So does KOTOR 2 suck or not?

[thedumbum]

kotor2 doesnt suck its worth the 50 bucks

[Darth Jebus]

I wish the opening crawl in k2 matched the friggin' music.

[Akshara]

What do you think everyone about the LS and DS?

I think the DS in TSL is far superior than it was in Kotor.

 

In Kotor, one had to be a pretty serious bully/thug to attain and maintain DS mastery - or at least the DS wasn't very subtle. And there were really only two paths: full LS or full DS, and a single choice which sent you down those paths near the end. It was very difficult, if not impossible, to play a true "grey" character and finish the game, without compromising the character's integrity at one point or another.

 

In Kotor II, one can actually reach and maintain DS mastery and finish the game without ever killing indiscriminately, acting like a bully, or being a thuggish gangster. Characters will even respond and comment on how subtle or gross your evil is, and either gain or lose influence because of those actions. Quests are not black or white, requiring either a hard DS or LS solution to complete - almost all main quests have more than one solution, that can lead to either LS or DS gain, or both, for each.

 

 

On Dantooine, it is possible to side with the Koonda Militia against the Mercenaries, and still get a DS result. Sometimes doing the obvious DS path doesn't give any DS gain. On Citadel Station, siding with the Ithorians can still lead to the DS depending on how you deal with them. It's possible to go full DS without ever aligning with Czerka or the Exchange ever. It is entirely possible to be DS throughout and maintain mastery, and still have all the Jedi gather at the enclave.

 

 

Of course, one can go through TSL and be a simple gangster thug; or be a dominatrix who takes on slaves; or be a tortured soul obsessed with revenge; or be a general all around monster - and to a much greater extent than in the first Kotor game.

 

One can also choose to pattern their DS path along the lines of a Palpatine, who manipulates everyone for their own gain, uses subtlety to corrupt others, and pretends to be a good guy who really cares; or follow the true Sith code laid out in the first game, of strength over weakness, like a Darth Maul or Malak would have done; or simply go through as a "Clint Eastwood western" kinda anti-hero, who walks their own path and doesn't shy away from killing nor put up with sh*t from anybody, but is at heart a good guy. It's also possible to "pull a Bindo" and play through as a true Grey character, who never leans too far into the light or dark, and still finish the game without compromising your character's integrity.

 

Was TSL perfect in this regard? No. But after having played Kotor, Fable, Fallout I/II, and many other supposed "LS vs. DS" games, I've yet to come across one that allows as much freedom along the DS path as TSL does.

[LordRaven]

It does not suck. It could have been better. I have had a lot of fun with it though. I think it is to short but it is fun.

[Taellosse]

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.

[jorak_uln]

Top ten reasons why KOTOR 2 is better:

 

1. Story - Kotor I had a nice twist, but otherwise was a typically Star Wars story. KOTOR was like Star Wars and Edgar Allan Poe mixed. It was obviously too dark or too complicated for some gamers but who cares. If you don't get it, you can always stick to Battlefronts. No thinking or dialogue necessary for that. KOTOR 2 was deep, dark, gritty, mysterious and even downright ugly in some scenes. The emotions were much deeper and the game was actually focused more on the story than on combat, as opposed to KOTOR 1 where it was just kill everything. This story sucked you in as deep as you wanted to go and held on to you. It also gave you more choices and possibilities than 1.

 

2. The NPCs - Again, KOTOR 1's were pretty much stereotypes we've come to know from years of Star Wars books and novels. But KOTOR 2 showed us new possibilities, our first real Sith in the party (Visas), plus a character who was somewhere in between Jedi and Sith (Kreia), plus a sexy bounty hunter, and Canderous as something more than just a thug. Granted Disciple is kind of a goof, but he's eye candy for the girls. As opposed to like Carth, a prissy soldier, or Bastila, spoiled Jedi princess who didn't get along with her mother, Juhani too ugly for words, Jolee was amusing once in awhile, but not much in the way of backstory for the KOTOR 1 npcs as opposed to having your planet wiped out and being taken as a slave by the Sith, or being sucked in by Malachor and suffering "indignities" at the hands of Sith Lords (nasty)...also more droid adventures. Why not? How many times would the bad guys have won in movies had it not been for the efforts of R2-D2?

 

3. The Main Character - Yeah, Revan was cool. Revan was the bomb. But obviously there can be only one Revan at a time, and the Exile is actually a more interesting character, with a more interesting back story. He/She has more to overcome than Revan did, and didn't get the benefit of simply being reprogrammed by the Jedi Council. She got the shaft, and she was left with nothing by the start of this game.

 

4. The Dark Side. Got a much, much better taste of it this time. Actually had a chance to kill Jedi Masters and see what it's really like to be a Sith Lord. For people who only play light side characters, this is probably too dark, but for the rest of us, it's a unique experience that you don't get with KOTOR 1 or Jedi Outkast.

 

5. The Prestige classes. Nuff said.

 

6. New armor and weapons. Better lightsabers.

 

7. Better locations- Tatooine and Kashykk were fine, but it was nice to get to some lesser known places like Dxun and Onderon. It was kind of depressing to see what Korriban had become, but the Tomb of Ludo Kresh made up for it, I thought.. Star Forge vs. Malachor? Well, it's combat based vs. story based. Kill ten thousand combat droids and sith trooper and dark jedi, or kill significantly less and actually have dialogue with Sion, with Kreia, etc. Taris was a butt ugly planet that Malak probably improved.

 

8. The Villains - Can't imagine a much better villain that Kreia. So incredibly messed up in the head and yet so calculating and evil. Oddly enough, something of a hero at the same time, getting the character to destroy her, Sion, Nihilus and Malachor. Again, obviously too complicated for people who like a slash and bash rpg. Sion, actually a sad story despite being the baddest man in the galaxy, personal combat-wise. Nihilus, another tragedy which Kreia pointed out when she explained that he didn't really have power, was just a wound in the Force, a blight on the galaxy. All three victims of Malachor and the Mandalorian Wars, of Revan even, just as much as they were threats to the galaxy.. These three as opposed to Malak, a basic Darth Vader without the armor, megalomaniac. Darth Bandon? Seemed like he should have taken up ballet or something instead. Granted the Sith Assassins had those silly goggles, but was with those grey court jester outfits the Sith in KOTOR 1 were wearing?

 

9. Music - The music seemed better to me all around, seemed more fitting to the mood of the various scenes and locations, especially on Malachor. Even some jazz in the cantina on Onderon. Though I did like that funky beat in the cantina of Taris' underworld in KOTOR 1.

 

10. The Mandalorians. Visiting their base camp, interacting with them, fighting alongside them. Having the main character come to terms with the Mandalorian Wars because of them, going one on one with them in the battle circle, hearing them talk about taking another shot at the Republic. Catching a ride in a basilisk because of them.

 

People who don't think this is better just don't get it, but oh well.

[NeverwinterKnight]

People who don't think this is better just don't get it, but oh well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

you know, people can "get it" and still enjoy kotor1 more. they are not mutually exclusive.

 

i "got it" but am still leaning towards kotor1 in terms of overall enjoyment.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

I love how the same sounds/music have popped up in lucasarts games over the year. No, that's not a bash, infact i love it cuz it brings back good memories. For example, the music in the Telos cantina was also used in "The Phantom Menace" game that came out for playstation and Pc. The speede sound you hear on nar shadda is a classic from the Nar shadda multiplayer map in Jedi Knight. When I started playing this game, I had detirmined that Kotor 1 was better. But now after a couple months of playing it, I'm starting to think I like it better. The only thing i miss from the original is Bastila

[LordRaven]

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.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It seems like someone os trying to land a gig as a game reviewer.

[ryan12177]

I get it just fine, but KOTOR was a much better game, doen by obviously more detail oriented designers.

 

 

Does KOTOR2 have improvements? Sure, I love the improvements to pazaak, the robes, the ability to upgrade and modify weapons etc and the prestige class.. but the problem is that the buck stops there.

 

On the down side

 

~ Swoop racing takes a step back in 2.

 

~ The game is the easiest I've ever played, and I thought 1 was slightly too easy.

 

~ The inability of the devs to create a sensible dialogue tree so that you aren't having the same dialogue options pop up all game. The way your convo's progressed (perfect example being Jolee) was perfect and the new game has you asking the saem questions all game.

 

~ Lack of inteligence of enemies. Doesn't necesarily go under game difficulty because the fact that you're fighting Sith (Has anyone noticed that you see less Sith in the Sith Lords game than 1?) and NONE of them ever try to use a force power on you is a problem.

 

~ Random loot generator.. god, that was a bad idea.

 

~ Planet size.. Besides Nar Shadda, every planet is a lot smaller than the planets in the first game. Why even re-visit Korriban and Dantooine if we were going to get half-planets and stuff like a crystal cave appearing where there wasn't one before?

 

~ The game end.. I don't even think that one has to be explained. Malachor isn't exactly storming the Starforge

 

~ Broken promises.. the Devs sad a lot of things that just never came to be or weren't quite what they said.. they promised, bigger planets, they promised that certain characters would choose to leave you or not joined based on your influence/allignment (half truth at best), they said a lot of stuff that just wasn't to be.

 

 

So, I don't think its a matter of people never seeing anything as being as good as the first, its a matter of the developers of 2 being rushed and not produving as nearly flawless of a product as the first and actually ruining a lot of the aspects that made the first game what it was (story, dialogue, replayability)

[the khanster]

It just doesn't have the charm of the first one.

*Here's to #3*