tanstaafl28

A bitter one-handed blind woman, her undead apprentice, and a sith demi-god in a Japanese Kabukki mask? Malik and Reven would have shredded through them as if they weren't even there.

If I were, I'd glady share.

>>:: Spits coffee all over keyboard :: >>Hey, put down that crack pipe! NWN is a blocky 3D version of Diablo but not half as much fun. Challenging? My arse. DII got boring faster than NWN. In comparing user-created modules, DII requires a Comp Sci degree, whereas NWN provides a far easier toolset by comparison. DII just doesn't have the same level of community support and downloadables behind it either. NWN has more classes, more items, more choices, and more flexibility than DII ever thought of having. There are builders who have completely rewritten DII using the NWN toolset and it's ten times better than Blizzard's crap. Blizzard ruined Warcraft, they abandoned Starcraft, and they dropped the ball with Diablo II. That annoying diagonal 3P perspective got old fast. >>Now I know you're trolling, or alternatively you are also freebasing on crystal meth. My six year old nephew could write a less hackneyed and predictable plot. Perhaps you've never played PnP D&D, or read any of the Forgotten Realms books, none of them have very complex plots, but they are often fun anyway. >>The second expansion. And it isn't a masterpiece but it is a tremedous improvement on the dreck that went before it. You're right about HotU being the second expansion, but it was a lot more fun than the previous one, or the original campaign. Cheers MC <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hope you're kidding...TSL is a trainwreck compared with KotOR...I suspect LA pushed Obsidian to get it out before Christmas and sacrificed quality doing it.

Put the crack pipe down. KotOR 2 can't hold a candle to KotOR.

You're far more generous than I am. This game was a mess. IMHO, the storyline just can't overcome all the bugs, character flaws, and plot holes.

I concur on many levels with what you have to say. Graphics and music are decent, if not terribly original. Storyline and characters are more shallow than a dry creekbed in a desert. As long as I could control my character, I sliced through the competition as if they weren't there. Combat was a bad joke. The worst thing was when I would target an enemy and my NPC's would rush in and hit up the same enemy making it virtually impossible for me to even get close to them. The settings: aggressive, support, ranged, etc didn't seem to keep the NPC's from attacking the same thing I was attacking rather than attacking other targets. Game inbalance was just as you said. I hardly bothered to create any items because I had most of what I needed from all the bodies and containers all over the place. Upgrades were pretty much the same as before, just more choices. Skills, feats, and force powers made me so powerful it was too easy. I played a Sentinal/Weaponmaster with a double-bladed lightsaber and I was virtually invincible on my own. I have to assume the control issues are due to the fact that consoles don't have mouse look and they don't have the ability to "store" repeated keyboard commands as a computer does. Obsidian should "borrow" whatever stability factors they employed in the PC game to balance the controls between the two. With my trackball, I can get into a situation where not only is my PC perspective is rotating rapidly and I can't stop running. It creates a rather humourous "running in circles" game with all my NPC's trying to keep up. Sux when I'm trying to attack though. As for starting at level 1, the explanation that the exile thought the Jedi council cut them off from the Force (when it was their own guilt that clouded their connection). When the connection was somehow re-established, it was as if the exile had to start learning how to use the Force all over again. Really, how much fun would it be if one started as a full Jedi? Dialog was ok, but a lot of times I was looking for the events that "changed" individual dialogs and found myself stuck in the same old responses with no hope of gleaning anything new from them. Massive inconsistencies. Things just didn't follow as far as I am concerned. I went to Dantooine last, cleaned out the Jedi enclave sublevel, rescued Vrook, and then defended the city from the mercenaries. While all this was going on, someone managed to "rebuild" the Jedi enclave? How did I not notice? The whole premise that this plot was pushed by an old blind woman, her undead apprentice, and some Sith demi-god who wears a Kabukki mask just leaves me wondering what the developers were smoking (and why they didn't share that with us instead). I don't know whether to laugh hysterically, or cry in futility. The various planets are rather boring...Dxun ranks up there with having my teeth drilled. Telos was about the most interesting stop with the orbiting station and all the goings on down on the surface. The ending left me wondering what I had missed, because I just didn't get it. IMHO, it does not live up to the name "KotOR."

Great, why?

I'm not sure what's what either. The game left me bitterly disappointed.

The only help I can give you is to go back and enjoy KotOR because this one isn't nearly as good.

I'm pretty sure that Obsidian was founded by former Bioware developers, but I could be wrong about that. Having said this, I sure that the story concept was all Obsidian. IMHO, the storyline in TSL should be completely discarded and any sequel should pretend it never existed and start over. I suspect that the developers were under some serious pressure by corporate types to get the game out by Christmas, and in so doing, they sacrificed the storyline and crippled the gameplay. The characters are shallow and flat, there are scenes that make no sense, and the decision trees are so fractured that it is difficult to tell what choices will end up giving one darkside or lightside points. In some places, I'm not even sure what happened, or why I was supposed to do things. I never had these sorts of problems with the original. Having finished the game, I am inclined to go back and play KotOR and forget that a sequel was ever created.

I do not think The Sith Lords can compare with the original KotOR, however, I am hopeful that NWN2 will be better because it won't have the limitations of consoles. Neverwinter Nights is extremely challenging but worthwhile. The story is cleverly written, and there are two expansions beyond the original to keep one busy for some time to come. The original NWN took me about a month. The first expansion, Shadows of Unrentide, was not as much fun, but added a lot of depth to the gameplay. The third expansion, Hoards of the Underdark, is a masterpiece that brings the best of the whole thing together. Additionally, it comes with a toolset to allow users to develop their own modules at any difficulty level one would choose. Learning how to build mods is somewhat challenging, but not impossible. A huge list of these modules are freely downloadble from The Neverwinter Vault )along with all sorts of tools, scripts, and tutorials if one is interested in "rolling their own"). There is a vast community of players, multiplayers, and builders supporting the game. Bioware has also created some "Premium Modules" that can be purchased and downloaded for a few bucks. I would say that the platinum edition has now been out for a while and it would be worth your time to look into it.

I believe I now understand why Bioware farmed the sequel out to someone else. They put so much love, blood, sweat, and tears into KotOR that they knew nothing could ever come close to it again. After a bitter wait, KotOR 2 was a major disappointment. The curse of writing a sequel to such a big hit as KotOR is one gets what happens in KotOR 2, namely: a shoddy hodgepodge of non-cohesive assumptions that make little sense in context. From what I was able to make out from this game, I was supposed to have ended KotOR with a darkside Revan (which I NEVER did-I have no 'itch' to be a badguy). This story could have easily been told regardless of what happened before. The fortunes of war are full of sudden reversals and surprises for either sides. Besides, most of us came to know the characters from the previous edition with a sense of familiarity, and none of us would want to see them end up the way they appeared to in this one. To be honest, I am not even sure I understand the story completely, but what I do understand is that in this one, there is a whole lot less choice in which planet one goes to in which order. Because I was to meet all the jedi masters on Dantooine, I saved it for last, only to discover that in the short time it took me to clean out the Jedi enclave sublevel, save Master Vrook, and save the new city from the mercenaries, someone "myseriously" rebuilt the enclave without my knowing. I am still not certain how I ended up on that planet, or what this shadow device was that that remote enabled, or what was the point of all the droids zapping each other in the Ebon Hawk, nor am I certain why the Bounty Hunter chick with ethics bothered to wander around that rock just to fight the Wookie again. Who was that mysterious Sith Lord in the Japanese theatre mask on that wrecked ship? What was the blind Sith/Jedi's role in the whole thing? Too many unanswered questions, nothing to even make me want to remember all their names. How could these whacky misfits even begin to compare with Bastila, Canderous, Jolee, Juhani, Carth, Zaalbar, Mission, Reven, and Malik? These characters were annoying, humorus, developed, and we identified with something in each of them. I felt nothing at all for the new (and even the assorted old) characters in KotOR 2. What is obvious from the many lapses in this storyline is that it was rushed into production to meet the X-Box Christmas deadline rather than delaying it to get it right. I may speak only for myself, but I'd have been happy to wait another year to get a more cohesive storyline with strong characters than what I got. One of the best features of KotOR was the fact that it had immense replayability, I do not feel the urge to replay KotOR 2 nearly as much. Of course, why should Obsidian care, they already got their money from me on this one, but you can bet your socks I won't be as eager to buy anything else from them. I am terribly surprised that Lucas Arts even okayed this game for production. Despite some rather impressive improvements to general gameplay and item modificaitons, this game is not worthy of the Star Wars name.

Not everyone has a DVD drive. My laptop has one, but my desktop does not. I never had a need for one.