The Legacy of the Sith turns out to be a major patch in Star Wars: The Old Republic that doesn’t deserve the name expansion.
It could have been so beautiful: The bombastic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s new expansion Legacy of the Sith slaps fans in the face with pounds of Star Wars feeling thanks to a nasty villain (Darth Malgus) and a Padawan on a quest for meaning (Sa’har) along with a tragic backstory.
This offers an opening that raises hopes – but the subsequent crash into the harsh reality of the game could not be greater. Even if you take your time, you will be through with the story of both factions after five hours at the latest. We would have expected much more from an add-on – and many fans of the online role-playing game feel the same way.
A blow in the water
The story surrounding the Imperial attack on the peaceful water world of Manaan offers little in the way of movement, but all the more fights against plenty of enemies and the usual clichéd main opponents.
The new Flashpoint Ruins of Nul, thanks to its grandiose scenery and Darth Malgus’ artefact search in an ancient Sith temple, conveys much more the feeling of an adventure at the end of which you confront the nasty villain. What feels like the beginning of an exciting new story at this moment, however, is also its end: After that, only the endgame awaits you from the new level 80 onwards, with the familiar elements of daily tasks, flashpoints and operations that have been played out for years.
At the end of the main story you will receive a teaser for future content. Otherwise, however, Bioware leaves you out in the icy rain, which is particularly bitter in Legacy of the Sith.
If the scope of the last expansion, Onslaught, seemed too small, you will be even more disappointed now. There is not even a daily task area on the conflict-ridden planet Manaan, snippets of information on the current conflict and the rest of the galaxy are equally meagre.
If you’re unlucky, you’ll be served a full bug broadside while playing through the story: Even a week after release and several patches, these range from area changes that don’t work, action areas that can’t be activated, enemies stuck in the ground but still attacking that you can’t kill, to a flashpoint end boss that knocks you off your feet right away with its first ability.
This annoying state of affairs is made particularly bitter by a lengthy test period for the expansion content on the player test server and the recent release delay of two months. The strange mixture of menus in the new and old design also makes an unfinished impression.
When the Jedi makes friendly choking
All of Legacy of the Sith’s other innovations deal with game mechanics. Bioware has made particularly big changes to the classes: In future, for example, class and character abilities will no longer be linked to each other.
Previously, you were only allowed to choose two basic alignments per class, which also decided which weapons the character could use. For example, only Republican soldiers were allowed to unpack the fancy assault cannon and bounty hunters had to forgo rifles in favour of blaster pistols.
Today, you first choose the class you want and thus also the class history when creating new characters. Then you select the desired fighting style from eight possible weapon or Force orientations.
For example, you can exterminate the enemies of the Republic as a Jedi ambassador with the abilities of the Marauder, which was previously only available to Imperial Sith, or you can create a bounty hunter who hunts for suitable targets with an assault cannon.
Of course, this decision is not entirely free: only power user classes may choose power fighting styles, weapon classes are still limited to firearms. Existing characters keep their previous fighting style. Only subscribers can choose an additional fighting style; Free2Play players with existing characters will be left empty-handed.
The changed system cannot hide the fact that no new class has found its way into the game for ten years. No other MMORPG with such a long run offers a sadder record!
At least there are now customisation options if you want them. And even here there are bugs involved, when switching fighting styles the complete settings tend to disappear and players always have to refill the skill bars.
New meets old critically
The fighting styles themselves have also been revised. Before the update, there were so many class abilities that you often needed more than two ability bars with ten slots each to use them all. With the streamlined new system, even a few slots remain open, but now you are spoilt for choice: different abilities are only available from one of three options that the character learns when they reach a certain level.
Alternatively, you can strengthen an existing ability with one of three effects. You can reassign these at any time, even in the middle of a raid or flashpoint. Nevertheless, the change from the familiar ability rotation, including the elimination of some options, to the new, leaner variant is quite hard and forces players to make more agreements and cooperate, especially in end-game content. You can see for yourselves how well this works with strangers in the group finder.
The equipment for the endgame, which is intended for character levels 80 and above, completely abandons the upgrading system that has been in place for years, with which you could improve weapons and pieces of armour through exchangeable modifications. This devalues the crafting system without any meaningful replacement of craftable items.
In addition, in the future you will only earn better equipment through game activities such as completed weekly missions, loot from Flashpoints and Operations, and PvP. New loot from the same activities will give you the same piece of equipment with better stats. Alternatively, you can exchange found equipment for a version of the next higher level for a fee made up of collectible tokens and in-game currency at the appropriate merchants.
If you want to equip your characters for challenging operation modes, you will have to get used to another new feature: Previously, there were equipment sets consisting of six items that granted strong bonuses. These have been eliminated and replaced by legendary sets consisting of two items that you buy to match your class and fighting style and whose bonuses are intended to support certain play styles in particular.
This does allow you to switch fighting styles more easily in Operations, as you don’t have to deal with a lot of armour pieces. At the same time, this presents you with a mountain of work until you can even tell how much the bonuses are really worth in practical use.
All in all, apart from a few good basic ideas, Bioware delivers far too little fodder for everyday MMORPG life with the Legacy of the Sith expansion. For even newly designed game systems cannot replace the missing breath of fresh air on the content side, at best they can supplement it. Considering that the last expansion Onslaught came into play at the end of 2019 and only two more Flashpoints were added in between, that’s a pretty bleak outlook for the anniversary year 2022.
Editor’s Verdict
I had quite a bit of bellyaching before this expansion and unfortunately the inward grumbling has been confirmed: Legacy of the Sith continues the downward trend of new content that has crept into SWTOR since Knights of the Fallen Empire in 2016. Less and less substance is being touted more and more by the marketing department. Sure, some old systems had to be reworked and modernised for a solid future of the game. But if an expansion consists almost exclusively of such revisions, Bioware should not be surprised about the fans’ displeasure that can be read on Reddit and in other media.
Especially in comparison to other MMORPGs, SWTOR stinks when it comes to delivering new content. In view of such a strong brand with plenty of new content from books, comics, TV series and films, the constant lull in the only Star Wars MMORPG can no longer be explained in any meaningful way. It’s all the sadder that there are approaches and ideas, especially the trailer totally picked me up. The computer AI boss in the ruins of Nul is pleasantly tricky, the part with the seemingly endless steep cliffs under fire is really fun. However, if these are the only highlights of the expansion, it’s just too little in the long run to even begin to excite me.
