Kay I'm a huge star wars fan, so I'll tell you Nar shada is a big piece in star wars lore even in origional trilogy era, In the books, comics and games based then which expanded the story, chiss = grand admiral thawn huge bad guy in universe nearly beats rebels, sith are well emperor and darth vader and are one of the biggest pieces of lore. Taris are key parts of the KotOR story. For the darth malagus point, well anakin skywalker (darth vader) is a long way from being born yet.
For the point of it being better in film era my view would be it would suck. Because it would be star wars battlefront. You could have no jedi, maybe an odd sith but in reality you would only have spys, soldiers and smugglers/bounty hunters. Because it is some years after the return of the jedi luke reestablishes the jedi order, and vader and the emperor train very few sith, those that are trained usually die quickly.