I've played through 5 of them to the end of Chapter 3 so far (Consular, Warrior, Knight, Agent, Inquisitor) and the Trooper up to Belsavis. The only one that really stands out is the Imperial Agent. It's the best written and also the only one which I want to replay to see the different choices. It's too bad you can't just replay the class story and I just don't have the time to level another Agent to 50.

I think it's less a problem with Ashara than with the game's presentation of Light and Dark. It's true that the Taris storyline is messed up -- you can get some bizarre outcomes -- but beyond that, there is nothing wrong with Ashara. She does fall to the Dark Side; you can see it in the various conversations like the one where she concludes that "peace is a lie." She keeps saying that she is still a Jedi to reassure herself, but most Jedi (even open-minded ones) laugh at her when she says that. What Ashara does not do is become a murderous psychopath. She is not a Jedi when it comes to pride, emotion, peace, etc., but she doesn't do evil for the sake of being evil. The reason it doesn't feel like she has fallen is that the vast majority of the Dark Side choices in this game are Evil with a capital E -- basically Saturday morning cartoon villain stuff. When the situation is more sophisticated than that (e.g. the Mother on Belsavis), she is happy with the Dark Side choice. So no, I don't think she was intended to be like Jaesa, especially since the people who want an apprentice that kills without mercy or remorse get Xalek.

The problem is that the game just isn't designed in a way that allows the player to make up their own plans. None of the classes can do it, but for some (e.g. the Trooper) it makes sense to follow orders all the time whereas for the Inquisitor it really doesn't. The Friendly Neighborhood Force Ghost actually calls you on it at the end of Chapter 1. Redacting for spoilers, he says something like "This is the second time you stick your nose where it doesn't belong without even the slightest idea of what is in there. Shouldn't you have a plan or something?" I would if I could, dude, I would if I could.

My suggestion is not to think of it as a single story. It's really 4 shorter stories about the same character. They lead into each other, but there is otherwise very little connection between them. There's a running theme of masters and apprentices, but it's not enough to truly link them. Also, I would second the suggestion to play Light Side. At the very least, the second story makes very little sense with a Dark Side character.

I disagree. One of the nice things about having 8 distinct storylines in one game is that it allows them to be quite different. The Jedi Knight is the archetypal hero described by Joseph Campbell in the form almost certainly inspired by Luke Skywalker. The Imperial Agent is a variation on the theme of James Bond. The Sith Warrior is the Star Wars version of a mafia enforcer story. The Jedi Consular is a story about the relationships between Jedi masters and apprentices. I haven't finished the others yet, but the Sith Inquisitor appears to be a sort of Indiana Jones type. Having the Campbellian hero around doesn't make all of the other storylines insignificant; they just have a different scope (and not even that different -- galaxy-changing outcomes seem to be shoehorned into every class story).

I feel this way a little bit, though the only time it really bites is on Imperial Taris. Not only are the Imperial characters systematically undoing all of the good done by the Republic ones, but they're doing it for no real purpose. Unlike, say, Republic Balmorra, the Empire is not out to conquer, they simply destroy everything in sight (including the environment) in some bizarre rendition of "We destroyed it 300 years ago and it's bloody well going to stay destroyed." What makes it even more galling is that if you played the original KoTOR, you know that the initial destruction of Taris was completely pointless -- Malak was trying to kill a very specific group of people and all of them escaped.

Ah, but think it through. It is indeed true that the Planet Prison is a relatively peaceful blockade when applied to a world like Earth (or Dantooine or Voss), but Coruscant is a city world and, like most cities, it imports most of its food. We are explicitly told this because Uphrades is one of the main worlds supplying it. Indiscriminately blocking all travel means that Coruscant's citizens (which number somewhere between hundreds of billions and several trillions) would starve. Millions would die just in the initial food riots once people figured out what happened. If there is no way to quickly undo the damage to the atmosphere (and we are not told of any), the death toll would certainly be in the billions, perhaps even tens or hundreds of them. I will grant you that the damage to the planet would not be as great as that inflicted by the Desolator, but the number of casualties would be higher by at least an order of magnitude and possibly by several orders of magnitude. Also, based on the quote here, Tarnis and Angral were not after mere concessions -- they wanted surrender. This was meant to be a decapitating strike.

Actually, we do know that Angral was planning to destroy Republic worlds regardless of the Knight. Remember that the reason Tarnis dies in the first place is because he was trying to activate the Planet Prison and fought to the death to prevent the Knight from stopping it. This would have caused immense damage to Coruscant and billions of deaths (for comparison, the total population of Uphrades was around 16 million). The Knight walks in on Angral gloating and congratulating Tarnis on his accomplishments. Yes, killing his son angered Angral beyond all reason and led him to swear vengeance against the Jedi in general and the Knight in particular, but it it did not cause him to destroy Republic worlds -- he was in the process of doing just that literally before the Knight walks into the picture. I am not sure why you think so. The Knight (played Light Side) is the clearest example of the heroic archetype in the game. Sure, things in the story go wrong, but not because of anything the Hero does (it's mainly because the Republic military is incompetent and the Jedi Council is only slightly better).

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

They arguably get more resources, but, more importantly, they do not allow the ethical implications of a method to deter them from using it. For example, even leaving aside the frequent use of torture, they are perfectly comfortable with truth serum (see Jedi Knight storyline), outright mind control and genetically engineering analysts who are brilliant, but... well, play the Imperial Agent storyline and see. The Republic doesn't have this kind of technology because for the most part, it is reluctant to officially condone evil. Some individuals from the SIS do use such means (ironically, when they are provided by Imperial Intelligence), but it's halfhearted at best and doesn't work out well. All of that said, if you play the Imperial Agent, you'll see how their ruthlessness can hilariously backfire and... let's just say that Imperial Intelligence outclassing the SIS at the end of the story is a rather debatable statement.

No, I play it because of the stories. I've long wanted to play a game with several different central plots depending on your character and it looks like this is as close to that as I will get for the foreseeable future. SWTOR has a lot of flaws (some are intrinsic to any MMO, some are specific to this one), but it is fun enough to keep playing until I finish it with all 8 classes. I doubt I will stay after that -- I cannot for the life of me see what people find interesting about doing the same missions over and over again. Hopefully Wasteland 2 and/or Project Eternity will be out soon afterwards.

It's sort of addressed in the Jedi Knight followup quest (The Emperor's Orphans or something like that; Kira gives it to you). He's still around in some form, but whatever that form is, he's basically incoherent. At the very least, what the Jedi Knight did severely traumatized the Emperor and at most, it drove him insane.

It does depend on the build, but I found him to be more difficult than the final boss. His immunity takes away a lot of the best abilities of my Juggernaut.

To be fair, if the Sith Warrior fight on Corellia is the one I'm thinking of, then there's a reason for wanting to do it in a group since it's the hardest fight in the story (harder than the final boss). The guy has boss immunity so Force Choke only does damage (no stun or even interrupt), Force Push doesn't work at all and you're left with only one interrupt which you have to use on the right ability. I did it on my own, but it took me something like 3 tries, a gear upgrade and the Heroic Moment ability which I almost never had to use with my Juggernaut.

The Jedi are generally good with some instances of fallen, corrupt and otherwise evil people. The Sith are the opposite: they are generally evil with some instances of good. I don't think saying "there is no good or bad" makes any sense here -- if you play through the class stories, the Empire is systematically Evil with a capital E to an almost cartoonish degree. It starts with the Emperor himself (his plan is fully detailed in the Jedi Knight story) and pervades the entire structure from the Dark Council through the rank and file and down to the lowest acolytes and soldiers. There are some good people there and the player can choose to be one of them (mostly -- some stories force your hand), but by and large the Empire is rotten to the core.

No, there is no reason to train it -- but I looked at my level 50 Sage, and there appears to be no option to do so either (it has no rank). Why do you ask?

Unlikely. The problem is that there are so many of them. You may get some reactions in terms of +/- affection since that costs Bioware basically nothing and at most they might mail you letters, but I doubt there will be anything that involves voice acting. This is the drawback of fully voiced games: you need to hire an actor back to add dialog for any character. It's also why the new companions will probably be either available to all (like HK-47) or at most faction specific (i.e. not one per class).

No. Everything adds to your main stat and Endurance, but only the main hand and offhand slots determine your base damage and give a direct Force/Tech bonus. Thus, having a purple in those slots is much more effective than having it anywhere else.

The problem here is not expertise in open world PvP, it's that they put PvE missions in a PvP area. There is nothing about either of those missions that requires PvP. In fact, the droid-killing mission is exactly the same as half the PvE missions in this game (defeat enemies until you get X of one item and Y of another, then defeat a more powerful enemy). The pylon mission can be argued to be more PvP oriented because the main obstacle (if you can call it that) is the cooldown of the pylon so it's beneficial to have fewer players around, but given that the exploding orbs do quite a bit of damage regardless of the gear, it's not obvious that fighting over the pylon is a good idea. In fact, I very much suspect it's more efficient not to fight at all (hence the queues). Basically, people (including myself) go into the PvP area in PvE gear because the missions are PvE. This type of setup is a paradise for griefers: not only can they attack people in PvE gear, but they can also attack after a group or an individual has been worn down by PvE combat or with a larger group against a smaller one. That said, I've been going there alone (or at most in a pair) in PvE gear and I've only been attacked twice (and a third time when I was not actually in the PvP area at all nor even flagged, but somebody deliberately walked into an AOE of mine and then attacked me). I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of players on the Ebon Hawk server.

It was the original KotOR -- you were on Manaan (the Selkath ocean planet). But hey, you did go in water deeper than your waist so I think Sentry_gun owes somebody a roast dinner...

They were not referring to killing random critters on Ilum. It's a very specific trick: you need to be in a 4-person group and spawn the packs of elites, kill them then reset the quest and rapidly do it over and over again. The main thing it exploits is the "bolster" which allows a character of any level to be in a group with level 45-50 characters. The secondary things are the doubled XP and the quest resetting mechanics.

Slicing is an odd skill. On the one hand, it is indeed quite useful for missions discoveries and augments, but on the other, it doesn't really replace either of the two skills needed for any given crafting skill (for Cybertech, these are Scavenging and Underworld Trading). I have found that it works best when you have multiple characters in your legacy and each of them has different skills so they can send each other materials and you don't have to pay the exorbitant costs on the GTN.

If you want to use them, then yes. Keep in mind that you haven't missed out on much: for the mission and crafting skills, it doesn't matter when you do them (unless of course you want to use the crafted items as you are leveling). It's only the gathering skills that will require more effort and cash since you're not getting the "free" stuff lying around every planet. Also, the lower level skills are cheap and you get to send out many companions at once so you should be fine.

Has anyone tried doing this? I'm playing a Jedi Knight now and there's an option to explicitly ask the NPC that gives you the quests to go to Taris and Nar Shaddaa where you should go first. He replies something like "Let your Jedi intuition guide you." This would be well and good... but Taris is levels 16-20 and Nar Shaddaa is levels 20-24. My Sentinel is halfway between levels 18 and 19 so I could in principle go to Nar Shaddaa immediately (it would be tough, but not impossible). However, if I did that, I wouldn't get any XP from Taris since I'd be way over-leveled for it by the time I'm done with Nar Shaddaa. Has anybody tried this, either with Taris or, on the Imperial side, Balmorra? Does the game somehow account for it or is this a case of the story giving you a choice and the gameplay taking it away?

I would suggest playing the Imperial stories, but pick the opposite advanced class for each character from your Republic counterparts (i.e. if your Consular was a Sage, make your Inquisitor an Assassin or, if the former was a Shadow, make the latter a Sorcerer). I've found that this keeps the gameplay from getting stale and the stories are completely different. As to what to do with the level 50 ones... the best use for them I've found is to supply the newer characters with money and crafted items. Characters will be more powerful and level faster with somebody feeding them purple items and cash to buy all of those legacy perks. Also, make sure to max out companion affection for the Republic characters (force feed them gifts if you have to) as this increases the Presence for every character in your Legacy and makes your companions more powerful.