This is a blog post, but also meant to be a script, or near script, to a YouTube video on the same topic that I intend to make. Let me get some screenshots together as well and I'll add them to the post as soon as I have them.
Let me discuss all eight of the classes for Star Wars: The Old Republic. After I discuss them, I'll put them in two different forced rankings. The first forced ranking will be "what should I play?" In other words, if you only play one class story of the game, which one should you play? The answer is, number one. If you only play two class stories, you should play numbers one and two, etc. down to if you only play seven of the eight class stories, then you get your last rankings. This is a stand-in for what I think "objectively" are the best stories. Of course, I have my biases, and sometimes I like classes better or worse than they are "objectively" because I just prefer the archetype and can ignore the flaws better, so I'll have a second forced ranking of simply my favorites. But what I consider to be my favorites are not what I'd recommend as necessarily the best or worst of the classes. I do have, for instance, a clear case of preference for the tech classes over the force classes, so I tend to play them much more often and like them better, even when at least two of the force classes are clearly the most iconic ones in the game. There will be some differences between the two lists.
It's worth pointing out, though, that although I think the bottom two classes will be consistent, and many people seem to agree on those two, they are kind of the outliers, and the other six are all of a pretty consistent high quality, and the daylight between them in the rankings is pretty thin. Depending on how I feel about the concept, or how irritated I am by its flaws, they can move quite a bit in the rankings, because honestly they're all more or less equivalent in quality level anyway. Small variations on how I'm feeling about them can cause them to fluctuate in the rankings without it really causing any significant difference in how I feel about the class overall. The top six (of eight) are all quite good.
It's also worth pointing out that I think the top six stories are more or less equivalent in quality to the Knights of the Old Republic story, to which they will naturally be compared. Although that's a very highly regarded storyline, I've had just as much fun with the Old Republic stories, and think that in general, they're just as good.
I'm going to discuss all eight of the classes without ranking them first, in groups. First, the two Republic Force classes, the two Republic Tech classes, then the two Imperial Force classes and the two Imperial Tech classes. Then I'll provide my two forced rankings. The order in which I discuss them shouldn't be seen as indicative of anything.
Each class discussion will cover four points: 1) the actual character itself, as presented by the dialogue and voice actor, 2) the plot and structure of the character's story, 3) the ensemble cast of companion characters, especially the "girlfriend" options which is very on-brand for BioWare and how they make RPGs, and 4) the mechanics of playing the class. Of course, the last few years or so you've been able to decouple the mechanics from the class, and mix and match them, but all of my first wave and second wave of characters were created before this feature was available (the Third Wave is all mix and matched characters) and I think it's still appropriate to talk about the mechanics and how well I think that they work too.
JEDI KNIGHT
After farting around with the demo for some time, the Jedi Knight class is the first organized and well managed character that I played. It's clear that the Jedi Knight is the canon class of the game. It's kind of the one that the devs consider the most iconic. It's got most of the stuff that leads into the expansion stories integrated into it too. I feel like the most effort was put into it in some ways. It's the one that has the most "Knights of the Old Republic III" feel to it. If for some reason you only ever play one class, this is the one that I'd recommend the most. Not necessarily because I think it's the best story, but it's just the most iconically Star Warsian of them all.
Let's go through the numbers then. First, the portrayal of the character itself is probably the weakest aspect of this story. The voice actor that they cast, David "I Hate White People" Hayter, gives a very relaxed, "serene" delivery, no doubt at the director's insistence, that accentuates the fact that he's really kind of written as a boring stick in the mud. Ask him anything, and you get an out of context fortune cookie quote as an answer. I don't want to call him a liberal retard virtue-signaler... although that's really how he comes across so maybe I should. This is also accentuated by the fact that right off the bat you're treated to an inane "moral dilemma"; the Jedi council on Tython sits around hand-wringing about an illegal settlement of twi'lek trespassers. These entitled, bratty little princesses complain that the Jedi don't help them more—when they're the ones trespassing on the Jedi's planet in defiance of the legality of their settlement—and then ultimately (and this is a minor spoiler) they stab the Jedi in the back and betray your character specifically. Inadvertently perpetuating a right-wing talking point that's playing out before our eyes in metaphor. You can't make this stuff up, especially considering that the game is fifteen years old this year, that they somehow managed to get a metaphor that's perfect for the ongoing Somali fraud scam that's in the news right now.
In spite of this, if you advocate with the council for telling the immigrants that the party's over, and the crashers have to go back home and leave, you get a bunch of smug lectures delivered in a hall monitor tone from the useless Jedi masters of the council. I actually thought that the start of this story was fairly rough and frustrating. Although with my second and third Knight playthrough, I worried less about doing what I was obviously "supposed" to do, and enjoyed it a bit more. Also, luckily, once you leave the rest of the Jedi behind and go on to the next planet, the tone improves tremendously. This has almost always been a problem with the portrayal of the Jedi Order across all mediums in Star Wars; they're supposed to be these paragons of virtue and wisdom, but in reality they more often than not come across as the villains of the story. Not in the comic book swirling dark capes around and laughing menacingly kind of villains; those are the Sith, of course—but in the sense that they are a fifth column, chewing away at social order and cohesion, destroying the Republic from within with their smug, self-righteous craziness. I think the problem is that all too often the writers are woke idiots, women and betas, including all too obviously George Lucas himself, so they have a poor idea of what good and evil actually is. Their attempt to portray good sometimes is just flat-out evil—they're the Dolores Umbridges of Star Wars. I was annoyed with the story during Tython, but it improved significantly once I left. But the main character himself is still the weakest elements of this class.
The plot of the Jedi Knight is the most "high fantasy"; the biggest, swashbucklingest, high stakes craziness space opera plot of the whole game, and it is certainly one of the strongest aspects of a Jedi Knight playthrough. While the Empire and the Republic are technically in a state of uneasy peace when the story starts, a rogue element of Sith are waging open warfare against the Jedi and Republic and even your character in particular for personal reasons, using illegal superweapons that the Republic developed (but shouldn't have) which have been stolen. After rushing around desperately stopping all of these at the last second, the war starts for real. The Hero is caught up in a strike team to go assassinate the Emperor himself (which is... pretty insane, but whatever.) This goes disastrously wrong, the entire strike team is brainwashed and turned to the dark side, but our Hero manages to escape after some time thanks to the ghost of his old master and an unexpected ally close to the Emperor himself, who now admits that he's known for centuries that the Emperor wanted to consume all life in the entire galaxy and had a vision that this guy, our Hero, would be the one to stop him. The story ends on a final, epic second confrontation with the Emperor himself. Again; once you get past the fart-sniffing, hand-wringing on Tython, this story is fantastic if occasionally silly, and it hits all of the right notes for what a truly epic Star Wars story should have—Star Wars movies have always had plenty of silliness; you're not supposed to think about the plots too hard.. It's on par with other equally well-regarded Star Wars stories, like Knights of the Old Republic itself, in my opinion. The classic well-rounded villains as well as the gripping plot alleviate the blandness of the main character, who gradually grew on me over time once he didn't have to spend time sweating contrived, hoaky "moral dilemmas" clumsily constructed by writers who wouldn't know morality if it beat them up in a back alley.
The Jedi Knight also has probably the best collection of companion characters too. T7, your first one, has most of the charm of R2-D2 himself. Kira, your second, is probably the best, or at least tied for the best, romantic option in the game. She's a great girlfriend and a charming NPC. Doc is a little try-hard, but he's good for some laughs occasionally, although the bitterness of nerdy high school kids getting revenge on the "cool kids" for shoving them in the locker comes through occasionally in how the writers treat him. He is, if I remember correctly, the romance option for female versions of the character. Finally, you get Scourge, and when you get him, he is one of the more unexpected and interesting characters you can get. He's also probably the best "last character" you pick up in the game; most of those last companions you pick up just don't have the time to develop properly, so they feel kinda meh. The only exception to the great companions is Sergeant Rusk; a character that I never really figured out what his role was other than that they needed one more character. He's kind of a cipher filling space like goods in a package, and I could do without him and never really notice the loss.
Did I mention that Kira is probably the best, or at least among the very best romance options in the game? (I know, I did.) Laura Bailey, now of Critical Role fame, does the voice acting. She's one of the best developed and best written and best portrayed of all of the romanceable characters, and because you have access to her as a companion for almost the entire game (you pick her up officially on Coruscant, the second planet but you've interacted with her nearly from the beginning) you have plenty of time to develop the romance. She's also actually got an interesting story of her own to explore where she had been an Imperial Manchurian candidate kind of thing as a child and has to deal with the fallout from that past. The plot, villains and companions of the Jedi Knight are really top notch; probably the absolute best in the game, and go a long way towards alleviating the plank of wood personality that the main character himself is kind of saddled with by the writers.
I've played all the way through with both the Sentinel (two lightsabers) and the Guardian (one) which, if you remember from the older Knights of the Old Republic, they're kind of the same idea here. They both have a variety of very classic Jedi moves. In fact, I think they do a really good job of making you feel like you're playing a Jedi as they're portrayed in the movies, with similar abilities and combat styles, and surprising mobility for a melee character. Some of the classes don't really feel quite as much like the moves in game match what you'd expect from the source material, but in this case, it very much does. The only thing that the classes don't do very well is handle trash mobs, lacking much in the way of area effect attacks. I mean, you can do it, but it's a bit more time consuming and tedious than the tech classes who can stand back and plink at enemies, or do big area effect attacks that take out multiple low level opponents all at once. Each class has three combat specs, and all but one of them (on the guardian) are damage dealers, although some are burst damage, some are damage over time, and some are hybrid. The one exception is the tank spec. None of them have any healing ability for groups, although for solo play, you don't need that anyway, because you can spec your companion to be your medic. I'm actually glad that it doesn't have those specs, since you don't need them for solo play, which is what most people spend most of their time doing.
Again, I suspect that the devs put their greatest effort here, making the Jedi Knight feel like the most iconic class to play in the entire game. But how could it have been improved? The Knight has a great story, marred by two somewhat glaring problems; 1) lame main character, who really needs a lot more personality and spunk to feel anything at all like a real person, and 2) Tython is also a very rough first planet, where you are put in one hoaky moral dilemma after another where the "light side" choices are all stupid and the "dark side" choices are mostly just childish, and no matter what you pick, the stick in the mud Jedi council will lecture you like a Karen hall monitor about it. The story improves tons when you leave Tython, you get a great girlfriend character, probably the best in the game, even, and you get her on the second planet after having already interacted with her a lot on the first planet. Tighten those two problems up, and you've got a story that's better than Knights of the Old Republic even.
Also, the plot is somewhat repetitive, for the first act, and it's a little silly when you're part of a strike team to go kidnap the emperor and bring him to Tython to turn him to the light side. Lolwut? I remember in college hearing about an idea floating around in Kennedy's CIA about sneaking into Cuba and shaving Castro's beard off, thinking that that would cause his government to fail. This idea is only marginally less stupid. Still, the Jedi Knight story mostly delivers interesting swashbuckling action, thrilling heroics, and over-the-top melodrama, which is pretty iconic to the Star Wars franchise, after all.
JEDI CONSULAR
There is another Jedi class too, though. It also starts on Tython. Like the Knight, the Consular is also, unfortunately, a plank of wood, who's voice actor—the otherwise charismatic Nolan North—was coached into portraying him as if he's trying to put everyone he talks to to sleep. In fact, this character is probably a good order of magnitude more boring and bland even than the other Jedi class. And unfortunately, the rest of the elements that make up his experience aren't good enough to ameliorate it as they are in the knight. To wit:
The plot is a little bit all over the place. It tends to focus on hidden, mystical, mind-controlling corruption type things. A Dark Plague is turning Jedi masters to the dark side and controlling them. Our Hero finds some kind of mystical ritual that removes the plague and restores their personalities, so for the first chapter, you have to run around rescuing Jedi masters who've been taken by this plague. At this point, he gets an extremely precocious honor, and he's called the Barsen'thor. Of course, nobody knows what a Barsen'thor is, but supposedly it's allegedly an incredible honor that hardly anyone has ever been given, you being only the third in the entire Jedi history. And this is at the end of chapter one. Following this, you're sent on a kind of run-of-the mill diplomatic mission to deal with some entitled and bratty politicians who are skeptical that the Republic has their planets' best interests in mind. The third act involves dealing with sleeper personalities loyal to the Emperor embedded within unknowing people throughout the Republic. This is an interesting callback to Kira Carsen of the other Jedi class, because she was supposedly one such who had that sleeper personality rooted out of her. The same was not the case of many others, who had no idea that they were secretly pawns of the Emperor until he "turned on" their Child of the Emperor subroutine and they became agents for evil.
Sadly, this space opera Manchurian Candidate idea sounds cooler than the actual execution of it ended up being. I felt like the reality was kind of jumbled and confused rather than a tense standoff where you never know who to trust. Overall, I'd call the plot of the Consular story mediocre; it has some good ideas, and sometimes it's reasonably well executed, but it's never as good as it sounds like it would be.
Some of this could have been salvaged with interesting companion characters, but I felt like the companions that this character gets sound better on paper than they are in reality. For quite a long time, you only get the weird Trandoshan lizard guy as a companion, and the writers tried too hard to really explore his strange Trandoshan culture and religion. Talking to him feels too much like a boring anthropology lecture and too little like a swashbuckling space opera story most of the time. Next you get Tharan Cedrax, the eccentric inventor with a holographic AI girlfriend, who comes across as all high concept and no thoughtful development. His whole story is trying to compete with fellow scientists to develop the coolest invention. He's kind of weird and creepy, in my opinion. Zenith, the unlikeable revolutionary Che Guevara-esque political figure from Balmorra is what left wing weirdos think of as a hero, but everyone sees correctly for a villain. He didn't interest me in the least either. In fact, quite the opposite; I'd have ditched him right away if I'd been able to choose to do so; he's not trustworthy because of his narcissistic fixation on his own issues, and his complete lack of any morals. Felix Iresso is a slightly more interesting character, who's had his mind tampered with and discovers that Sith secrets are buried in his head somewhere. But again, this is a more interesting concept than a reality; you never actually even dig into what the secrets are or find them! Given that we're discovering all of this at the same time that the Manchurian Candidate Children of the Empire plot is running amok in the story, it seems odd that it's a weird parallel to that but which goes nowhere. He's also the romanceable option for female Jedi. Finally, Nadia Grell is the only male romance interest. She shows up extremely late and isn't really all that cute. The relationship feels rushed, forced, contrived and a just-so story.
There are two types of ways to play this; the Shadow, a double-lightsaber wielding guy who's famous for having a built in stealth field, and the Sage, a single-lightsaber guy who uses force powers and hardly any combat moves even involve his lightsaber. I'll be honest; I never really use any of these two now that you don't need to, although I do often use light-side Shadows as my second combat spec on force classes. I don't actually use it much, but sometimes you need to use the stealth abilities to just skip past stuff, so it's nice to have that option.
Overall, while I'd say that the Consular class experience isn't a complete wash, it was my least favorite of the eight. It's a shame because there's good ideas buried there, they just never were able to rise to their potential due to poor execution. The Consular is like the prequel trilogy of the Old Republic. While the Jedi Knight can be savored in all its glory, (minus the very first part on Tython) the Jedi Consular is best saved for a time when the double XP event is active and you can blow through just the class story as quickly as possible without lingering on the disappointing aspects that otherwise make up the experience of playing this class.
To fix the consular, the writer would need to seriously redo the boring main character who has no personality. There needs to be a serious rewrite where the concept of the "earnest Jedi who speaks in boring fortune cookie expressions" is replaced with someone who resembles a real person, cracks some better jokes, has some more interesting opinions, etc. This is a systemic problem that affects both Jedi classes, exacerbated by what I think is BioWare's writers getting caught in the "righteous, liberal vision of a serious hero" paradigm, and the problem is that the character is such a boring cypher with no personality that it's just frustrating to play him.
Of course, the consular's companions need reworking too. I never had much interest in Dr. Lizardo, who you have to run around with for several planets as your only option, while he constantly gives you lizard anthropology lectures. The only possible exception is your girlfriend character, who isn't too bad, if a little mouthy, pushy and self-important. Still, she could be much worse, and some of her worst traits come across as more immaturity rather than true character flaws. But she's not really very cute, and you get her very late, so you have no opportunity to have a proper romance with her. Plus, honestly, there's no chemistry between you and her, and that's mostly on the writing of the main character himself.
The plot also needs some serious polish. The dark side plague that you run around healing and the Manchurian candidate dark side brainwashing that you encounter has some potential, but it never quite seems to live up to it. They also are very similar and kind of bleed into each other, which amplifies the repetitive nature of it. And your villains aren't very memorable either. The other element that you do as part of your plot, running around with all of these entitled, obnoxious diplomats, is more tedious and frustrating than fun. The main idea, of a dark side plague of some kind followed by sleeper agents who don't even know that they're sleeper agents, has some potential, but it needs a more interesting character, more interesting companion dynamics, and the adversaries and plot problems to be solved need to be much more lively.
SMUGGLER
The premise of the smuggler, of course, is to play as an Old Republic analog to Han Solo. The iconic look for the smuggler is usually even very similar to the classic Han Solo vest or jacket kind of outfit. (Although there's a commonly appearing odd one where you've got one of those neck pillows sewn into your jacket like you're about to go on a cross-Atlantic flight and want to sleep in your seat.) You even get a wookie companion, although its not the first or most prominent one in your lineup.
In general, I'd say that the smuggler class story is one of the middle of the road experiences. I was excited to play this one, as the concept is one that I really like, but the reality wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. There's a couple of different reasons for this, and I'll get to them below. First off, how is the character itself? I actually think that he's kind of charming most of the time, in a hapless kind of way. The voice actor, Maury Sterling, is perfect for the role, and there's a lot of wit and light-heartedness to the writing. That's the good. The bad is a bit more complicated. See, the smuggler is portrayed as this alpha ladies man. On almost every single planet, there's an opportunity for a romantic fling, for instance. However, what you start to notice after a while is that the smuggler himself is kind of reactionary, passive and even beta. It's like someone tried to write a ladies man character without having the first idea of what a real ladies man is actually like. His flirty options are often kind of cringy and begging-sounding, almost, from girls that a real ladies man wouldn't give a second look at once she showed her unlikable first front. This problem carries forward more than normal with the actual plot of the story too; the character is somehow unable to make another NPC character give him the information that he needs. There's a poorly conceived fig-leaf for why he'd go along with being strung along like this, but I gotta be honest with you; it never felt very convincing to me.
I know some of that was probably inevitable because of the medium. You can't make characters too proactive with this kind of writing, because otherwise it would be too open ended for a writer to actually write it. But you can and should do a better job of concealing that, by making the character himself feel like he's in the driver's seat even so, and not following along like a puppy dog after some other NPC who holds all of the cards. Even though, as it happens, she held only a couple of the cards and for reasons that I can't divine, we treat her like she holds all of them. I couldn't help but imagine all kinds of ways that I would have gotten around that situation if it were a table-top roleplaying experience as opposed to pre-scripted computer roleplaying experience. Ultimately, that's just not what you're expecting. The Han Solo experience is that he's a capable fellow, independent, and used to making things happen, not a hapless tag-along on his own adventure. I haven't heard a lot of people complain about this in reviews, so maybe it's not a universal problem, but it just wasn't the experience I was expecting for the smuggler, and it ended up being really disappointing.
Similarly, the two halves of the story are not created equal. All of the stories have two halves; the first one makes up the introduction and Chapter 1, a total of 6 planets, and the second makes up chapters 2 and 3, so 6 more planets. For each of the stories, you have a rival in the first half and then you graduate to a new rival/enemy and situation. With the exception of being led around too passively, which is the only thing that I don't like about the first half, I thought the treasure hunt stuff and race against Skavak was pretty good. When you go on to become a privateer for the Republic, it kind of loses focus. I don't think the second half of the story is nearly as compelling until you get to nearly the end where it tries to surprise you. I also kind of thought that dragging out an off-hand reference to Rogun the Butcher from Ord Mantell all the way to the end wasn't really credible. I was saying "Bring Rogun on!" from nearly the beginning, and yet I'm supposed to be running scared from him the entire game? The Republic privateer half promised a kind of Errol Flynn swashbuckling gunfighter in space, but it felt like treading water until they could get to the plot point down the line that they were excited to show at nearly the very end. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure that I loved the idea of being a Republic privateer anyway. I liked the more independent feel of the first half of the story. I know that since everyone converges on the battle of Corellia at the end of their class stories that you can't be too independent, but that was always really the promise of the smuggler and bounty hunter classes in particular, and they didn't do enough to give them some space from the faction, in my opinion. Now, I'm sure it wasn't ever their intention to either, but I think that that independent feel is part of what makes both of those classes appealing as a concept, so they probably should have.
The smuggler has a decent set of companions, I suppose. Corso is the first one you pick up, and he's kind of a dumb bro type of guy. I think he's romanceable if you play a woman smuggler, but he feels a little too dumb for that to make sense to me. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just kind of always focused on some weird small picture item, like his favorite blaster, or something like that. His super-cringe white-knighting personality starts to get old after a while too. The Chewie equivalent, curiously, is also kind of boring; he's just got the typical wookie former slave kind of thing going on, that we've now seen over and over again, as if it's the only thing any writer knows how to do with wookies. Gus is the last companion you pick up, and he quickly became one of my favorites. He's kind of a hapless Admiral Ackbar-looking failed Jedi swindler who's eager to please. They should have had more of him in the game, in my opinion. The two girls are the romance options, and you can do either, actually. One of them is Risha. Although you interact with her for a long time, on your ship no less, she doesn't officially become a companion until after chapter one. Given that it was my intention to "recast" her, i.e., apply a customization to a prettier version, I found this kind of annoying. She's the more obvious romance option, but she plays so hard to get that I almost got tired of trying before it was done. I think the writers were going for the witty banter, Hepburn/Tracy kind of thing, but they didn't really do it very well because she was too bossy and ultimately started to veer into unlikableness, and the main character was too helpless against her banter, which I found really strange. It's almost like the writers don't actually have any idea what the relationship between a successful alpha-type man and a pretty girl actually looks like. Nothing about it rang very true to me. The other romanceable option is Akaavi Spar, the big, burly, Darth Maul looking warrior grrl, who is the least feminine "woman" I could ever have imagined. The very idea that anyone would want to romance her jars my suspension of disbelief.
The two mechanical options are the gunslinger, a typical gunfighter type guy, and the scoundrel, who has a stealth field and focuses on sneaking up and sneak-attacking people. Although his weapon is a pistol, he actually mostly uses it in melee, hitting people in the face with it, which is kind of weird. I use this one a lot as a second option so that I can have a stealth field when I want to skip past stuff, but honestly, I forget to do that except in the most extreme of situations. The gunslinger, on the other hand, is one of my favorite classes to play, and I've got characters of all three specs, and I use it on multiple character types. My very first smuggler was one, but I also have a trooper playing that spec, and an agent on Hutta.
The scoundrel has a heal spec option, although since 99%+ of my play is solo play, I don't really need that. I do have one full Scoundrel character, but otherwise it's just my backup second spec on pistol-using tech characters, in case I need the stealth ability.
How can the smuggler be improved? If you stop worrying about trying to fit what the game thinks your characters want to hear and just doing what you should be doing anyway, the smuggler works better. (Ironically, also true in real life.) It's another case study in how the writers don't seem to know jack squat about what alpha males are really like and what women actually want. It's not so bad that they made the successful men into the villains, like in Revenge of the Nerds or Beauty & the Beast, but if you're willing to take a few hits on companion approval and maybe not flirt with every single NPC that it gives you the opportunity to flirt with (most of whom a real man wouldn't be all that interested in anyway) the smuggler is a much more charming and engaging character to play.
I am a little frustrated that Risha, your default romance option, isn't "officially" a companion until the end of Act I, even though she's on your ship and is an NPC that you interact with a lot. It almost feels like you pick her up at the end of Coruscant, but you don't really do so completely in terms of being able to use her as a companion or customize her appearance. She's also a bit pushy and holds out for too long too, but again, there are structural reasons why it has to be this way, even if it doesn't really feel right from a chemistry perspective. And, of course, you have another romanceable option among your companions, but not one that I can take seriously, so I've never pursued it with any of my many smuggler characters, nor do I intend to. Offering Risha customization early and making her an actual companion and partner would improve it a lot, as well as having an actual alpha, or at least someone who understands normal alpha relationships, give the script a polish would have been nice.
I also feel like the second act where you do privateer work is a bit weak. And the attempted plot twist feels more forced rather than clever or natural. The whole freakin' game I was saying, bring on Rogun "the Butcher", but we're "supposed" to be afraid of him the entire time. Kind of frustrating too. The whole point of a character like the smuggler is that he takes his own destiny in his hands and makes things happen, but you have to be way too much of a follower here. I know; to some degree that's dictated by the structure of the game, but a good writer at least doesn't allow you to notice it so much.
TROOPER
I admit that I expected the trooper to be one of my least favorites, and it ended up being much better than I expected. The very reasons that I expected not to like it do indeed keep it down, but they ended up not being as bad as I feared. Notably, the fact that you're constantly running around doing errands for some CO who's judgement and motivation you couldn't really trust, but because you're a soldier, you don't really have a choice. This is definitely a thing. But there's a lot more going on than just that, which is what I was afraid that there wouldn't be.
In terms of character, the trooper isn't the most interesting guy you'll meet. The voice actor turns out a credible job, but I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be seeing. You can kind of pick his attitude; cocky and bragging, dutiful, etc. with the dialog wheel, but that's mostly just minor roleplaying. Whereas the smuggler has a built in personality, the trooper doesn't really. His playthrough is much more based on plot than on personality.
However, I felt like the moral dilemmas that the trooper was faced with were kind of the only ones that weren't dumb and hoaky. There was actually some decent writing as the trooper had to deal with things like a squad of pilots who'd been thrown under the bus and made the scapegoats for top brass's lack of competence or ethics, how to deal with entitled, meddling politicians when you didn't necessarily trust the motivations or judgement of your own superiors either, what to do about a senior intelligence officer who seemed to be botching a mission and making the wrong call with some friends of one of your companions, an intelligence officer that you knew and liked but who you had to decide to save vs a whole boatload of other prisoners, etc. In general, I don't appreciate the BioWare moral dilemmas, because they don't usually represent real morality or realistic consequences of much of anything. They just feel preachy and dumb. The trooper, on the other hand, really kind of made them more real.
Tracking down a collection of traitors makes up the first half of the plot, and as is sadly all too often the case, the first half of the story was well-focused, and the second half lacks focus until you zero in on the ending. I felt like that was true here again for the trooper, as it was for the smuggler, and frankly, for most of the classes. The second half of the story is recruiting your team, and it not only felt unfocused and kind of weird and contrived, but frustrating, as several of the companions aren't really ones that I'd have picked myself, if I could. But I couldn't; I was simply told that this was going to be my team. For most of the companion recruitment for most classes, it's a bit more subtle; here you're just told that you're going to go recruit this companion just because and the whole planetary class story is about recruiting them. When you head to Corellia to confront your second half of the story nemesis, it's actually kind of weird, because you've only just heard of him, and don't really think of him as much of a nemesis. He was unfortunately not sufficiently built up to work.
I really only liked two of the companions, to be honest with you. The one you pick up on Ord Mantell is too grumpy to enjoy; his constant "On your feet!" because he's healing you when you just quick traveled (why does that always prompt the companions to heal you, anyway?) got really annoying, and I put him in the ship after that. He's the romanceable option for girl troopers, although since he's an alien cat person with a bitter personality, I don't find that very credible. Elara Dorne, the Imperial defector, is probably the most likable one. I like taking her also because even in the story she's supposed to be a medic. It made sense for her to run around with heal spec turned on. She's the romanceable option, and she's a relatively cute romanceable companion. A little stuffier than I'd like in real life (OK, a lot stuffier than I'd like in real life) but it works in the context of this character. M1-4X is a kind of walking "buy war bonds!" ad, but I actually didn't mind him from a roleplaying perspective. However, I did find that because he's a bigger companion than most that he often actually got in the way visually, so I didn't end up using him very often either. The two that you recruit in the later stages, the dishonorably discharged demolitions criminal that you are told to bring back "because he's the best!" regardless of his completely unacceptable behavior, just really bugged me, and the strange alien anthropology class bug-man is dumb too. There are several characters in the game that exist only to showcase their weird alien culture, and in almost all cases I really don't care for what they bring to the table.
The mechanics of the commando were really nice (commando has the big Jesse Ventura from Predator minigun kind of thing.) I loved the explosive rounds, which tended to knock people down, and then you'd laser gun them right to the crotch while they were laying there on their backs on the ground. I did start to feel like some of the "trick ammo" variations weren't really all that different from each other, but for the most part, I thought combat with the commando worked really well and felt like what I'd have expected it to feel like. It also comes with a heal spec, which I've already talked about. My first trooper was a commando, because it felt like the iconic trooper option, but I otherwise haven't used the commando option again, and I've only used the Vanguard rifle trooper option in non-trooper characters; a bounty hunter who specializes in the bowcaster, and a smuggler. Mechanically, the trooper is the mirror image of the bounty hunger, although cosmetically very different, but in reality, his story and role are more like a mirror image of the agent. Although he's billed as a soldier running around in soldier armor like a Clone Trooper or Storm Trooper doing military missions, in reality, he's written much more like James Bond or Jason Bourne. I also like it better when I roleplay it as such; my troopers tend not to be too deferential in personality, because they're independent lone wolves who resent micro-managing COs. So my troopers who aren't using trooper mechanics also don't really look like the iconic troopers; they're regular body build types and wear regular clothes, or more black ops style uniforms rather than armor.
How could the trooper be improved? The plot of the trooper is surprisingly good. I think it would be better if they admitted the obvious; this guy isn't really a soldier, he's more like a spy or hitman; an "asset" as they call them in the Bourne or Bond or Mission Impossible movies. I also feel like the second act when you're recruiting your team falls a little flat; there are a few where you can quite sensibly tell your CO that you don't want this person on your team, but you have to pick him up anyway (Tanno Vik being the most obvious here, but Yuun is also super boring.) The main character himself, again, has the same problem that the Jedi have; the writers want to promote him as a serious yet heroic figure, and they have no idea how to do that without taking out all personality and character, and making the main character that you play super boring. The villains get to have more fun, and the smuggler by his nature, but these three all get really short shrift, because being told what to do by superiors and being good little boys and girls who follow orders without any attitude is what the writers think a good guy hero is, and they can't seem to add anything at all to that without making them boring. But as I said before, the trooper was a pleasant surprise to me; in spite of foreseeing the things that I wouldn't like about it accurately, it turns out that they weren't as bad as I feared, and the other elements were mostly done fairly well.
Elara Dorn is also a surprisingly charming romance option. I mean, as a real man if she were a real woman, I'd probably get tired of pursuing her with the hard to get attitude that she sometimes has, but that's an artifact of the way the game is structured; you can't have the romance finish up too early, so there's nothing else to do about it other than accept that you need to wait until the right pacing moment in the story. I also feel like the trooper suffers more than most in terms of losing focus after Act I is done. This is true to some extent for all of the characters, but what follows for the Trooper until you get to the end is worse than most. Also, the second villain you get isn't very well developed or interesting. This is also consistent across most of the stories, but maybe a bit worse for the trooper than for most.
SITH WARRIOR
The Sith Warrior is the second most iconic of all of the class stories, and serves as a kind of dark mirror in many ways to the most iconic, which is the Jedi Knight. The Sith Warrior seems to be a kind of aristocratic Sith Warrior, although of course he has to prove himself at the Sith Academy on Korriban, and there are many places in his career where he could have been killed ignominiously. The voice actor is British and does a fantastic job. My Sith Warrior was a human male, which seems in some ways the most appropriate, and the story is absolutely fantastic.
I also played the Sith Warrior as a kind of reformer of sorts, who didn't really do the ridiculous "dark side" option all that often when I had a chance to do something more sensible. I suspect that most people who play the Sith Warrior do something similar; picking light side options as often as not, although as mentioned many times, the writers vision of dark and light side is pretty stupid (although consistent with the equally stupid take on it of George Lucas himself.) I just played him as a ruthless kind of guy who wasn't a raging psychopath and actually cared about effectiveness, and let the chips fall as they would. The character himself is fairly serious, although there are definitely lots of moments of dry wit that made me laugh out loud. In many respects, I thought he was a more interesting character than his Jedi counterpart, although I admit that the Sith story and the Imperial faction stories in general didn't grip me quite as much because of the ridiculous cartoon villainy of the Empire that you have to accept more than you'd probably like. I've heard him compared as a character specifically with the Clone Wars era Obiwan Kenobi, in terms of his sarcasm and wit, in particular.
The plot here is also one of the better ones. Darth Baras is the Sith Lord's master for a big chunk of the story, although it's hardly a spoiler to point out that eventually he becomes the final rival that must be defeated at the end of the arc. There's a lot of spy stuff going on, and a frankly kind of silly idea that there's this super special Jedi girl who has a super special power that would wreak havoc on Imperial agents all over the galaxy. While I found this concept a bit McGuffinish in a silly way, the story is otherwise really good. And honestly, it's not any sillier than the premise of most of the other stories, the agent and maybe the trooper and hunter probably excepted. It also involves the high level Imperial politics and what's going on with the Emperor specifically, which is why it's an interesting dark mirror to the Jedi Knight, and the only one (of two) class stories that actually flows in a good way into the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne storylines. The interaction between the Sith Warrior and Darth Baras, who is the third act villain, unsurprisingly, is also extremely well done. I actually thought that in terms of very clear focus prior to Darth Baras' inevitable betrayal, that it probably could have been a little better. Darth Baras' Jedi counterpart and rival was not nearly as compelling a figure, although it did allow for an exploration of the corruption and hypocrisy of the Jedi code and the Jedi structure in general. One of my personal favorite topics in Star Wars, if done well, because it increasingly becomes clear that Lucas' interpretation of the Jedi is flawed and absurd. This theme is even very apparent if the Sith Warrior is a reformer and a light-sider (mostly) seeking to make the Sith more reasonable and effective rather than cartoonishly villainous. But otherwise, this is an interesting mirror of the most of the stories, where the first half was focused and the second struggled to find its footing; I think the Sith Warrior had a more unfocused first half and a much more focused and compelling second half.
The Sith Warrior has a decent collection of companions, compared to some of the ones we've seen in other classes. By this I basically mean that about half of the companions are likeable, and the other half I could take or leave. Vette, the sassy twi'lek girl is the first one you get, and the default romanceable option for male Sith Warriors. I actually didn't romance Vette, because she's a weird blue-skinned alien with tentacles instead of hair, and my Sith Warrior was a good looking human male. He has better options! Or, at least he should, although the game doesn't really provide them. I suspect that its a good romance, because Vette is a charming character, but her alien-ness just kind of turned me off. My second Sith Warrior is pursuing this, but is still in progress. Jaesa is a human female; the former Jedi padawan that you take as your apprentice. You can go dark or light side with her, and I did light-side. The romance with her doesn't progress very well in the normal story; you get to a platonic understanding that having children together would be logical, and that's about it. However, at the end of the expansions, you can have an actual romantic reunion with her that is probably worth the payoff. It's a shame that this wasn't developed, though, as for me, it was a much more likely scenario than a sassy teenaged alien.
Quinn is the next most important character, and he's interesting because he offers some unique moral dilemmas. He's not exactly a likeable character in his own right, but he's an interesting one in terms of what he brings to the story. Pierce, on the other hand, is just the Imperial version of a trooper, and has a kind of boring military story going on, and Broonmark is nothing more than an extra violent Chewbacca or something; he brings very little to the table, and I don't care about him in the least.
The Marauder is a pretty classic Sith feeling mechanics. Its in-your-face aggressive is very much to my style. It's a mirror image to the two-lightsaber Sentinel, and they feel very similar, but somehow it seems to work better with the Sith. The Juggernaut is the alternative to the Jedi Guardian. Because the Sith and Jedi characters use the same weapons, the cosmetic differences between mechanical mirrors are significantly more minor than with the tech characters. I don't actually think it makes a huge difference if you play your characters as Sentinel vs Marauder or Guardian vs Juggernaut, although I've done a handful of characters and represented at least one of all four; one Juggernaut, one Guardian, two Sentinels and two Marauders in my stable so far.
I'd rank the Sith Warrior as one of the better experiences in the game. If you only play one character story, I recommend the Jedi Knight, probably the Guardian with one lightsaber being the most iconic mechanical advanced class option. But if you play two, I probably would recommend the Sith Warrior, specifically as a Marauder as the second most iconically Star Warsian story to play. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that I think that the Sith Warrior or the Jedi Knight is literally the best story, just that its combination of being iconic along with being really good makes them the ones that you should play. And they are actually among the best stories, no matter how you cut it, although a case can be made that the non-Force using Imperial classes are perhaps the "best" stories.
In summary, the Sith Warrior is the dark mirror of the Jedi Knight, and if you sometimes have to choose a few dark side options on the Jedi just to not be a ridiculous parody of a liberal hero, you also have to mostly choose a lot of light side options as the warrior to not be a tactically obtuse, childish psychopath. I personally find the character most enjoyable when I play him as a kind of reformer, who finds the insane dictates of the worst of the Sith counter-productive to the growth and success of the Empire, not to mention worthy of summary execution in its own right. The Sith are maniacs, and while that's kind of how they're supposed to be, it also begs the question of how their society ever formed in the first place, much less managed to last as long as it has. The early stuff in the class story has a kind of rough Spartan agoge feel to it on occasion, which kind of works, but later it's just nothing but insanely counter-productive whims and backstabbery. This weakness carries forward in the faction stories of all of the Imperial classes to a fair degree, but it really only applies as a plot point in the class story that you have to ignore and pretend that it isn't there for the two Sith classes. In the agent class, on the other hand, it's a plot point, but is treated much more reasonably, and the Imperials are constantly careful and cautious and also sometimes kind of resentful of the prominence that the Sith and their stupid ideas are given. For the most part, they do their best to stay out of the Siths' way and ignore them, so that they can competently run an Empire.
Because the Sith Warrior isn't bound to try and be serious and heroic in the minds of writers who don't understand either dimension, he actually is kind of a likeable character and feels like a real person. This is true whether you play him more dark or more light; he's still a more interesting and likeable character. I prefer him, as noted, a bit more light, but I can understand wanting to do either.
While none of the characters hit five home runs with their companions, the Warrior and the Knight both do better than most, and have at least three or four pretty good, interesting ones. Quinn isn't exactly likeable, but he is interesting, and has some interesting plot elements inherent in his story. Vette is a likeable girlfriend, and if she wasn't a funky colored alien without any hair, I'd like her quite a bit better. Jaesa is another really interesting character, but if you run her light-side, she disappointingly doesn't offer the romance option that you kind of want from her. The writers, to their credit, took this feedback and added an expansion romance that is very satisfying; kind of suggesting that you had a lot of romantic tension all along that she tried really hard to put aside, but ultimately failed to do. But the expansion is out of scope for this discussion, so I'll say that I was always just a bit disappointed in the romance department with the Sith Warrior. Jaesa having a real romance option was a must, and having Vette be human would have been nice too. Otherwise, I suppose, if you wait out the class story, Lana Beniko is a very credible romance option for a reasonable and effective Sith Warrior (i.e., kinda light-sidey) being exactly the same kind of character herself.
SITH INQUISITOR
The Sith Inquisitor, on the other hand, is one of the poorer experiences. Perhaps a little better than the Jedi Consular, but not a lot. The character itself and his performance is fine; actually mostly fairly well done. The character isn't really one of the more serious ones, in fact, the cartoony cape-swirling villainy is frequently played up for laughs, and he's frequently put in absurd situations where there's allegedly humor in the absurdity. Sometimes this works OK, sometimes it just makes the whole Inquisitor experience feel like a dumb joke. The character himself is billed as a manipulative, darkly magical analog to Darth Sidious, but he's more like Darth Sidious' retarded older brother who only succeeded at much of anything due to insanely unbelievable levels of dumb luck. Even when the character is repeatedly told quite clearly what's happening, he stumbles right into blatantly obvious traps and insanely stupid hijinks. The Sith Inquisitor class story documents the Team Rocket of Sith Lords.
If the story were billed as a farce, it might have been a little more palatable. As it is, I cringed way too often, and laughed way too infrequently for that to have been successful either. I think it needed to commit to being a farce and gone all in on it.
In any case, the story itself is OK, especially for the first half. Running around binding Sith ghosts wasn't a terrible idea (although, of course, as it turns out, it was a terrible idea, the main character was just too stupid to have figured that out until he'd already done it.) However, the second half of the story it kind of falls apart. Some other Sith Lord takes your dumb luck ascension personally, or so it seems, and becomes your rival, but you never really understand exactly why he cares one way or another, making the entire second half feel extremely forced and plot devicey in a completely unconvincing manner.
The story could maybe have been saved if the companions were cool, but this is actually one of the weaker companion collections out there as well. In fact, for a very long time, the only companion you have is Khem Val, your "morose monster." While not a terrible character, he's pretty one dimensional until a second personality is sucked into the body, at which point, he really becomes the only character in the entire retinue that's actually very interesting. Andronikos Revel, the space pirate, is fine, I suppose, although he's a little too predictable as a generic gangster thug to really be as interesting as he should be. I believe he's the romance option if you play as a female inquisitor, which according to many, is the better way to do it. Not that the male voice actor failed in any way at doing a good job, just that the dry farce nature of the story seems somehow to work better on a girl. Talos Drellik, the Sith archaeologist doesn't offend at least, in a boring professor kind of way, and Xalek, who becomes your bone-faced apprentice is a complete cipher who gets no development at all whatsoever. And finally, you have your love interest, a failed Jedi girl named Ashara Zavros, who's Togruta. She's kind of pushy and unlikeable herself, and her motivation for being on your team never feels convincing. She's one of the weaker romance options, yet she's the only one you get. Not only is she a weird looking alien, but she's not even likeable as a girl. Vette at least has that going for her.
Finally, I didn't really enjoy the Sith Assassin, pretty much for the same reason that I didn't much enjoy the Jedi Shadow. I liked the stealth ability... a lot... but actual combat never felt very interesting or varied, and I ended up button mashing just a few abilities over and over again most of the time. The sorcerer is a more iconic use of the class, all the lightning abilities and whatnot, and a popular option. When on Tython, I see a lot of characters running around blasting flesh raiders with lightning, so they're obviously playing sorcerers. My own Sith Sorceress is reasonably OK, and I also have a second consular playthrough that uses the sorcerer spec. Otherwise, I use the Jedi Shadow and Sith Assassin as stealth capable second specs for most of my force using characters, but I rarely use either for actual playthrough. My very first playthrough on both classes (long before they split the mechanics from the story) were double-bladed lightsaber types, and I think I got a little burned out on playing them.
To improve the Inquisitor? The main character himself or herself—and this is probably the only class story where I actually think it works a little better as a woman—isn't really too bad, although it's a victim of not really delivering what they implied that it was. You're supposed to be cunning, manipulative, like Palpatine, but you're just a dumb bro succeeding by dumb luck and being led around by the nose non-stop by other NPCs. And the companions are mostly pretty lackluster, and the plot is mostly kind of silly. To the point that you wish that they'd committed to making it a farce instead of trying to pretend that we can take it with a straight face. If the whole thing had been more light-hearted, the plot itself could have worked. But the character really needs better companions. If you play a girl, you have a serviceable if pedestrian romance option, but if you play as a guy, all you get is a severely unlikeable weird alien girl. Apparently, Khem Val is romanceable, although only in the Ossus+ expansions where super gay and weird options were something that they made a point of offering. I can't imagine it for either a man or a women; the "morose monster" is, at best, only vaguely humanoid to begin with. You don't get Ashara, the romanceable alien, until you finish Taris, which is not as bad as the consular getting Nadia Grell on Quesh, or wherever it is that you finally pick her up as a companion, but it's still too late, in my opinion. Romanceable characters should be available on the first or second planet, so you can have plenty of time to interact with them and establish the romance.
The villain is also really flat. You never really understand what his beef is with you, or why either of you should care one way or another about each other.
BOUNTY HUNTER
Well... the bounty hunter isn't universally loved, I should add. I personally love it, and I think in the wake of the Mandalorian show, its popularity has gone up. But many people think it's kind of too straightforward and less interesting than it could be. I can't remember anyone ever really saying that they disliked it, but I think many fans think it's more middle of the road. The only real complaint I had with it is that it wanted so badly to be an independent freelancer, but was tied to the Imperial faction because you have to have a faction. It was really interesting and frustrating if you were going back and forth between class story quests and faction story quests on a given planet to go out of your way to point out that you weren't Imperial only to be told in the next quest how Imperial you were.
The gist of the story is that you're a new hunter; high in calibre and talent, but low in experience and name recognition, and you've been recruited by an outside coach to join the Great Hunt, a big Mandalorian-led competition for bounty hunters that allows you to quickly make a grab at fame, fortune and the big time if you're successful. A cheating scumbag murders most of your team in the first few moments of the story; while still on the starter planet of Hutta, actually and becomes your rival until the end of Chapter one, where you finish the Great Hunt.
The second half, as in many of the stories, lacks some focus for a while; you've won the Great Hunt, so now what? Big bounties, but they're just kind of all over the place until you find yourself the target of the biggest bounty in the galaxy thanks to corruption in (you probably guessed it) the Jedi order and the highest Republic political echelons, who want you taken down in revenge for other bounties that you've done in the past. At this point, the plot gets into the kind of tense desperation that makes a good thriller good, and it offers (if you choose to take it, of course) one of the most satisfying conclusions of all of the class stories.
The voice acting for the bounty hunter is really top notch; a deep, gravelly voice that is perfect for the role. He does, sometimes, say something too frequently that is a variation on "all I care about is getting paid" but as the character develops, if you pick the right options to develop him, this improves significantly. I have a hard time imaging the character as a girl, but the female voice actor also delivered a good performance. I play very, very few female characters of any class, though.
The bounty hunter has pretty good rivals too. Your rival in the Great Hunt is not quite as good as Skavak from the smuggler story, but has a similar vibe, and I liked taking him down. I liked, honestly, that I had the option to just leave him to die ignominiously rather than having to kill him, too. The rivals you develop at the end; the rogue Jedi and the Sith Lord who's pulling your strings, are pretty good too, if perhaps a touch underdeveloped. The Sith Lord in particular I hated, and I was itching for an opportunity to take him down after first meeting him and having him choke one of my companions (it was even Mako, I think). Having the option to go take him down and do some freelance for a Republic politician who was willing to clear the air at the cost of his career, was awesome... as well as an interesting piece of the puzzle; in all of the Republic stories, you kind of wondered why the role changed from one character to another. Here, you see why. In fact, it really lived up to the promise of the bounty hunter as a free agent, unattached to the faction, and capable of doing whatever he wanted to. (It helped that by this point, I'd maxed out my character level, so I'd stopped doing the faction stories too. If you're doing the faction stories along with the class stories, you don't get that feel nearly as strongly, because the faction stories keep pulling you back in.)
So that's the character and the plot/rivals. Among my favorite in the game. I admit that the opening premise felt a little contrived, but it picked up quickly and started working very well. Running around in the slums of Hutta doing gangster stuff with a Hutt Lord so he'd sponsor you off of his stinking rock felt very "on brand" for the class as well. I don't hesitate to recommend the bounty hunter to anyone and never did.
The bounty hunter also has some of the better companion characters. You start off with Mako, who's also your default love interest, voiced by Lacey Chabert. I'm not sure what she's famous for, but I always think of her as the youngest sister in Party of Five and I think she was one of the two girls who hung around with Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls. She knows her stuff. She's one of the better romanceable partners, in my opinion, although she holds out for "don't get involved with work partners" principle for too long, when you could be seeing more cuteness instead. Still, even so, I thought she was the equal of Kira with the Jedi Knight in terms of likeable romanceable partners, which puts her at the top of the heap. She's also one of the few romanceable characters who I didn't think there was any need to apply a customization to make her prettier, either—although I do for variety because I've played through this story several times. Gault Rennow is also one of my favorite characters, and his comments make him one to bring out with you more often than not.
Blizz, the eager to please Jawa tinkerer is kind of a fan favorite, although he feels more like a puppy dog than a companion to me. Torian is fine. He tries too hard to talk about Mandalorianism way too much for my taste, but I get it; a lot of fans really like the Mandalorian ethnography stuff. Skadge is the last companion you pick up, and he's usually flagged as one of the worst companions in the entire companion roster of any character period. I agree, but you don't actually get exposed to too much of him, which helps.
I played the class first as a powertech, specifically a pyrotech, so I was really, really into the flamethrower stuff. I think that the bounty hunter mechanics work very well with the character, and I enjoyed the area attacks with fire most especially. While you're supposedly supposed to be heavily armed and armored, it may not feel too much like it. A lot of the attacks come from "hidden" accoutrements on your suit, I suppose, but you only actually wield a single pistol. This is probably fine if you get a big enough one (I had a massive piece that I bought on the fleet right after Hutta from the bounty broker vendor. It was so good that I never once felt at all like swapping it out. It really looks the part. I love that gun.) The "other" class, on the other hand, is a duel pistol wielding gunfighter, which seems a little odd given that mechanically he's a mirror of the commando, the trooper that has the big minigun. I absolutely love both versions of the class and I've used them for many tech characters; I have a powertech agent, a powertech trooper, a powertech smuggler and a powertech hunter, as well as a mercenary smuggler and two mercenary hunters. As mentioned, the hunter is "advertised" as a heavily armored soldier, not unlike a Mandalorian, but the mechanics mostly feel like what you'd expect from a space cowboy or gunfighter. Most of my characters using this class are cosmetically accoutered in regular clothes; what people "associate" I suppose more with the smuggler.
How to improve the hunter experience? The hunter plot isn't super complex or deep until the very end, but it works OK to just get you moving. The whole concept of the Great Hunt is a little dubious, but once you accept it, it works fine and some of the hunts in particular are actually fairly interesting. This is especially true for the Eidolon on Nar Shaddaa and Tiresias Lokai on Tatooine. As weak as the Great Hunt motivation is in some ways, it does seem to feel a little better than what follows, where you're still doing hunts, but the motivation for doing them seems even weaker. The Great Hunt contrivance is contrived and forced, a bit, but the Black List is worse. It's a little bit of a shame that the writers couldn't quite manage to rise above what they did and create something that feels just a bit more compelling. Should have probably watched more classic westerns and gangster movies before writing this. There's nothing wrong with what we got, it just feels a little too safe and not quite creative enough somehow. A kind of deja vu, too obvious plot.
I don't really love Torian Cadera as a companion, because I don't really love the standard EU presentation of Mandalorians, but I'm sure that I'm the exception there; I think otherwise that's kind of popular. Mako is one of the best girlfriends in the game, in my opinion, and Gault is pretty fun. Blizz is... whatever, and I don't know why I have to take Skadge at all; in a realistic world, I'd never accept him on my ship; I'd have killed him as quickly as I could in game as a psychopathic criminal and villain who had started targeting me and my crew to scam. Mako is also your first companion, way back on planet one, which is really how most of the girlfriends characters should be, honestly. Kyra being at the end of planet two is the only other acceptable alternative, and all of the other classes who don't do that are doing it wrong.
I'm not sure how they could have done this without making the game quite a bit bigger than it is, but the attraction of the smuggler and hunter in particular is that you kind of want to disassociate them from the faction. The smuggler isn't really a Republic agent, just like the hunter isn't an Imperial one, but you're constantly dragged back in as if by an inescapable event horizon.
IMPERIAL AGENT
While the bounty hunter seems popular enough, I suspect that my esteem for it as literally one of the best character stories is probably unusual. This is not the case with the agent. Most fans of the game will point to this story, and even if it's not to their liking personally, they have to admit that it's one of the better written and most interesting of the stories. If nothing else, it's got more meaningful options that affect the conclusion of the story than any other class. It cleaves very tightly to the conventions of its genre and what makes its genre so successful (although, again, to be fair, that genre isn't space opera. It's spy movies and other types of thrillers.) It offers some unique perspectives; an actual patriotic Imperial agent who cares about the Empire and believes in its cause for the right reasons, but who has to navigate the craziness of working around the Sith all of the time. (The implicit conflict between the Sith as a caste in Imperial society vs non-Sith is an interesting background vibe that never really completely leaves the Agent's storyline.)
I think it's this actual character trait of the agent that makes it so compelling. The understated, quiet British accent is perfect for the role, and no doubt plays a part in why it is so often compared to James Bond specifically, instead of other spy thrillers like something written by James Patterson or Tom Clancy, even though it invites comparison to them just as readily. The agent is a servant of the Imperial government, but he never once really feels like a villain; he's a sympathetic, likeable and relatable guy who wants to see his people succeed. There's even a bunch of special lines of dialogue available to people who play a non-human agent, and the "iconic" agent was probably envisioned to be a Chiss sniper.
I've already mentioned that the plotline here are probably the strongest point of the class; more than most other classes, it simply doesn't feel like "oh, we have to go to this planet because it's a design parameter of the game to have us go here next, so cram something in and make it fit." The agent class story feels more natural and simply better written than any of the other stories. It also manages to come up with a lot of the natural tension that thrillers have, and keep it there, which is quite a feat given the kind of laissez-faire wander around doing whatever quest is closest to you at the moment feel of the game. Your pulse is never too far from the central issue of the class story, whether it be trying to stop imminent terrorist attacks, trying to undo Manchurian Candidate mental conditioning that is taking away your agency, or trying to stop a shadowy cabal of movers and shakers that no other class story even imagines exists.
However, all is not roses on the agent's front. Unfortunately, in spite of these manifest strengths, the agent has among the worst companions you can get in game. In fact, you're stuck with literally one of the worst ones for a very long time. Luckily for me, I have access from the get-go to some non-story companions, like Shae Viszla and Treek, etc., so I benched Kaliyo, the worst girlfriend in the galaxy, and talked to her as infrequently as possible. She's also supposed to be the default romance option, which is ludicrous, as she's the most unlikeable girl in the entire lineup of frequently unlikeable and unattractive girls. I shut her down hard, and would have loved to not even take her on as a companion at all if I could have. Luckily, there's a late alternate romance option that's not terrible, a girl you pick up on Hoth who's been on assignment to the Chiss. Her voice actress is a blonde Aussie, but the character herself, for some reason, is black with close cropped hair. I swapped her out for a much prettier white girl option and romanced her. It was... OK. A little rushed as late-appearing companions always are, but certainly preferable to the bald crazy alien chick who only makes super beta woke retards excited. In her backstory, her dad had saved her from being shipped off to the Sith Academy to fail because she had a minor gift, and she was ungrateful and threw him under the bus. I think that was supposed to be a reflection on the Empire, but it feels like a reflection on her, and not for the best. But Kaliyo is literally the worst. The writers were apparently surprised and caught off-guard that there was strong demand in the player base to be able to kill her off in the Expansion. These writers are pretty clueless. That's exactly what I wanted to do the moment I first saw her.
Besides these two romanceable options, the rest of the companions aren't that great either. You spend a fair bit of time with Vector, and I think he's the romanceable option if your character is a girl. Sadly, he's one of those anthropology lesson characters, who just talks about alien culture all the time. Given that he's a human who's been partially "assimilated" by a bunch of super creepy bugs, I didn't find him particularly likeable either; in fact, he kind of creeped me out, and if I could have chosen to not take him on at all, I would have done so.
You also get SCORPIO, the completely untrustworthy, egomaniacal robot girl with a serious superiority complex. Another iffy choice. And finally, you get Dr. Lokin, a middle-aged scientist spy with a Bruce Banner "anger management" issue of sorts. It's telling that of all of the companions, he's one of the least offensive to have around.
I played the agent as a Sniper originally, but I've also played an Operative. Mechanically, they are mirror images of the smuggler classes, although with very different cosmetics; the sniper rifle is the same as the two pistol gunslinger, and the blaster rifle Operative is the same as the single pistol scoundrel. I use the Operative a lot as my backup tech combat spec, but otherwise, I've only played through with it once, and don't intend on doing so again. But I've used the sniper quite a bit; I have a sniper trooper (chiss even, so he can look like the "iconic" agent) and a sniper bounty hunter. I love playing the sniper in particular, just like I love the gunslinger.
Although now that weapon cosmetics are part of the outfitter, I look like I'm carrying a blaster rifle rather than a sniper rifle. The sniper rifles are simply way too long to believe that you actually run around carrying that thing on your back.
In summary, the agent has a really interesting story, and although there is occasionally a loss of agency (no pun intended) inherent in it, the plot is probably among the best of all of the class stories. However, the companions are among the worst in the game. The only one that I really like is Raina Temple, but even then I have to swap her out for a prettier customization, and you get her way too late to have a credible romance with her. Kaliyo, who's supposed to be your romance option, just isn't attractive at all in looks, in personality, and especially in baggage. The idea that any man of value would have an interest in a woman like that is laughable. What's wrong with the writers? Are there not any actual men among them, only really toxic betas and women? A better romance companion, which you pick up earlier, and better companions in general is the main thing that the agent story needs.
All in all, I can heartily recommend both of the imperial tech classes. Neither are perfect, but both offer a top-notch experience all the same. The bounty hunter is brought down occasionally by its unfocused "treading water" sections of the plot, and the agent is brought down by the absolutely terrible companion characters. But in spite of those weaknesses, they both still manage to be among my favorite experiences in the game. In part, precisely because they weren't iconic Star Wars stories, but stories from another genre; a western or hardboiled crime story and a spy thriller, yet grafted pretty seamlessly on top of the space opera Star Wars setting.
FORCED RANKINGS
So for my more objective "what should I play if I'm new" ranking, I think I'll go with the following:
- Jedi Consular - poor story (relatively), poor character, poor companions. The obvious worst of the bunch.
- Sith Inquisitor - silly story that doesn't match the expectation, not quite silly enough to be the farce that it's trying to be, mediocre companion selection. The obvious second worst
- Republic Trooper - occasionally rocky story, occasionally boring main character, but not being a military regular as advertised actually improved this quite a bit.
- Smuggler - for a charming ladies man, he's surprisingly cringy and hapless, and the fetchit multiple McGuffin quest of the first chapter was a potentially interesting but poorly executed idea, and the privateer stuff was unfocused and boring.
- Bounty Hunter - ever wanted to play Boba Fett (before Disney screwed him up) or the Mandalorian, or just plain a gangster or cowboy gunfighter in space? This is your guy. The main story premise is a little weaker than I'd like, but it's a fun experience, and what Star Wars has done in the last few years has probably made this even more attractive then it was when the game launched.
- Imperial Agent - brilliant story, terrible companions. Only not higher because the story is not really very iconically Star Wars, and doing James Bond or Jason Bourne in space isn't what people expect from Star Wars. So play the Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight first, but then play this one next. It's actually the best story, I think, and one of the best experiences in the game.
- Sith Warrior - very classic Star Wars, super iconic, tons of fun. Kind of a darker, more laconic mirror image of the Jedi Knight rather than the Darth Vader fantasy, although if you want to play Darth Vader as this character, you kind of can.
- Jedi Knight - brought down by a boring main character and a poor opening planet experience, this picks up to be the most iconic of the class stories, and if you only play one, I absolutely think it should be this one.
- Jedi Consular - my least favorite. I deleted my OG consular, he never even maxxed level, and I only reluctantly started a second one with different mechanics to see if I could salvage the story by running it a bit differently.
- Sith Inquisitor - my second least favorite, but while having a hapless cute sorceress rather than a kind of nerdy Goth guy as my main character, and leaning as much as I can into the farce, it works a little better.
- Republic Trooper - Although considerably better than I expected, and on par with the rest of the "top six" as a pretty good story, I think it's the weakest of them due to some structural elements of the plot and the relatively boring main character.
- Jedi Knight - great story if you want wild, swashbuckling capes & rayguns space opera action. Terrible main character can be improved a bit by making some iconoclast "dark side" choices here and there, but it's still the weakest aspect of playing the Knight.
- Sith Warrior - although as a villain, he's slightly less iconic, the character himself fits the story better, and the plot is just as good.
- Smuggler - needs a lot of massaging by picking dialogue options that the game kind of discourages you from making, but it doesn't actually very often mess up your story to do so. I wish this were even better, because I absolutely love the concept of this character. But he doesn't quite live up to his potential.
- Imperial Agent - the best story and plot, a good main character, really frustrating companions and a bit too much deus ex machina from time to time.
- Bounty Hunter - not only do I absolutely love the concept, but the whole experience is extremely well-rounded. It's not the best plot, but it's good. He's not the most interesting character all of the time, although you can play him like a normal person or like a real jerk—and the latter isn't as fun. But he's good. His companions (minus Skadge) are pretty good. His girlfriend is tied for one of the best in the game. And he's got the great crime story, western gunfighter vibe going on, and keeps his distance from the Imperial hierarchy. Honestly, he's at his best when he's not even doing anything Imperial at all.
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