds, so his favourite, your rival, has the best chance of being picked. Thing is, although your missions are supposedly fatal, you keep pulling them off, and the act of sabotage in the final trial actually works in your favour, because although it’s a race where your rival gets a head start, to actually complete it you need to know certain things. Things you know (because you were there when the sith lord told you about it) but your rival doesn’t. The overseer’s final act is to try and give credit to the rival anyway. And fails. The rival is killed, and you become a sith apprentice.

I never said the overseer was smart.

When you get to Dromund kaas, you meet a new rival, the sith lord that’s the boss for your boss. Because he plans to intervene with any attempt to do… what it was your master plans to do, you’ll have to kill him first. This is against the rules, and everyone knows that your master doesn’t get along with him, instead you’ll do the killing, because no one could ever suspect a mere apprentice could do it. This plan works, but the sith lord warns you in his dying breath “she’s been planning this for a long time. She’ll do the same to you.”

So, you get sent off to the dark temple to make sense of her visions. That say that you’re the only one who can go into one of the tombs, and come back in one piece. Turns out, that tomb has the force ghost of your powerful sith lord ancestor in it. Yeah, it’s that force user suck up that I really don’t like. You get directions to all sorts of artefacts across the galaxy, and your master has a surprise for you! A new ship!

 

Act 1

 

So, using said ship, you hunt for those artefacts, and build up an impressive power base along the way. What I dislike here, is the alderann arc specifically. You can blunder your way through killing everyone that looks at you funny, or, you can be subtle, and trick a Jedi into handing over the keys to his vault where your stuff is kept, and make him a better person in the process… LOL! He was just faking! And now he’s got reinforcements, and tries to kill you. Anyway, the mid act mission is actually from your ancestor, who suspects that your master might be planning to betray you.

Big. Shocker.

So, he sends you to recover his old possessions, which will apparently protect you from whatever she’s planning. When you get all the artefacts, she calls you back to Dromund Kaas, and tries to kill you. As a final boss, she’s ok, but pretty interrupt dependant, and a nightmare for Assassins. She fails, and you take her place in the Sith chain of command.

 

Act 2

 

So, now that you’re a sith lord, you don’t have to listen to anyone, right?

No. Turns out, your old master had her own master, and it wasn’t the tin can man you killed in the prologue. This guy sends you off to collect a sith artefact… which is owned by a very upset sith ghost, and only your ancestor’s intervention saves you. Clearly, this was just a trick to kill you, so you’ll just have to do what you did in Korriban. The impossible. You learn how to bind force ghosts, take the artefact back, and your new master kills you.

Or at least tries to. Turns out, binding force ghosts is beneficial to your health, because you can’t be killed. So, clearly, you need to bind even more ghosts until you have enough power to kill the treacherous scum. Quesh is trying (and failing) to save your apprentices, so clearly, you need to get another one. You start looking in Korriban, and… Hey, it’s your old overseer! He’s certainly more polite to you now.

After Hoth, you have enough spooks under control that you can march into your enemy’s headquarters on dromund kaas, trap him, kill his apprentice, and then…

Huh. Turns out binding force ghosts isn’t as healthy as you thought. The power you’ve stored is killing you, and the ghosts now have control over you instead.

The apprentice, as a final boss, is extremely cruel. Like the act 1 boss, he uses a lot of cast attacks, and you just don’t have the capability to shut them down. Only hope is to evade his targeted attacks (assassin nightmare) and hope that you can shrug off enough of the damage to kill him before he kills you. Companion micromanagement is necessary.

 

Act 3

 

That’s bad. So, time to fix it. You head to Belsavis, looking for a way to repair the damage that the ghost binding has done. I’m not too sure about this, as the final mission on belsavis has a light/dark choice. When I played it, it was dark sided to free the artificial intelligence ‘mother’ from rakata captivity in exchange for healing you, and light sided to force her to heal you anyway. You even get a bribe from the Rakata for leaving her imprisoned. I can’t tell whether they assigned the LS/DS points incorrectly for the conversation, or if there’s something I’m missing about it that makes the nice choice the cruel choice.

You still have ghosts in your head that won’t shut up, so you head to Voss to deal with them. But… turns out that you’re going to bring ruin to the Voss, and they do everything they can to try and convince you to leave. And the real kicker? You do exactly what they said they’d do. Bring a Gormak to the stars. And it’s apparently going to bring ruin back to them. Nice job, inquisitor.

The mission on Corellia is an ancient sith tradition. A duel, not just trial of arms, but a war to destroy the very power base of your opponent. Held between you and your rival. As if one war on Corellia wasn’t enough. The final battle on Corellia has you face down your rival… who runs away. So, you chase him to Korriban, and fight him again. And this time, he gets finished off.

Because you killed him, you get his place on the dark council. Instead of executed for insubordination, like happened to ever other NPC. Weird. You can choose to free the ghosts, send them off to rest in peace (LS only) or continue to bind them to you. Not really that impressive for a final morality choice.

 

Knight

The other favourite storyline. I see a lot of people call this KOTOR 3, and I’ll admit, it does have it’s appeal. It’s always about the big rescue here, from saving your Jedi master to saving the planet. In fact, that comes up a lot. I do have a problem with the whole “chosen one” angle, that dominates the later half of the story, though. Yet despite that, it is a lot of fun.

Prologue

 

So, turns out you’re a padawan with combat training. So, when flesh raiders attack, naturally, you’re the first they turn to. There’s a cave where they’re coming from, and you need to block it up… only, there seems to be a fallen Jedi there, commanding said Flesh Raiders. Weird. After beating him, you get sent to the Jedi Council who say that “This has never happened before” and “He never received Jedi training”. You get introduced to your new Jedi Master, who apparently hasn’t taken a padawan in ages. But he’s making a special exception for you.

As you roam all over Tython, you make friends with the local Twi’leks, and find out that your master’s previous padawan is in fact responsible. And evil. And wants to kill all the jedi, so he can train them his way instead. But you stop him, and that proves you’re ready to be a jedi.

But wait! There’s more! It turns out that the jedi council has had a bad feeling, and it wasn’t about the person trying to destroy them! It was from Coruscant! And when you get there, you find out that someone has stolen a bunch of inhumane weapon designs that the republic was working on. While your old master and another Jedi master head to planets that were working on these weapons in detail, you get tasked with hunting down the stolen designs on Coruscant. But, not only do you fail to catch up with the thief, but the doctor running the project has been captured! Oh, wait, never mind. He was a sith.

Yeah. And he has a weapon that could hold the entire planet hostage, so you need to move it and kill him. No, you don’t get any choice in the matter, you have to kill him. And his father, a very powerful Sith, watches the whole thing, and swears to not only kill you, but to use the weapon designs that his son stole, and kill as many people in the process. Because it’ll make you feel guilty.

And the people who were sent to look into the weapon projects? They’ve vanished. Looks like the Jedi Council had better declare a full-scale emergency, and send out every man, women, and Jawa they have to put an end to this threat!

No, they just have you deal with it. Because said sith has been declared independent of the empire, it’s not an act of war, and superweapons that demolish planets aren’t as critical as… other… stuff. You know, the stuff that all the other Jedi do. Yeah, that stuff.

 

Act 1

 

One of the two classes that has an act 1 with even a minor variation in the setup. All other classes, for act 1, they have pretty much the same goal on each planet. For the jedi knight, he has the same goal on three of the four planets. The first one, you need to find the scientist who ran the superweapon project. For all the other planets, you need to find the superweapon before someone can switch it on.

Along the way, your sith enemy is making it very clear he doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as he gets to kill you. Two of the bosses are actually quite honourable, and it’s possible to spare them by showing the same courtesy back to them. The other two are outright monsters, and it is very satisfying to take them down.

The mid act mission is a break from the superweapon hunt, as it throws doubt on your Companion. She turns out to be a child of the emperor, and was training to be a sith when she was younger. You take her to the council, and it’s possible for the knight to very vocally point out that she can’t be trusted. And yet, apart from one guy saying that they should throw her in the brig, all of the council says that she’s still trustworthy. What throws me off here, is that the knight can choose to either support her (I don’t doubt her at all. I just thought you should know) or say outright “Don’t trust her” when the council asks for their take on the situation. No matter what the knight chooses, she stays a trusted Jedi, and as his apprentice. I’d think that if he goes against her, the least they’d do is assign her to a Jedi that can trust her.

Strangely enough, the way the alderann arc flows, it only makes sense if you finish that last (which is the way the levelling works, so that’s good). But, they leave a small opening for people who did that before Tatooine, and it kind of throws it off. I need to be a bit more specific:

Your old Jedi master snuck onto your enemy’s ship, and was caught. He gets cut down while you watch (via holo) but managed to plant a tracer on the guys flagship. Your allies find out, and say that soon, they’ll be able to track him down. The time it takes to complete Tatooine seems to be too long for them to get a tracker working, but the way the conversation ends kind of implies that they won’t be figuring out for a while. And yet, if you finish on Alderann, they immediately go into the next conversation saying “We’ve found him!”

The first time I played through, the final mission was a nightmare. There are a lot of strongs and elites wandering around, if you haven’t gotten the hang of your class then it will show. The boss himself is extremely powerful. You’ve got no way to recover, so your only hope is to either mitigate his damage enough for your companion to down him, or to out DPS him. In both cases, this tests your ability to play your class to the maximum.

After that, the Emperor takes control of your companion and turns her on you. After beating her/him, she then tries to drive his influence out, and succeeds. But this doesn’t quite make sense to me. A knight that likes her fits perfectly into this scene. But I have my suspicions that it was possible to kill her, back when companion killing was possible. After all the flak and abuse the knight puts her through, repeatedly pointing out that they don’t want her around, and can’t trust her, and so forth, suddenly just puts up with this? It’s the proof that she can’t be trusted, and the dialogue makes it very clear that they don’t, why wouldn’t they kill her right then and there? And just as oddly, why didn’t they get rid of her on Tatooine, or even pick her up off Coruscant?

Furthermore, after the mission is complete, the knight heads to Tython, to chat with the council. They make her a full Jedi, and she decides to stick around the knight. If they’ve been abusing her like I pointed out above, why would she?

All the complaining about the companion situation aside, it was a rather interesting act.

 

Act 2

 

Your knight is called back into action. This time, they’re going after the emperor himself, in hope of stopping the upcoming war by capturing and redeeming him. That Jedi master has a pretty optimistic outlook, really.

First stop, is Balmorra, to figure out a way to see the emperor’s hidden space station. You work with the balmorran resistance, and eventually leave. The information you want is on Hoth.

But, instead of sending you there, they send you to Quesh. Apparently, a Sith the leader redeemed there has dropped off the grid, and they’re worried. You save him from the Emperor’s Wrath, but the guy admits he lost his temper and fell back into Sith methods. DS, you did nothing wrong, LS, rededicate yourself and you will prevail.

After that, you go to Hoth. Get the plans for the Emperor’s station, and leave. Finally, the whole team is on their way to save the galaxy! Cool, the environment is from false emperor flashpoint. Wait! The Wrath is blocking the way! For a final boss, I don’t really remember too much of him, so I doubt it was anything special. Now, for the Emperor…

No, I’m afraid it’s not that easy. He one shots the entire party, and corrupts you into his own Sith Apprentice. Training montage of you being all Sithy, and then… Hey, it’s your old dead master. He breaks you out of the emperor’s control, and you get your crew out of the emperor’s holding cells… hey, it’s the Emperor’s Wrath! Sorry, make that ex-Wrath. Apparently, the Emperor is evil, and the Wrath has been working for him only until some Jedi knight from his vision shows up and puts an end to him…

AKA You.

Why he didn’t help out at the end of Act 2 is beyond me, really. But he makes it clear that the emperor plans galaxy wide genocide, and the only hope you have is to whittle down his power until you can finish him.

 

Act 3

 

Turns out that while the emperor knows HOW to kill the galaxy, he lacks the power to pull it off, and so needs to make a few blood sacrifices first to get it. So, you spend this act beating him to the punch, by sabotaging his efforts for mass murder. Only… it won’t be that easy. Remember the team you had back in act 2? They got corrupted too, and you’ll have to fight them as well.

After freeing Corellia, you then set off for the imperial capital planet, to put an end to the Sith menace. The final boss of act 3 was extremely tough at launch, but I’ve heard that it’s been made a bit easier. I know that I myself took a few tries, but could manage it, so I likely got in after the difficulty drop. Probably the hardest thing is that you are only allowed to take a specific companion, that very few people are likely to have geared. There is a puzzle that gets you the gear needed, but… it could be overlooked quite a bit. He summons adds consistently during the fight, and while they’re deceptively fragile, they can add up some damage. I believe that they are immune to force attacks, so you have to use sweeping slash to take them all down at once, or just use normal melee attacks. It’s been a while, so I don’t quite remember.

And you’ve beaten the emperor! And now you get to choose between kill him, and take him prisoner- no, wait. He commits suicide. He isn’t going to leave a body for you. Still, the council is impressed, and since you’re such an awesome Jedi, you get promoted to Jedi master! Unless you’re evil. Then the military promotes you instead.

 

Edited by ekimmak
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Smuggler

The smuggler is not a complex or intense storyline. They don’t have overly emotional moments like the Jedi Knight, or a complex and rewarding plot like the Agent. But they’re a fun storyline. You get a lot of memorable quotes from these guys, and it feels like both light and dark side choices are believable. There’s even conversations where picking the right response can skip a fight completely. Including points where you get to Shoot First. Worst thing, is that while the first act is very well done, it falls apart after that.

Prologue

 

You start out seeing your smuggler drop off some weapons. Simple. But, turns out that you’ve landed in a warzone, and to get your ship off the ground again (without being blown up) you have to take out the nearby turrets. First mission, easy, now you can…

Some guy just stole your ship. And the weapons you were smuggling.

Huh.

So, you’re obviously going to have to get it back again. You spend most of the starting planet trying to find where your ship is, and the final mission is actually getting your ship back… but, the thief left a few minutes ago. Damn.

And your contact is dead. Double damn.

And the crime lord you were smuggling weapons for? He knows you lost them, and has put a huge bounty on your head. Triple damn.

So, you’ll have to chase the thief to Coruscant, find a new contact, and then chase him all over this planet as well.

It picks up after this, I swear.

So, you get your ship back, and get to charge the thief for some expensive new upgrades on your ship. Or, at least, that’s what I was told. I think the ‘expensive upgrades’ is just the ship droid, to be honest. Which I guess is its own reward…

Anyway, you find out that your new rival had been gathering up some… questionably ethical goods… to trade for certain items. Certain items that, when used correctly, could lead one to a dead crime lord’s fortune. How do you know this? Because the rival’s former partner cuts a deal with you, transport the goods and she’ll get you that treasure.

 

Act 1

 

This is the premise of act 1. You travel to each planet, dropping off your cargo in exchange for things that will supposedly lead to this mysterious fortune. It varies quite a bit, actually, because the obstacles tend to vary from people wanting favours, to your rival trying to get the clues first, to the crime lord you ticked off in the prologue.

It ends with the truth about your contact for the last four planets being revealed, and you being sent out on a ridiculously dangerous mission to secure your fortune. And at the last minute, your rival turns up to try and steal it at the last minute. It doesn’t go well for him.

 

Act 2

 

After act 1, things drop down a bit. You get a call from an old friend, who’s willing to give you the opportunity of a lifetime: A job for the republic. You find and acquire certain things they want, and they ignore how many rules you broke in the process. And pay you.

Balmorra is tracking down a bunch of weapons, while keeping an idiotic imperial turncoat alive at the same time. Not very interesting.

Quesh, you go off on your own, to help out a fellow smuggler. How he rewards you is dependent on your alignment. Nice guys get nothing, neutral guys get credits, evil guys bind them into a lifetime contract.

Hoth, is tracking down a white maw cloaking device. And, it actually has a bit of a varied ending. But, it’s not really that impressive. Although, you do get more sneaky dialogue options.

For the final mission of act 2, you get in on a scheme to rip off an imperial treasury. You spend some time setting it up, and then rip off some really impressive sounding stuff. Getting shot at in the process by an imperial admiral. Actually, he looks kind of familiar, didn’t he…

Oh. He’s the boss of that crime lord that’s been hounding you since Coruscant. Guess you’ll have to do something about that.

 

Act 3

 

So, naturally, you start by cutting corners. Belsavis is where they’re keeping the mentor of said crime lord, and you’ve been given the authority to give him… extra time outside in exchange for his information. Not much of an incentive.

But wait! There’s a breakout! He escaped! This must be the work of your sworn enemy … only it isn’t, he wants his old mentor dead as much as he wants you dead.

Then, you go to Voss, where there’s smuggling. And you have to figure out how he’s doing it, while avoiding getting arrested by the Voss. Because the blame has been pinned on you, instead.

But, hey, you’ve destroyed your enemy’s criminal empire, and now, he’s calling what few loyal troops he has left to his side. Now you’ve got him. And you’re going to finish it, once and for-

Wait, he’s calling you the traitor? What’s a sith doing here. Isn’t that admiral supposed to be…

Ah. You’ve been working for him instead of the republic, all this time. Oops.

So, Corellia is about payback. You travel the planet, hunting down the people who were deceiving you about your missions, with the help of a Jedi. A real Jedi this time.

And then you take down the imperial admiral, and take control of his underworld fleet that he had only just managed to get working. Piracy, patriotism, or just plain credits, this is over, and you now run the criminal underworld.

 

Trooper

The trooper class story is rather bland, to be honest. I guess if you’re interested in a military take that isn’t shrouded in secrecy, it could be enjoyable, and the prologue + first act has a lot at stake, but it fades away after that. I’ve heard people compare it to mass effect, but it doesn’t seem as entertaining.

Prologue

 

So then, you start by being told that you’re the best of the best in cadet school, which is why you’ve been accepted into Havoc Squad, the best of the Republic’s special forces. Sounds just like most of the force user stories, unfortunately.

And then you’re attacked. Because you had field training, you get tasked with taking care of your attackers, while they fix the walker. It’s not as if you have zero useful gear, and only just got out of the training academy…

Wait. Both are true. And they still send you out. Huh.

So, there’s a bomb, that can level the island, and you need to find it. You get sent out to find a spy… who’s dead. It’s your fault.

And then you go to his wife, to get the information he had. She blames you as well.

And then separatists attack, and they don’t blame you, they just try to kill you. And fail.

You spend a lot of time going back and forth, looking for that bomb. Eventually, your team finds it, and tell you to sit this mission out, while they go on a suicide mission into the heart of the separatist base. Predictably, it goes wrong, and everyone panics, because only a havoc squad member could go into the enemy base and survive…

Oh, wait. You’re still here. You can do it, thanks.

So, after slogging through a volcano filled with hostile soldiers and the occasional smuggler, you disarm the bomb and find Havoc squad…

Have betrayed the republic. That’s a twist.

You survive, and get promoted to lead havoc squad. Because you’re just that good. And now you have a mission: Take down the traitors!

Coruscant is your next stop, where you chat with your boss. She sends you out on several missions to try and figure out where the traitors are, and in the process, she wants you to kick as many dogs as possible. It ends when you get to the old mentor of havoc squad, who had joined them in their betrayal. And, if you’re clever, you can convince him that selling them back to the republic would greatly improve their chances of survival. Weird.

Anyway, you now have your own ship, save a republic senator (or take down a traitor) and set off to do… tuff.

 

 

Act 1

 

Your mission on each planet is simple. Find a havoc squad traitor, try not to do too much damage in the process. Of course, dark siders can choose to ignore the second part, and do as much damage in the process. The formula doesn’t really change between planets, either. Spend a few missions finding the traitor, general Garza gives you a secondary objective that conflicts with light side choices, and at the end, she complains either about you ignoring her specific second instruction, or about the bill she received for wanton destruction.

The mid act mission is the absolute worst of all of them. You get lured into an ambush, and then take on the imperial’s version of havoc squad. According to the ex-leader, they and his old team fought to a standstill on several occasions. You, and a companion, take them down in one mission. What makes this mission so unpleasant is the final enemy. He is of the Nemesis type, and elite level. Nemesis are heavy abusers of leaps and rocket punch, throwing off any player/companion combination with their raw damage. The only way I managed this was to get out the ranged DPS companion, and kite the guy for as long as possible, while staying in range of the companion. That enemy type is BROKEN.

Final mission is taking on the final of the spec force traitors, and the leader. If you chose to save the senator in the final mission of the prologue, you come across the traitor that escaped. Like most of the traitors, she refuses to surrender, so you have to kill her. And then kill everything between here, and the final boss.

He’s actually a rather interesting boss. The guy switches cells in combat, which indicates what sort of attack style he’ll use. Cryo cells means that a CC is coming up. Ion Cells has heavy knockback and a powerful channel. Can’t remember the others, but it was a really cool fight.

In the end, the leader repents, and offers to switch sides AGAIN. Another Light/Dark choice, some more Light/Dark points. Not very stunning. And then you get told to take a vacation before act 2 starts.

 

Act 2

 

You get told that there’s a superweapon capable of flattening fleets, so you need to fill up the vacant seats in Havoc Squad’s ship, and deal with it.

On Balmorra, you need to track down a demolitions man. Considering how much the guy clashes with the rest of HC, I can’t help but feel they should have at least considered the guy who used to do it. Traitor, maybe, but better than a bloody extortionist like this guy.

Quesh demands that you save some troopers that will be absolutely crucial in the upcoming battle. Just like all other Quesh quests, it’s filler, and not very interesting.

Hoth has you helping out the guy who will be your technical specialist. He has a mission on Hoth he wants to see through, first, so when that’s done, he’ll join up.

Final mission has a nice feature, though. Your entire squad teams up in the first battle, and it’s awesome. After that, unfortunately, it dies down. Worse, you HAVE to use your two new companions. You can’t take any of the people you might actually have been gearing.

After all that, you blow up the weapon. And then you see an imperial commander announcing to the galaxy that it was ‘unprovoked’ and ‘this means war!’. So, your next mission, is to bring the full power of the republic down on the imperials.

 

Act 3

 

Your first mission is on Belsavis, where you’re releasing the republic’s best star fighter pilots. Apparently, they still have some loyal soldiers. And it makes no sense!

The first havoc squad defected because they had been left to their own devices on an imperial world. Fair enough. But the republic pilots were jailed, for running a mission they were told to, when their target wasn’t there. And yet they DIDN’T defect when the jails were broken? This makes zero sense!

Next mission, you’ve got a republic senator tying up forces on Voss. Apparently, they think that the Sith will take the planet, despite failing horribly last time. You run around, dealing with problems to try and sooth the senator’s mind, only to find out that he was right, and the imps had a plan that could have taken over Voss easily. But they don’t, because you’re there. And the Voss didn’t do anything about it, because they knew you’d be there.

It would have saved a lot of time if SOMEBODY just told SOMEONE about SOMETHING. But, because everyone’s being really sneaky, it just wastes both your, and the republic military’s, time.

Finally, Corellia, where you get to see all the people you’ve been gathering together do their jobs. That bigshot imperial from the end of act 2? He’s here, and the final mission is to take him prisoner.

Or kill him, that works too.

And then, you get a parade. If you chose to take the imperial prisoner, he gets set free, in exchange for releasing a lot of republic POWs.

Remind me, how did this senator get elected to be in charge, when she’s willing to do stupid things like this? I can see why it’s a good choice, there are plenty of reasons. But, the way this idiot puts it just rubs me wrong. I can feel it from her voice, that she’s just dying to add “Think of all the good PR” to her explanation.

And, that’s it. Havoc squad is sent out, waiting for their next big mission.

 

 

Warrior

Last class, and last sith. The warrior is a fairly fun story. While it doesn’t have the same number of memorable moments of the smuggler, and doesn’t have any real plot twists, it’s still good. You’ve still got ‘the chosen one’ mentality of force using classes, but unlike the jedi, you can go ballistic and get away with it, and unlike the inquisitor, you start out at the top of the food chain. Even a light side juggernaut gets to enjoy bending the rules, as no one dares call you out on your ‘corruption’. You are just that tough. There also seems to be a lot of people who think are a match for you, and end up splattered all over the walls.

Prologue

 

You’ve been brought to Korriban, despite it being before you should be allowed to, because you’re a tough sith, and they need to cleanse it of ‘impurity’. Apparently, the overseer doesn’t like the idea that a mixed blood could become the apprentice to Darth Baras, and so wants you to do something about it.

Your first few missions are about making yourself stronger, breaking the rules in the process. Baras finds out about this, and sends you to ‘take care’ of your overseer. How literally you take this statement is up to you.

He then has you competing against your mixed blood rival, to see who is tougher. You are, obviously, and so you’ll get to be his apprentice. Your rival doesn’t like this, and tries to ambush you. This works about as well as you’d expect.

You are then sent to Dromund Kaas, where you run a bunch of errands for Baras. Tidying up his secret services and such. One mission that seems random actually turns out to be quite important. Baras has found a spy, and wants to know what the spy knows. But, the spy is protected from torture, so, you have to find a better torture device. That belongs to the emperor. And is in the Dark Temple.

Really, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying to kill you.

But, you get the relic, and Baras gets his answers. Turns out, his old jedi enemy has a new padawan, with the ability to see someone’s true character, past deception and lies. For a sith lord with a considerable espionage network, that’s bad.

 

Act 1

 

Which is why you’re going to be sent out into the galaxy, with no leash, to terrorize it! Oh, and deal with any possible leaks.

This act has a bit more variety than others, actually. Your first two planets are dealing with ‘holes’ in Baras’ security. And by ‘holes’, I mean undercover agents, and dealing, I mean kill violently.

Balmorra is about killing off anything that might have known about the spy, before killing the spy, in such a way no one could ever know he was a spy. It’s a lot less complicated than it looks.

Nar Shadaa, the spy has gone straight to one of Baras’ rivals. Who you then systematically destroy all reputation of. And then challenge him to a straight out duel, that he tries to cheat at. A light sider will be able to cheat back. The sith lord apologizes, swears allegiance to you, and kills the spy to prove that he means it. Uh, thanks, I guess? You could always banish or kill him instead.

Mid act mission has you dealing with a listening post, that’s been spying on you. The jedi knows perfectly well what you’ve been up to, and vows that his padawan will one day bring Lord Baras to his knee. And you’ll just be a casualty along the way. Baras doesn’t like this, so he makes the padawan your next priority.

The two planets after that are baiting this mysterious padawan.

Tatooine is following her apprenticeship, as she went through a mysterious pilgrimage that you must follow. It reminds you that Baras is a sith lord, and not to be trusted. Instead of killing this superpowered padawan, you should recruit her instead! You can either kill her old master to drive her into despair, or just tell him (and have him pass on the message) that you want to talk with her. Sith’s honour.

Alderaan is her home world, and you’re looking for her family. You have the ‘help’ of an Ulgo noble… who seems to think that his new sith bodyguards makes him untouchable. His bodyguards are smarter than that, and say that they won’t lift a finger to stop you. The idiot then sends you out on wild goose chases to get girlfriends and deal with his rivals, only helping when you remind him you are not his stooge. Strangely, there are people quite willing to walk up to a sith lord and ask them for help, after they break down your door. And if you’re nice enough, you can avoid getting into the final boss fight of the planet. You can kill her parents to drive her even deeper into depression, capture them for Lord Baras to torture, or give them a good place in the empire to utterly baffle the poor girl. And then the noble goes one step to far, and you can inflict your usual punishment: death, banishment, or ignore the petty worm.

The final mission goes on for a bit. First, you get contact by the padawan you’ve spent the whole act hunting. She knows that both your master and hers are just using the two of you as pawns in their chess game, and invites you to talk. You go to the meeting, to find out her master found out, and not only talked her out of it, but sent two Jedi to attack you.

That ends about as well as you’d expect. You are then contacted by Baras. The Jedi has challenged him to a duel, but Baras has outgrown this petty rivalry, which is why he’s sending you instead. The jedi is rather disappointed that Baras would be so cowardly, but decides that he will have to end you eventually, and so tries valiantly. And then not so valiantly. And then goes pure dark side uncontrollable rage, and fails a third time.

Being almost killed draws his padawan to you, and, she is shocked to see that her master isn’t the paragon of strength that she expected thought he was. Using her powers, she sees the corruption in him, and then, uses her power on you, going utterly crazy from doing so. Whether it’s because she thinks that you’re all trying to confuse her, or because you just plain deserve it, she does try to kill you. And fails. And then you recruit her. And Baras is pleased.

For now.

 

 

Act 2

 

In his usual style, Baras tells you that he has a secret plan, that is now underway, to resume the galactic war between republic and empire. So, he’s going to send you off to kill/capture a lot of important people.

On Taris, there’s a war trust, that need to be killed before the war begins. As you find each one, you discover they’re working on… something. That something turns out to be a supercharged fuel that can turn a regular droid into a miniature destroyer cannon. Which you beat, anyway.

Baras then sends you to Quesh, because there’s someone else that needs to be killed. Or something. There’s a lot of imperial killing, but it’s unclear why.

Then you go to Hoth, to hunt for a Jedi. Baras shows his knowledge of the original trilogy, by force choking someone over the holo. And that he can track his own stuff from the other side of the galaxy.

Dark sided, you kill the Jedi you’re hunting for, and another old rival of Baras’. Light side, you leave them buried in the snow instead. It’s a lot nicer when you understand the context.

Final mission is… kill Baras’ superior. Lovely. And it turns out, he had another apprentice. Reminding you of just how untrustworthy your master is. But, no rest for the wicked, you’ve got another act to go.

 

Act 3

 

So, now the galaxy is at WAR! And Baras is now on the Dark Council. As Baras’ trusted apprentice, you lead the first strike against republic forces, and-

Wait, what’s he doing?

Huh. You just can’t get good sith masters these days.

So, you are now tasked by the emperor himself, to deal with Baras in a bloody and gruesome manner. After destroying all (false) claims that Baras is the voice of the emperor.

First up, on Belsavis, you have to take care of his sister. Oddly enough, you get a Jedi to help out with this. One that you don’t have to kill at the last minute (unless you want to).

Then, Voss, where the real voice of the emperor is. You have to go through a long and complicated process to find him, and then release him, from the Corruption of Voss. It’s hard to tell whether the Emperor bit off more than he could chew and met a dark side force more powerful than him, or that the Corruption of Voss, a sentient manifestation of dark side energy, is terrified of what the emperor could do when he’s let out. It’s a bit vague, but you do get the emperor out.

Finally, Corellia, where you have to save Baras’ rival of the day. And take away Baras’ final trick to falsifying his testimony of Emperor’s voiceness. And now you take the fight to Baras himself.

The final boss on corellia is a very unpleasantly glitched form of the Smash spec. The final boss of the entire story, Darth Baras, is an even worse version. Smash becomes a AoE doom attack, kind of like orbital strike, but going for 18 seconds (the cooldown of their smash), and ticking every half second instead of three seconds. What makes Darth Baras worse is that he also has Force Pull, meaning he’ll just grab you, and pull you back into his smash zone if you try to run.

But. You will win. And the emperor will declare you his personal executioner (but not in person), who is superior to the dark council themselves. And now, the galaxy awaits!

 

 

Edited by ekimmak
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So then. Those are all the storylines in a nutshell. I tried to avoid going into depth, but I pretty much went overboard with the parts that really stood out for me.

 

Later on, I'm going to look at how each AC plays, but not for a long time. When I've finished, I'll provide a (biased) take on how each spec feels to play. But that's something that'll take a few months to do. What I plan is this:

 

  1. Get one of each AC to 55
  2. Get them all green, crafted gear from 55
  3. Get them all HK-51 companion
  4. Run them through the Makeb Dailies, and parse it

 

 

What'll this do? Give me a mostly balanced view of each AC and spec.

The reason I'm making it green level gear, is because I want to compare them in relatively similar gear. Making it crafted stuff simplifies it a lot, and gives a good comparison.

HK-51 will be the companion I play with, because he is identical in every class, and comes with his own (relatively) good gear. Very few companions have similarities to form proper parse, and then there's the fact that out of the three types of companions (DPS, Healing, Tanking), only one of them never becomes redundant. A healing spec will kill too slowly with a healing companion, and the same for a tank spec. But with a DPS companion, you actually have to have skill. Healers need to work harder to keep them alive while keeping aggro off themselves. Tanks will need to mitigate enough that their companion kills the enemy before the enemy kills you. DPS turn it into a damage race, with the same rules as the tank.

 

All in all, a dps companion is a much better standard to compare than any other companion type.

 

Now, something I won't be looking at is PVP. Why? Because there are too many conditions to form a real judgement of the spec. How is your gear? Good? Bad? Average? How well is your enemy geared? Massively outnumbering you, or dragging behind you only slightly? How good a pvp'r are you? How good are they? Should objectives be considered, or is it just raw killing that should count?

 

It's way too difficult to get through all this. It's just plain easier to ignore it in this thread, and let the rest of the forums squabble over what's OP, and what's in need of buffing. And besides, it'll be hard enough to get 8 55's, 8 HK-51s, and 8 full sets of crafted gear. I really don't want to go even further for PVP comparisons that are extremely situational and narrow minded.

 

To be continued...

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Re: Consular.

 

 

I actually liked the prologue since it involved learning about the formation of the Jedi. I would have liked that arc continued rather than the Act 1 arc starting.

 

Act 1, agreed, is terribad. It's very repetitive, with essentially the same LS/DS dilemma each time (i.e. do you kill or capture someone who's committed evil while under the effects of mind control?).

 

Also, the "mystery" is so obvious that the Jedi look like morons for not figuring it out sooner. The two unanswered questions are: Who is this Parkanis guy none of the infected Jedi want to talk about? Who is infecting the Jedi?

 

Even someone who knows zip about the Consular story can probably answer both questions right there.

 

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Re: The Bounty Hunter

 

 

I was so-so on the prologue. On one hand, Nal Hutta fits in with the BH story like a glove, and Braden and the rest of the team that's been assembled for you is fairly nice. Personally though I found the idea of the Great Hunt to be dull. It reduces Bounty Hunting from a tough and mean job to a sport.

 

I did like the resolution with your rival, though, where you can give him a good death or just let him rot.

 

Act 2 is just a series of more or less unconnected bounties. The only thing binding them together are the Black List folks, who are all pretty forgettable since none of them ever actually do anything. I thought for sure one would turn out to be a traitor or a rival, but no. They all stand together, talk together, and then die together. You could cut one or two of 'em out of the story and it would impact nothing.

 

I did, however, like the options you had with Mandalore. You don't *have* to toe the line with him. I told him to shove off, and he got all pissy about it :-)

 

In Act 3, yes, that is the leader of all the Republic. It feels a bit flat since we never really see or hear about him before now (other than the vision on Voss). You also have the option to capture him, at which point the Sith guy is a bit confused about you bringing him in instead of just killing him there, but still seems happy enough.

 

Overall I'm not a big BH story fan. Too much random, more or less unconnected missions tied together by a flimsy arc (Great Hunt, Black List).

 

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Re: Trooper Story

 

I actually found Act I and Act III tto be amazing. The mission on Belsavis that makes no sense actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, they really couldnt defect to the Empire after killing thousands of them- perhaps they felt they had nowhere to go, so they stayed there. Idk.

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Excise, Re: Consular.

 

Yeah, the prologue seemed to be an interesting start. Even when hunting for a cure, you get glimpses of the history of the jedi. But the actual act 1 has nothing to do with that. It might have been too much to ask, though. On one hand, all the infected jedi masters investigating ruins being infected could have been an interesting tie-in for all the missions, because they lost Parkanis while investigating sith ruins. But, it seems like the writers didn’t really bother, they just gave you a reason to go to all the other planets that other classes go to.

Which, I guess, is fortunate. It would have been very difficult to come up with a reason for Nar Shadaa, for example. All the other planets have some sort of history, but that is one giant city. No ties to jedi history.

 

Excise, Re: Bounty Hunter

 

The problem with your ‘team’, is that they’re dead by the second mission. Although it would have been unfair to give the bounty hunter a full crew on the first planet, the fact that they die before you can connect with them means that it doesn’t hurt as much as it should.

The three bounty hunters, are actually mentioned in the SWTOR encyclopedia, and it’s actually a shame. Knowing their backstories made them more interesting when I played through a second time, but agreed: They only ever show up as a group, and infrequently at that. If they had been split up a bit, maybe showing up on the planets on their own bounty hunts, but lending some time to help out, they’d have been more memorable?

You have to face it, they had their work cut out for them with this storyline. While you do tend to see the consequences of your work, it’s quite possible to have forgotten what it was you did in the first place to get them riled up. I think the chancellor may have shown up once before the vision, but it escapes me.

I do recall seeing someone praising act 3 for shaking up the formula that the other class arcs set, so opinions may vary.

 

sir_star_wars, re: Trooper story.

 

I think my issue is that Havoc Squad defected because the republic didn’t send backup, but the guys on Belsavis you recruit are still loyal, when the republic locked them up tight. Defecting may not have been that implausible, seeing as the empire wouldn’t necessarily have names and pictures of them (the best they’d have, unless Imperial Intelligence was involved, would be ship designs and voices from intercepted communications), but even if they wouldn’t consider the empire, they still could have joined the riots. The fact that the whole squadron was quite happy to go back to working for their jailers, after they said “we’re sorry, can you forgive us?” just rubs me wrong. Just like the new leader of the republic managed to make a light side situation feel self centered.

 

 

Re: the comparisons

It will definitely take some time before I can get full comparisons for the actual classes. The problem is mostly the stealth cunning class. My highest level of those is an operative, but she’s on a different server to the rest of my 50+ classes, so she won’t be able to gear up like them (or easily, at least). I’ll have to do some serious grinding for the cunning stealth class I have on that server, and then there’s getting crafting to 450, getting an HK-51 droid for each, and then gearing him up equally, because like an idiot, I went and used planetary comms to gear up the HK for my assassin before remembering about this.

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Haven't gone through the Trooper arc but I saw your summary. So is it the Trooper arc that actually explains what made the Empire and Republic finally go back to war?

 

Most of the pre-Makeb stories does a very poor job of explaining what's going on in the big picture, and the war starting up was always the most glaring example for me.

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I think i may be the only person who likes the inquisitor story line >_<. I like flashy fights and power and magic and the inquisitor story line gave me just that. I think i remember getting goosebumps while i was fighting thanaton. All that power that you had waiting to be unleashed to your enemy... I like :D

 

I also like the sith warrior story as well. I was very surprised at the twist

(when one of your companion..)

. I thought that was really interesting.

Imo i think the inquisitor story line was great. I loved it. And the warrior story line had enough twists to keep me entertained. :p

Edited by paowee
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Re: Excise

 

 

Either them or the Sith Warrior. The warrior's act 2 consists of travelling around, attacking key republic targets to goad them into a fight while simultaneously setting up Lord Baras' ascension. The trooper spends their time gathering up the remaining squad members for a hit on an imperial superweapon. After they smash it, a major imperial general calls them out on it, and declares war.

 

Really, I'd say all classes are equal to blame, because they start out on the other factions planet (breaking the treaty). On Quesh, the empire pushes the republic off planet, goading them even further, and Hoth, they're making it as difficult as possible for the republic to salvage old wrecks that can't be left alone. Troopers are the only class that actually see the start of the war, though. All others get told "BTW, We're at war, now".

 

So act 2 is a culmination of the events that start the next war, if you read between the lines.

 

 

 

Re: Paowee

 

 

Well, you're one of a few. most people start forum threads demanding that companion killing be brought back just for that one companion. Personally, I didn't mind too much, but that's because both my warriors are lightsided, and my female warrior hadn't really gotten that involved with Quinn, so it's easy to see why he'd pick Baras over her. And, it actually made a lot of sense that he'd then be loyal to her when she spared him, because he knew that Baras wouldn't have spared him, and was expecting the same case from her.

 

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

 

The inquisitor line isn't for everyone. Most people wanted a Palpatine expy, and were disappointed that they didn't get it. If you enjoyed it because it had flashy fights, power and magic? Then all the more power to you.

 

 

 

Re: stormdrakelord

 

 

Well, yeah. The smuggler doesn't have too much story to it, but the character really makes up for it. So, it really depends on whether you like a good story, or good characters.

 

 

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Regarding Agent's Chapter 1 -

 

 

I think it should be worth mentioning that you can talk your way out of final boss fight. It was quite a "jaw, meet floor" moment for me; here I thought even single player RPGs stopped doing something like this in favour of adding MOAR MANDATORY BOSSFIGHTS!!!1! no matter how out of place, and to find something like this in a MMO of all places is nothing short of a sensation.

 

Edited by krakadyla
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In the Trooper storyline, I shot the traitorous Senator in the hearing. General Graza kept saying there are consequences for all my choices, especially killing the Senator. Then I am hailed a hero by the Supreme Chancellor. There was a point when chasing down General Rakton, that he said that he should recruit me. I found that interesting, but seems story is forced that you have to kill him. Disappointed overall with the storyline.

 

 

I am disappointed with the Makeb expansion. I wish it continued class specific content along with the Makeb story. Curious about the JK storyline, can you fall to the Dark Side and become a Dark Jedi? Also the Smuggler can you become an underworld boss?

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Ekimmak knows all.

 

Nah, I just have great memory and altitis.

 

Re krakadyla:

 

 

You dare doubt a member of imperial intelligence?

 

On a more serious note, I wasn't sure whether I should include that or not, as you can't use spoiler tags within spoiler tags. I've tried. But then again, it's unique to the agent storyline, so it might be worth mentioning.

 

 

 

Re Mannam

 

 

Yeah, for someone who gets told that THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES! a lot, I've seen more consequences for my actions as a gun for hire than as a trooper.

 

Yes, I was quite disappointed with the Makeb being a planet story arc rather than individual class arcs, but I can tolerate it.

 

What do you mean by a dark Jedi? If you mean someone who used to be a Jedi, but is now the emperor's personal executioner, then no. You want the Anakin Skywalker story, go to the sith warrior. Plenty of relentless bloodshed there. Darkside Jedi knight starts out arrogant, but gets some serious opportunity to do collateral damage. No mercy for enemies, no mercy for allies, I think the only reason the Jedi council doesn't have you expelled is that you get the job done, no matter how bloody it is. Just be prepared to argue with your companions a lot for most of the game.

 

Any smuggler ends up running the show at the end of the game, dark or light. The light side smuggler takes over the underworld and gets a medal from the republic for it. The dark side smuggler owns their own pirate fleet, and is not the person you want to owe a favor to. Ever.

 

And after all the damage they did, the chancellor still asks them to come help on Makeb. Either she is a complete twit, or is hoping that the damage they do to the hutt cartel will outweigh the damage they do to their own side.

 

 

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Truth be told, I don't think the Consular deserves all the hate it gets. I mean it's actually pretty interesting if you get into it. I loved feeling the pure, er... "Awesomeness" of the class, and I thought the diplomat role was a very good way to get a peek inside the Consulars mind, and how they work. Unlike the Knight, which didnt seem very Jedi like at all.

 

But hey, just my 2 cents. ;P

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Re: Excise

 

 

Either them or the Sith Warrior. The warrior's act 2 consists of travelling around, attacking key republic targets to goad them into a fight while simultaneously setting up Lord Baras' ascension. The trooper spends their time gathering up the remaining squad members for a hit on an imperial superweapon. After they smash it, a major imperial general calls them out on it, and declares war.

 

Really, I'd say all classes are equal to blame, because they start out on the other factions planet (breaking the treaty). On Quesh, the empire pushes the republic off planet, goading them even further, and Hoth, they're making it as difficult as possible for the republic to salvage old wrecks that can't be left alone. Troopers are the only class that actually see the start of the war, though. All others get told "BTW, We're at war, now".

 

So act 2 is a culmination of the events that start the next war, if you read between the lines.

 

The declaration of war itself is arguably an irrelevant event, much like how the Sino-Japanese War didn't technically "start" until Jiang declared war on Japan in 1941 - four years after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, during which Japan occupied vast Chinese territories, fought the epic Shanghai campaign, and committed countless atrocities against Chinese civilians and soldiers. In SWTOR, both Republic and Empire were backing separatist and rebel movements in the other's territories (Ord Mantell, Balmorra) before the start of the class stories. Both sides effectively commit acts of war with scant attention paid to the treaty at all. The events surrounding the Black Talon's attack on the Brentaal Star apparently featured a balls-out, full-on fleet battle ("I just crippled three Imperial dreadnoughts"...), and that flashpoint was practically at the beginning of the game. By the end of the prologue, to all intents and purposes, Empire and Republic are in a shooting war, and the Treaty of Coruscant is just a scrap of flimsi.

 

I don't think it's possible to pinpoint a moment in time at which the Cold War went hot. The Balmorran campaign - the Imperial one - or the Black Talon incident would be good potential options. But really, those are just matters of degree, and I think the writers wanted it that way: a gradual escalation of hostilities, not a clean break like "22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and its satellites invade the USSR". Rakton's declaration of war had resonance in the Trooper campaign, but it really didn't change the situation on the ground for any of the other classes: it was an evolutionary, not revolutionary step. The Empire didn't need a declaration of war to launch a full-scale invasion of Taris, same with the Republic's second intervention on Balmorra at about the same time.

Edited by Euphrosyne
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