Taellosse

Wow, I had no idea there was any such thing even in T3. I did all the upgrades to him that were allowed, and never got such an option in dialogue with him. I guess that has something to do with the whole locked navicomputer thing, huh? Never did get that taken care of. I also did not see Bastila after talking to Carth. I wonder why...

In terms of gameplay and the rules-set, it surpasses KotOR, in my opinion. The fact that it is possible to reach beyond level 20, the presence of prestige classes, the greater upgradability of lightsabers, dual weapon setups that can change on the fly, all contribute to a more fun game, mechanically speaking. One thing that did kind of disappoint me was the armor. Now, I liked that fact that I started out as a jedi from the very beginning, thus not making me feel like I had all these "wasted" levels once I wanted to learn force powers. The drawback of this was that I was pretty restricted in what my own character could wear. Now, I found these light armors very early in the game which didn't interfere with force powers. One had an armor rating of 3 and the other 4. I don't remember what they were called, but they both had these sort of cape-like things coming from the waist, and armor plates over cloth on the torso. They were both upgradable, which was cool. The trouble is, I never, ever found anything to compete with either one once I had them. So my character was wearing that same thing from Telos to the end of the game. I found this thing before I ever saw a Jedi robe of any sort, so once those did start showing up, they were not nearly as good, since I never saw one with more than 2 armor. All of this may have just been a result of the randomness of item drops in this game, so it might be different for someone else. The random item drops annoyed me slightly in another area: lightsabers. You can't build more than your own lightsaber, so after that, to equip any characters in your party that become or start as Jedi, you have to depend on the ones dropped by Sith. I got something like half a dozen or more short lightsabers from this. But only one double-bladed saber, though that was earlier in the game and thus useful, and one regular length lightsaber. Unfortuantely, this latter didn't arrive until sometime on Danntoine, the last world I visited before the end-game. It was cool that I could make use of upgrades in addition to the 3 crystals for them (though those upgrades were few and far between until near the end as well), but they were still lesser weapons compared to a full lightsaber. One concept that had great potential but wasn't carried through as well as it could have been was Influence. One of the things that bugged me about the first game was the fact that your party members had static alignments (with the possible exception of Bastilla, if you were playing DS I suppose), and this meant that at least some of them could be shifted along with you, at least to an extent, based on your interactions. It also allowed for the possibility of learning about the character at a variable pace, depending on how well you got along, rather than at pre-plotted points in the story. The drawback, though, was that if you got on well with someone from the start, they unfolded too fast. I learned just about everything there was to know from the Disciple from the minute I got him, because I scored a high Influence right off the bat. So much so that I was able to turn him into a Jedi right away after gaining him as a party member. When I realized that was possible, I reloaded to before I picked him up, did it again, and went through the convo with him until I got that, without even leveling him up, so that all his levels could go into his Jedi class. As a result he was only a level 6 of whatever he is before he goes Jedi, and all his other levels were as a Consular, making him a good deal more useful, and powerful, as a character (or at least as a Jedi), despite the fact that I got him much later, than Atton, who didn't get to go Jedi until near the end of my time on Nar Shadaa. The other drawback of this is that if you are sticking to either LS or DS, those characters that aren't so easily influenced because they stand near the opposite end of the spectrum don't reveal much. In my case, GOTO, HK-47, and Canderous, I mean Mandalore. In the latter two cases, they didn't have much to reveal, since they were characters I knew from the first game. My only real questions about them is what exactly happened to them between the two games. GOTO, though, left me wondering. I suspected he was actually a droid himself, not merely operating the thing remotely, but I couldn't get much of anything out of him. In all cases, I felt like I could have learned more if the game had been longer to accomodate it. I didn't feel like I had many opportunities to make use of every character. I picked them up, in several cases, relatively close to the end. In fact, because of this, I only actually turned Atton and the Disciple (and why the hell doesn't he have a name, anyway?) into Jedi. I gather that its possible to make Bao-Dur a Jedi, and I would imagine its also possible to make Mira one. But in both cases, I never had the opportunity to do so. I may have if I'd used them both more often, I suppose (although, as I said, I was able to make the Disciple one as soon as I got him), but I think it would have been easier if there'd been a way to actually tell how much influence I had with a given character. I've heard that you can make that one Handmaiden on Telos a party member, though I never had that opportunity, and I suspect that its possible if playing the DS to pick up that wookie who's after Mira instead of her. In the former case, I understand its possible to make her go Jedi too, but I assume the wookie can't, , and neither can Mandalore, and obviously none of the droids can. I think if the game had been a bit longer, I could have had the opportunity to use more party members, and thus get more Jedi in the group. The story was also very good, but, in my opinion, not superior to the first game. Mostly this is due to the lack of polish on the ending. While I don't necessarily expect an enourmously shocking plot twist 2/3 of the way through the game, as before (I rather liked Kreia's line about that, actually, at the end), the ending was still somewhat of a letdown. That may be somewhat mitigated if there is in fact a 3rd game. But I still felt like there were too many hanging threads left over. It left it feeling like they ran out of time towards the end of making the game. Some of those threads have already been mentioned, like what happened with the remote and GOTO being unconcluded, the open question of who actually survived from your party after the crash onto Malachor, aside from those mentioned when speaking to Kreia. One that really bugged me was the HK-50s. Maybe I just didn't gain enough influence with HK-47 or something, but I never saw another one of those guys after getting him reassembled, never mind finding out who the hell sent them after me in the first place. I'm not sure, since I don't still have my saves from the first game, if this game was actually any shorter, but if FELT shorter. In the first game, the broad plot was sort of similar: go to these 4 places and find This Important Thingy. But once those 4 things were assembled, there was still a fairly sizable chunk of the game left, including a whole additional world to explore and deal with before ever going to the Star Forge. In this game, after you find the final Master, the end run of the game begins. While Malachor is arguably another world, it doesn't have that same depth that the final world of KotOR had, because there's no one else there, just some beasties to kill, which, if you're thorough in your first run-through, means that when you play the Remote's bit, its just a question of running from one point to another. Now, I know I didn't experience every single thing this game has to offer. Even just looking at the FMVs that I unlocked, there were a handful I missed somehow. There were a couple of quests I was unable to complete, and several others I'm sure I never even got, either because I was playing LS, or because I simply didn't have the right dialogue options or successful persuade checks or whatever. The things mentioned above dealing with character backstories also couldn't all be done. I rather doubt its even possible to go through everything in this game and maintain a particular alignment at the same time anyway. In that sense, I think this game may actually be more replayable than the first. Because the plot doesn't hold the same kind of unexpected twists to it, I think I may actually be more willing to go through it again to see how it differs from a different perspective. I've tried to play the first game as a DS character a couple of times, but already knowing the plotline, and what would be revealed, actually reduced the appeal for me. My only great curiousity is whether its possible to get Bastilla back when you first encounter her as a Sith, when playing a Dark Jedi yourself, and I'm curious to see the final FMV for the dark side. But slogging through the whole rest of the game for those two things just doesn't seem worthwhile to me, when there are going to be essentially no other surprises. This time, there are more things that will be different based on how I play, in terms of the major characters. Wow, that was a lengthy critique, wasn't it? Do I win the Longest Post award for this thread? And, ironically, I didn't even entirely answer the question that started the thread. I guess the summary would be it does not suck, but there certain aspects that could have been better. I'm by no means sorry I bought it, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it quite as much as the first game.