So I'm just about to 50. It's been, by and large, best described as "okay". A few of the worlds are places that you just want to be done with and feel akin to taking out the trash. Others manage to be alright. It's very much a mixed bag. BioWare certainly seems to enjoy making desolate landscapes of one form or another, though, and that gets old after awhile.
I think that a part of the problem for me is the class. When I rolled a consular, I wasn't expecting a combat class. I was expecting a class that had a story line around diplomacy, investigation, and generally something a little more "Star Trek: Next Generation"-ish. A story that's more about the characters, people, and circumstances than the pew, pew, pew - THAT would be for the Jedi Knight.
As it turns out, my expectations were entirely wrong. BioWare made the Consular class just another "bash them in the head" approach to gaming. It's very disappointing, and the class never becomes more about diplomacy. Every class mission is you being sent into a location to kill a bunch of bad guys. Never once are you making any real decisions, meeting politicians (who you don't kill, anyway), or in any way being a diplomat, unless you think that stuffing a light saber into someone's back is, in fact, legitimate diplomacy - then you do it constantly.
I think that SWTOR would have been more interesting had I rolled a Knight, or any other combat class. Everything would have felt like it fit. As it is, it's like they give Hillary Clinton a machine gun and tell her to make a surgical strike against the enemy in order to further her diplomatic ends. While certainly amusing, it just doesn't make any damned sense. You get a few diplomatic responses in text when making your "choice" during cut scenes, but those are immediately brushed off by the NPC that you're talking to. All roads lead to Rambo Hillary; just you, your light saber, and your companion taking out entire armies.
There's also the issue of your character's abilities (otherwise called "spells" in other MMOs). Basically, you'll be using the same three main attack abilities from level 1 to level 50. In regards to the consular, that's the Pebble Pew ("Telekinetic Throw"), which toss a lot of tiny rocks at your target, and the Chunk Chucker ("Project") that you've seen in the videos that tosses a large rock or such at your target. Those are your primary attacks, and your skill trees revolves around them. Your basic rotation is: Double Strike to get the critical hit bonus to pop, then Project to hit them with a guaranteed critical hit. You do this three times, while using your single, basic light saber swing between these attacks because that builds up your "Force" (aka "Mana"). Once you do this three times, you get a stackable buff that causes your Pebble Pew to do a lot more damage as well as heal you (I have no idea why throwing a bunch of rocks at people heals you O.o).
Between that rotation you'll be using your interrupts / brief stuns in order to stop the bad guy from using their special abilities. It's all very basic and repetitive.
Is the game terrible? No. Is it very simple and full of single player game issues? Yes. Maybe I can talk more about those later. For now, I've typed enough and I'm going to go do something else.
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