This week the Galactic Seasons 4: Passage of Peace ended, while I had completed all 100 levels of the Season Pass a while ago I actually fell behind this season on the Reputation and had to scrape by to make the final week as I completely forgot to hand in Reputation Items to Amity for the first few weeks.
Unlike the last Season, I only completed the Galactic Season on Star Forge, as I was far less interested in this season due to the repeat of last seasons objectives calendar.

Seasons 4 Overview

Galactic Seasons 4: Passage of Peace, or GS4 as I’ll call it from here on, released before the 7.3 Voss Interpreter’s Retreat Update. This seasons companion was Amity, a human force-sensitive cyborg that was raised by Selonians. Unlike prior seasons, GS4 is inspired by ‘the High Republic’ and was the first season to have a non-Underworld theme.
This season very much followed the same objective track as Galactic Seasons 3, with very little changes from the prior season.

Comparing prior Seasons

Season 2 gave us Fen Zeil, a cameo/easter-egg style companion in direct reference to current Star Wars media (Cad Bane), and Season 3 gave us PH4-LNX, a droid crossover character designed with the mobile game Galaxy of Heroes.
However GS4 gave us a completely brand new Lore character named Amity. There were no major element changes to GS4 as Amity’s storyline followed the same formula as PH4-LNX’s in the prior Season.

Galactic Seasons 3 elevated the Story Quest element introduced in Season 2, Fay instead gives us actual Quests that involve travelling aroun the Galaxy and participating in story beats related to her interests as a character with some minor dialogue changes based on your Faction and overall expansion progress in SWTOR.
Galactic Seasons 4 included mandatory combat on a litany of worlds, with the highest being level 50 in order to complete the Introductory and Story quests for Amity, which was a twist compared to PH4-LNX that requires Mek-Sha, a planet off-limits to pure F2P players.

The Reputation and side systems to GS4 were identical to GS3, with Amity also taking residence aboard your player ship just as PH4-LNX did last season, however this season for the first 1/3rd of the battlepass, there was no weekly limit of 200 currency to be earned, meaning devout players could churn content to over-earn an intended number of Reputation Tokens early.

Even now, like prior Seasons, if you did not manage to earn enough Reputation to finish the track, you can still earn small amounts of currency to give Amity when killing mobs with Amity as your active companion.

Compared to the prior Seasons, this seasons companion-unique Weekly Objective was communal rather then competitive, and you could still do it solo like last season. The ability to take Amity around meditation shrines to earn points to complete some weeks Galactic Seasons objectives was nice, a feature I’d love to see them expand in the future! Perhaps requiring groups of players to unlock areas or summon ghosts or bosses by this method rather then sitting outside Dromund Kaas for 5 minutes to gain half a seasons level.

The Season Pass

Galactic Seasons 4 followed the same established track as Galactic Seasons 3, the largest change to the formula was that all rewards in the pass were distinctly a ‘High Republic’ and aged theme over the prior Seasons unabashed Underworld themes. I really enjoyed the armor sets and weapons available in this pass as they were much more grounded and well crafted compared to last seasons bright LED and more flashy and comical weapons and armor.

GS4 featured the same rewards structure as Season 3, which gave 2 armor sets and 1 weapons set in the Subscriber track and 1 weapons set in the F2P track. However the largest difference be the decorations that were Gormak and Voss themed, which was clearly referential and intended to hallmark the 7.3 Voss Interpreter’s Retreat update and less so the themes of the Cold Moon organisation we see in the Story of Amity.

The armor sets designs featured a white and green theme, quite similar to the Vendor dye schemes of the new PvP Pass system, while the armor itself is clearly referential to the new canon High Republic era with its fanciful robes with embroidered shapes and colours.

Likewise the Galactic Seasons 4 also brought the Mek-Sha Stronghold, the first huge update to the Galactic Seasons Rewards vendor, available for 14 GS Tokens which would require completing nearly an entire season to unlock.

Compared to Seasons 3, the weapons of GS4 were very different in 2 major ways. The weapons themselves were vastly more grounded in SWTORs setting and artstyle, even featuring a special effect on all ranged weapons where the Barrel overheats when shooting. I greatly preferred the standard versions of the weapons as the special Pink versions looked quite ugly especially as they were created with default turquoise crystal color to match.

Galactic Seasons 4 also gave us some crazy Speeders, including a bright pink landspeeder that I actually really love, compared to the Odux creatures which seem like weird shaved banthas.

Review & Comparison

Galactic Seasons 4 was the first time that Bioware/Broadsword deviated from the overused Underworld theme and went all in on the Force. This was elevated by the Story Quests that accompanied Amity which had a more engaging Story then PH4-LNX, however we sadly never actually got to see anything Cold Moon related.

The [Weekly] Objectives and bonus Completionist Achievements structure remained the same since Season 2 showing that Bioware seems to have found that stable balance in Reward and Progression structure that was established in Season 2, however as the Season concluded we already have seen devtracker posts that the Developers are now changing the structure of Seasons Objectives for future seasons. What lays in store for the future I dont know.

Season 4’s theme was a great refresher compared to the old seasons, while the decorations seemed the most unrelated, I feel that the rewards this Season were the strongest since Season 2, which as I said in my season 2 review were mostly bangers due to easter-egg reference to current Star Wars media over standalone quality.

I am also happy that Season 4 finally had a force based companion over a shooter, sadly we didn’t get our first Ranged class Force companion but I’ll take Amity into my companion roster happily.

We know already that Season 5 will be the first without a companion but will supposedly have a focus on a greater story with more characters, and have been given a preview of 3V-1L, an evil astromech droid that will be related to the adventures that GS5 will bring in the future.

Though I am unsure if the loss of a companion in the rewards of the Season will see an adverse effect on the playerbase, even if everyone I’ve seen has complained the season companions are annoying, loud and stupid since Season 1 first released.