The latest Star Wars: the Old Republic expansion was released yesterday, and for the most part... I approve!
I played through my two main characters - a light side Sith Sorcerer who happens to be slightly insane, and an Imperial Agent who has been working for the Republic since chapter three way back when.
My Sith Sorcerer - Aethya - was up first and she very quickly announced that she expected her Dark Council seat back. Which I have always found amusing, that people can't feel the light that imbues her. A light side dark lord of the Sith! One of my greatest disappointments was Satele Shan never noticing the light. Actually, speaking of Satele, another great disappointment was my neutral sorcerer where Revan comments on her ability to stay balanced and yet, in KotFE / KotET Satele was like, "You must maintain a balance!" - I CLEARLY WAS, WOMAN.
Anyway, I digress.
First stop was Onderon, which I think the game designers did a really lovely job on...
...where she had to deal with King Petulant. Not his real name. The dialogue options that popped up immediately made me eager to play my Saboteur Imperial Agent, there were so many opportunities to mock King Petulant, I could destroy things, and I could be rude to the sith lady I was working with.
Aethya is not like that, however, so played through with the grace and politeness expected of a slightly crazy un-sith-like Sith. And she was happy to come across these wonderful fellows who are as amusing as ever:
After successfully completing her mission on Onderon, next was Mek-sha...
...an asteroid mining facility thing that reminded Aethya of her slave roots. She was vehemently against the slavers she was forced to communicate with and took every opportunity to declare her disgust for the 'business.'
Once again, there were several dialogue options in this area that I couldn't wait to perform with my Agent. But I also couldn't wait to just get the hell off the asteroid because it was frameratey as hell. I had to put my settings on the lowest of the low to actually get through the thing and even then I was only getting 15fps. Eurggghhh.
(Luckily, that seemed to be fixed when I returned there later on with my Agent.)
Now that I had thwarted the Republic's plans twice and had stopped their ships from refueling, it was time to return to... Corellia.
I'm really not 'down' with Star Wars lore, but we seem to war on Corellia an awful lot. It's kind of... uninteresting to me. We had a giant battle there in Chapter Three and now we're still attacking the place years later. I say we sack Coruscant again. Anyway.
It's here on Corellia that one of my favourite quotes from the expansion - so far - has appeared.
We find Tharan Cedrax, Jedi Consular companion, and a little amusement ensues:
My Imperial Twi'lek battle assistant: "Don't you have a friend named Theron?"
Tharan Cedrax: "Another Tharan? I bet he spells it the stupid way."
We swiftly take him hostage for stealing and massacring Theron's name and join up with Malgus to defeat a Jedi who all this time I thought was a man. I've only seen her image in the loading screens having not done later content on a Republic character and, guess I was wrong.
With our objective complete, Aethya returned to the Dark Council and promptly removed the pompous arse who had stolen her seat and became Darth Imperius once more. Huzzah!
And then there was some stuff about Lord Scourge and Kira, the Jedi Knight's companions, and how they think the fallen emperor is still a threat. Dun dun dun. Uh oh.
Sorry, this is me trying to relay my experience without giving away significant spoilers? I'm not cut out for this. I like to blurt!
THEN I DID THE WHOLE THING AGAIN ON MY REPUBLIC AGENT! 😁
At last I mocked King Petulant, I had a Sith killed by Malgus' own hand for 'incompetence,' I killed King Petulant, and even better I killed the new Emperor's, Vowran's, Apprentice on Mek-sha which resulted in another amazing dialogue:
And after successfully sabotaging everything she possibly could in favour of the Republic, she met with her SIS contact and was heavily congratulated for her activities. Even though Theron reacted far more harshly to her helping the Republic and causing some casualties on Corellia than he did to my Sith who basically just forced him and all of the Alliance to become citizens of the empire.
Theron storms off. Lana, once of Sith Intelligence, is like, "I'm personally enjoying this."
These alternative realities are messed up. 😉
Anyway, so far Onslaught has offered about four hours of added story content per character and it's an obvious prelude for more to come... which I am slightly disappointed by. I was hoping that there would be no stretched out 'chapters' this time like in the last expansions. I get why they do it though.
Not too sure why they had a credit scene at the end of it though... when I'm fairly sure it's a Prelude.
I am disappointed that there was no added companion dialogue, only that which existed in the cutscenes as you progress through the story. I miss companions having things to say when you poke and prod them at certain intervals in the story at certain reputation levels.
I dislike how you progress the story by simply opening up your quest log and pressing 'launch.' It's all fast-tracked and it's not immersive.
But, I enjoyed the offered story. Giggled here and there. Liked the new planet designs. Enjoyed the Saboteur options. I guess my enjoyments and disappointments are about equal.
Most importantly of all, we got the Nautolan race! Totally made a dark-side sorcerer:
Until next time!
Thank you for stopping by! 😊
All screenshots in this post were taken by me, 