The Shrine

So which one have you played and which, if any, is noteworthy? After all they made story a big deal in this game.

For me:

Sith Warrior (chapter 1) - Seems pretty straightforward, you're some apprentice that probably ends up killing everyone. Darth Baras is actually pretty cool.

Sith Inquisitor (finished) - This is the archtypical Sith story where you shoot lightning at everyone and it's easier to keep track of the NPCs that you didn't kill as opposed to the NPCs you did kill. It's nothing groundbreaking but it's just fun to kill everyone you see.

Bounty Hunter (chapter 3) - You pretty much just shoot everyone if someone gives you money. I never got the feeling the Bounty Hunter was supposed to be an important guy since he's just a gun for hire. It'd probably help if all the Mandolorian super elite guys from the last 10 years got wiped out 1 strong + 3 weak Republic agents.

Imperial Agent (chapter 2) - Watcher X reminds me of Metal Gear Solid a lot. He really should do a 'I am your father' thing. The Imperial Agent could easily be based on his genes and stuff, and really I have no idea why the heck you're fighting these Republic agents after you beat Watcher X who could probably kill all of them while sitting on a wheelchair. I mean, this guy escaped a prison while he has a bomb in his head that's supposed to prevent him from escaping! I don't know at this point if Watcher X is going to return toward the end but it'd literally have to be a Liquid Snake's hand possess someone else thing if he somehow comes back to life ("being dead limits my resources.")

Completed Imperial Agent, Jedi Knight, and Consular. Finished Chapter two for Sith Warrior. Began chapter two with bounty hunter, trooper, smuggler, and inquisitor.

Imperial agents had the best story by far. I killed Watcher X for Kaliyo in chapter one. He basically saves your ass via dream/craziness or somewhat in person depending on you letting him go. Agents are the only class that still get X and Y choices but with lots and lots of variables in between, so it plays out in an interesting way. You're fighting the republic agents because that's the mission you're given. They brainwash you and give you a trigger word that makes you follow their orders so obediently they could order you to stop breathing and you'd die. The choice here is to play along or all but join the republic. I found brainwashing to be such an appalling tactic that I didn't mind killing every single republic agent in cold blood. The big moral choice here when deciding to all but join the Republic, is letting some young republic agent bleed out rather than save him. Fuck him. Even if this wasn't my first dark side character, I would have killed them all. Conditioning my brain to unconditionally follow orders? Really? Die. Story ends up with you realizing that there's a mysterious group that has created a conspiracy that manages to manipulate Jedi and Sith and Republic and Empire. You spend chapter three finding out how you can kill all of them. The end is so god damned secret agent-y that it's actually exciting. Hearing the voice actor slip in and out of his Imperial accent in this storyline depending on who he's talking to was very well done.

Jedi Knight is kind of standard after chapter one. And God fuck you, Bioware, for making some of the fights RIDICULOUSLY hard compared to EVERY other class, including their mirror class.

My light side Sith Warrior was fun but it was as if they made Jaesa ignore everything you did. They clearly assumed basically everyone would go dark side with the warrior (correctly, almost certainly) and did some rather shoddy work on her being light side instead of dark side. It is cool how they allowed you to make her light side or dark side in the end of chapter one though.

I thought the inquisitor story was boring as hell after chapter one.

Consular got kind of lackluster at chapter three. Being a diplomat with a light saber sounds cooler than it is. Doing it for two chapters is less cool. The love interest, as she is the last companion added, is woefully rushed and just doesn't seem correct to me.

BH and Trooper were fun but I was never all that invested in giving their story more of a chance.

I never looked up smuggler's chapter three but I didn't like chapter one and two so screw it.

No I mean compared to Watcher X basically all the other guys are newbs. The guy escaped while having a bomb in his head, which is considerable worse than just being brainwashed because you could just kill the guy before they say the key word, or just program yourself to kill them (yes it might suck if you program yourself to kill X and never did and have to spend your life chasing him, but like you said it's not worse than being programmed to stop breathing so might as wel do it). The whole brainwashing thing seems like something out of Detective School Q where the bad guys use magic words to brainwash people, and while the concept is okay the brainwashing/conspiracy stuff just doesn't feel all that exciting after Watcher X. This guy is the equivalent of Big Boss in the spy business.

SI story is pretty boring, but I think the whole point of the story is that you get to shoot lightning at everyone.

I was a light side inquisitor so I didn't even get to do THAT :D

Also I took Watcher X as a less successful version of the player as the Agent, as well as being a possible future. He couldn't control his intellect and it drove him insane. The Agent is limited in that he has none of the enhancements as Watcher X but he's just about as talented. Killing him was the first and only light side choice I made as an Agent until the end of chapter 3. Also I felt like being robbed of free will at the whim of the Republic was inexcusable. Getting to kill them was the closest I felt to glee while playing the dark side. Seriously, fuck those guys. The big motivation I felt for getting through chapter two was getting to rub their failure in their faces before killing them. The conspiracy you uncover in chapter three doesn't have that same urgency, but the build up to the end is about as good as the SWTOR plots get.

Did you finish chapter one before or after the Legacy patch? God damn that mission was (is?) buggy. If you didn't pull Darth Jadus or whatever his name was from that spot you had to contend with invisible walls that you can't attack through and he just gets to smash the shit out of you until you find a sweet spot/realize you have to pull him. But even with that bug I still didn't die once. Compared to the Jedi Knight chapter one ending when I died something like seven times trying to beat the last boss. Sure, I was a bit underleveled, but even when I came back two levels later he still killed me once and was hell to kill the second time. You get to fight a higher level boss with the same skills in chapter three which is just LOVELY heh. Even he got me once.

I think my favorite agent moments were basically the same line "I'm trained to deal with Jedi" said about as casually as smashing ants underfoot. Damn that's bad ass.

Watcher X is kind of like Big Boss. He was obviously greater than the Agent back in his day but he's old or maybe he went crazy and even then they still had to put a bomb in his head to keep him under control. It seems pretty obvious if they just do the serum on him he'd easily be able to figure out a way to go around it. I expected Watcher X to tell you just frame the Republic agents as enemies so then you can kill them, or make them kill each other, or setup situations where they die. Instead it was like 'oh look one guy happen to be bleeding to death, just walk pass him and laugh because he's too hurt to speak'. I mean Watcher X is more powerful than Watcher 2 by a lot and she became the new Keeper so he's clearly the top agent in the Imperial Intelligence.

If you're a class that can heal you can usually do okay on the story battles, even if you're not healer speced. It's painful when you play a DPS, especially melee DPS against any story battle because for whatever reason the story battle guys like to have instant gib PBAEs. Pretty much all the Sith Lords bosses gave me a ton of trouble as Assassin and almost none as a Sorcerer even though the Assassin is likely the most overpowered class right now while Sorcerer is just average because you can do damage from range and thus avoid their super attacks. Well, except Thundering Blast, but even there the Sorcerer can purge the Afflicition that ramps up the damage while the Assassin cannot once Force Shroud is used up.

The SI story isn't too great, and its only redeeming feature is that you get to throw lightning and kill just about any possible person. I mean, you obviously can kill a lot of people in other stories too, but it's just not the same to shoot or stab someone with a lightsaber compared to throwing lightning at them.

Watcher 2 wasn't all that but her enhancements didn't drive her insane, so the intelligence service felt like she was the safer bet. Watcher X would have had them chasing after ghosts if he was made Keeper.