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extrapenguin) wrote2021-03-05 10:16 pm
extrapenguin) wrote2021-03-05 10:16 pm
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SWTOR: Jedi Knight pt 3 (Ch 2)
Chapter 2, including Taral V and Maelstrom Prison: 1d 9h 19 min less 22h -> 11h and change. I spent about 2h on Quesh, Hoth, and both flashpoints together; I think I've reached a "2h per planet" flow. Also Ch 2 is literally half the length of Ch 1.
Balmorra: Somehow, Republic Balmorra feels smaller than Imperial Taris. Perhaps it's the location of the quick travel points? Or just that when I was going through Imperial Taris I was trying to murderate all the rakghouls etc for every side quest, which took forever. The Jedi Knight questgiver for the planet, Warren Sedoru, has a cool name and a cool design. The quest made sense.
Sealing up some colicoid tunnels.
Taral V + Maelstrom Prison: The one where the Jedi Exile's ghost helps you rescue Revan from jail! And then they both disappear. (Revan ends up being stopped by Imperial characters before returning in the Shadow of Revan expansion.) Decent flashpoints that bulked up Chapter 2 nicely, and having Revan turn up made some of Scourge's remarks about being Revan's ally against the Emperor leter on feel more relevant.
The digs were super cool.
Quesh: The Republic planetary quest was much more compact mapwise than the Imperial one! Not much to say about the planet, as it's one of my least favorites (along with Nar Shaddaa and Corellia) in the base game. The class mission of going to speak to Master Tol Braga's former padawan was nice, if only because we got to see Scourge for the first time and also the ex-padawan was also an ex-Sith Lord, and the Jedi Order's dedication to rehabilitating their enemies was nice.
Hoth: Alas, the planetary quest bugged out on me and I couldn't click on the very first thing I was supposed to click, so I abandoned it. Going to find the coordinates of the Emperor's base off a downed ship wasn't maybe as sense-making as the cloaking device from Balmorra, but in the realm of video game logic, it was ok enough.
Before Rusk's arrival, the Imperial officer was trying to claim that they outnumbered us when it was a 3v3. Come on, Bioware, at least give the Imps an extra mook or something.
Boss fight: Okay, so, I downright cackled once Tol Braga told me the plan was to break into the Emperor's stronghold, subdue him, and then ... bring him to Tython so he could join the light. It's like he portaled over into SWTOR from a children's cartoon. It's okay, that's why I love him. A kinder world and all that.
The ending was trippy in a bad way – the Emperor mind controls you and you eventually break free, Force ghost of your master saying you've been mind controlled to do terrible things, but the sense of time passing would've been much clearer with just a few fades to black, and also if we were supposed to have our characters do bad stuff while mind controlled, they should have shown that at least a bit onscreen (like, one vague dream sequence level, that's what I'm talking about). Lord Scourge betraying his employer to save the galaxy was a legit motivation, and now that I've done KotET, I could be all "ooh, he's talking about Nathema!" etc in the appropriate bits. The segue from Ch 2 to Ch 3 went really well. We've faced the Emperor unsuccessfully, now we have to stop his plans to vore various planets and maybe save our friends in the process!
I've gotten the 3 remaining companions. I'm less enthused by this batch than the first two, but lbr, T7 is impossible to improve on. I also found the companion acquisition pacing terrible overall – T7 and Kira turn up almost on top of each other, and then Rusk and Scourge are that but worse (I took Rusk with me to the Scourge meeting and that was ... 39 mob kills and one boss fight between the companion acquisitions, and I wasn't skipping that much, 5 mooks max). Doc gets a bit of time to breathe, but I didn't even get to 1000 kills (only 840 or so) before getting Scourge.
Doc: Love interest dude, somehow even more infuriating than Andronikos Revel. They tried for the lovable rogue, but he just comes across as an asshole who's only interested in getting in your pants. 0/10, very happy to leave on the ship forever now that I've gotten the achievement for kills.
Rusk: He was introduced as basically a hardass more interested in shooting Imps than proper squad management, so it felt like he was dumped on me so he couldn't get any more subordinates killed, rather than for "actual" reasons. He also doesn't really gel with my LS playthrough featuring asking that people surrender and such. He and Doc also feel much shallower/simpler as characters than Kira and Scourge.
Technically this is from Belsavis, but I was struck by the similarity of our head silhouettes.
Scourge: Scourge is interesting! A Sith defector who's defecting from the Empire but not the Sith way is a pretty cool concept, and I like that about him. I haven't had much time with him yet, so so far he's still stuck on "intriguing". I expect a few companion conversations will help with that, and he came early enough they won't be as rushed as Xalek's were for the Inquisitor.
I'm currently on Belsavis. By my calculations, Ch 3 should take me about 6 hours more, so I'll probably play through it tomorrow and then take Midwan to Iokath. I don't find the Sentinel playstyle as fun as the Sorcerer, so Kurebir is probably just going to do her class story and get to level 75 (for the achievement) and get retired. I might do the Shadow of Revan + prelude at some point to get the companion kills and because that was a nice expansion, but my endgame Republic-side character will probably be someone else.
Balmorra: Somehow, Republic Balmorra feels smaller than Imperial Taris. Perhaps it's the location of the quick travel points? Or just that when I was going through Imperial Taris I was trying to murderate all the rakghouls etc for every side quest, which took forever. The Jedi Knight questgiver for the planet, Warren Sedoru, has a cool name and a cool design. The quest made sense.
Sealing up some colicoid tunnels.
Taral V + Maelstrom Prison: The one where the Jedi Exile's ghost helps you rescue Revan from jail! And then they both disappear. (Revan ends up being stopped by Imperial characters before returning in the Shadow of Revan expansion.) Decent flashpoints that bulked up Chapter 2 nicely, and having Revan turn up made some of Scourge's remarks about being Revan's ally against the Emperor leter on feel more relevant.
The digs were super cool.
Quesh: The Republic planetary quest was much more compact mapwise than the Imperial one! Not much to say about the planet, as it's one of my least favorites (along with Nar Shaddaa and Corellia) in the base game. The class mission of going to speak to Master Tol Braga's former padawan was nice, if only because we got to see Scourge for the first time and also the ex-padawan was also an ex-Sith Lord, and the Jedi Order's dedication to rehabilitating their enemies was nice.
Hoth: Alas, the planetary quest bugged out on me and I couldn't click on the very first thing I was supposed to click, so I abandoned it. Going to find the coordinates of the Emperor's base off a downed ship wasn't maybe as sense-making as the cloaking device from Balmorra, but in the realm of video game logic, it was ok enough.
Before Rusk's arrival, the Imperial officer was trying to claim that they outnumbered us when it was a 3v3. Come on, Bioware, at least give the Imps an extra mook or something.
Boss fight: Okay, so, I downright cackled once Tol Braga told me the plan was to break into the Emperor's stronghold, subdue him, and then ... bring him to Tython so he could join the light. It's like he portaled over into SWTOR from a children's cartoon. It's okay, that's why I love him. A kinder world and all that.
The ending was trippy in a bad way – the Emperor mind controls you and you eventually break free, Force ghost of your master saying you've been mind controlled to do terrible things, but the sense of time passing would've been much clearer with just a few fades to black, and also if we were supposed to have our characters do bad stuff while mind controlled, they should have shown that at least a bit onscreen (like, one vague dream sequence level, that's what I'm talking about). Lord Scourge betraying his employer to save the galaxy was a legit motivation, and now that I've done KotET, I could be all "ooh, he's talking about Nathema!" etc in the appropriate bits. The segue from Ch 2 to Ch 3 went really well. We've faced the Emperor unsuccessfully, now we have to stop his plans to vore various planets and maybe save our friends in the process!
I've gotten the 3 remaining companions. I'm less enthused by this batch than the first two, but lbr, T7 is impossible to improve on. I also found the companion acquisition pacing terrible overall – T7 and Kira turn up almost on top of each other, and then Rusk and Scourge are that but worse (I took Rusk with me to the Scourge meeting and that was ... 39 mob kills and one boss fight between the companion acquisitions, and I wasn't skipping that much, 5 mooks max). Doc gets a bit of time to breathe, but I didn't even get to 1000 kills (only 840 or so) before getting Scourge.
Doc: Love interest dude, somehow even more infuriating than Andronikos Revel. They tried for the lovable rogue, but he just comes across as an asshole who's only interested in getting in your pants. 0/10, very happy to leave on the ship forever now that I've gotten the achievement for kills.
Rusk: He was introduced as basically a hardass more interested in shooting Imps than proper squad management, so it felt like he was dumped on me so he couldn't get any more subordinates killed, rather than for "actual" reasons. He also doesn't really gel with my LS playthrough featuring asking that people surrender and such. He and Doc also feel much shallower/simpler as characters than Kira and Scourge.
Technically this is from Belsavis, but I was struck by the similarity of our head silhouettes.
Scourge: Scourge is interesting! A Sith defector who's defecting from the Empire but not the Sith way is a pretty cool concept, and I like that about him. I haven't had much time with him yet, so so far he's still stuck on "intriguing". I expect a few companion conversations will help with that, and he came early enough they won't be as rushed as Xalek's were for the Inquisitor.
I'm currently on Belsavis. By my calculations, Ch 3 should take me about 6 hours more, so I'll probably play through it tomorrow and then take Midwan to Iokath. I don't find the Sentinel playstyle as fun as the Sorcerer, so Kurebir is probably just going to do her class story and get to level 75 (for the achievement) and get retired. I might do the Shadow of Revan + prelude at some point to get the companion kills and because that was a nice expansion, but my endgame Republic-side character will probably be someone else.