Originally posted by Captain REX
You can't nominate who you argue against. If you're wrong and everyone wants to argue against you, then that's how it is. Sorry.
Whether I'm wrong or not (I'm not), there's no way I'm making the same reply three different times to three different people. It's not worth my time.
Meanwhile, Vader takes this. Anakin/Vader wasn't a lightsaber prodigy, eh? Let's just forget that he was a better duelist than most of the Order by the time he was in his early 20's...and let's forget that he was the Chosen One and had tons of raw power, too. Which he honed. Yup...
You can believe what you want, but his rise in power is quite clearly due to his strength in the force, and not due to being a prodigy. Now the fact is, despite his strength in the force being the highest ever, he still didn't grow very powerful very quickly. Off the top of my head, both Bane and Exar Kun grew far more powerful far quicker than Anakin did, despite his greater force connection. There's not really anything supporting him being a prodigy. I've read the Jedi Quest books and it takes him just as long as the other padawans to grasp their lessons, it's just that once he's learned them, he naturally excels, due to his tremendous force strength. You're confusing strength in the force with prodigy.
Bastila was a prodigy, yes, but I don't think she was all that amazing. Her training with Malak was minimal at best, I should think;
Despite her knowing techniques such as force drain and force lightning?
any powers she uses while on the Dark Side is merely gameplay mechanics.
Both powers aren't dependant on gameplay, meaning it doesn't vary from player to player and thus canon.
And the Mind Tricking of Toydarians and Hutts is, again, just crappy gameplay mechanics.
I swear it was a cutscene, I'm almost 100% sure. You can never control Bastilla during dialogue, so I'm pretty sure you're wrong here.
TPM and ROTJ established those races as having a natural immunity to Mind Tricks.
Fallible third parties...
The Wizards Star Wars RPG gives them this,
Retcon?
and samples of the species say so themselves.
Again, these people are all fallible. How would they know for sure that they were immune? Perhaps it had been tested by force users before, and not worked, and thus that's how they arrived at their conclusion. Doesn't mean that they would know for sure that a force user with an extremely high will could pull it off.
This will be closed unless a reasonable argument for Bastila's victory can be posted.
Arguments have already been put forward. When has Vader ever overpowered powerful force users like Bastilla did when she instantly stunned both Jolee and Juhani? When has Vader ever tooled other powerful lightsaber users like Bastilla did when she was a mere padawan? Just because Vader's a movies character, and has more exposure and a larger fanbase, it doesn't mean he automatically beats just any smalltime video game character.