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My KOTOR2 Thoughts **spoilers**


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I'm sure if you're a regular on these boards, you've already seen this identical post a thousand times, so you should probably just move on, because I feel like putting down my impressions after having completed KOTOR2 last week.

 

Oh, and there are probably spoilers, so watch out.

 

First of all, I liked KOTOR. It was a great game, but I didn't think it was as great as all the hype it recieved. It wasn't as good as Torment, and I would have put it behind the two Baldur's Gate games as well. I thought the three biggest issues with the original KOTOR (excluding Carth's constant whining) were:

 

--Mediocre to poor interface: This is an artifact of most games that ship on both PC and console, and I didn't expect much to be done about it.

 

--Combat didn't feel Star Wars-esque: I assumed at the time that this was a symptom of trying to force a scene from a movie into a series of D20 combat turns, and I didn't expect any improvement in this department. However, I found that the animation work that Obsidian did really helped. The game is still, essentially, Luke and Vader standing face to face and taking turns battering down each others health bars, but the variety and quality of combat animations kept me from noticing. Excellent work here.

 

--Oversimplified handling of the Dark Side: I never liked the way Bastilla's transitions were handled in KOTOR. It was too much like flipping a switch. Jolee's take on light/dark, and even Juhani's, were more interesting, but they weren't the focus of the game. I found KOTOR 2 much more satisfying in this regard. I loved the constant arguments with Kreia, particularly since my character didn't always when those arguments. I think the first encounter with Atris is probably my favorite dialogue sequence of any game I've played. Terrific writing there, and throughout the entire game.

 

At the point of leaving Telos, despite being seriously pissed that I STILL didn't have a lightsaber, and would have said that KOTOR2 was far and away better than its predecessor. I no longer think that. Here's why:

 

--Technical issues: The game was highly unstable. To be fair, I loaded up some old KOTOR save games over the weekend, to replay some key sequences and make sure I was remembering things correctly, and KOTOR was just as unstable, so the problem may be due to an inherit incompatibility between my new graphics card and the KOTOR game engine, and not anything Obsidian introduced, but there were plenty of broken dialogs and other missed details really got on my nerves. In Particular, in the Korriban caves, I was forced to take a Dark Side hit because the game script was broken and would not allow me to proceed without killing the image of Kreia. I completed the game without ever regaining the Light Side points I lost to that encounter.

 

I write software for a living, and I know how hard good software is, but I don't want to see Obsidian die the same death as Troika, and that means that something desperately needs to fixed somewhere.

 

--The Ending: I'm not going to rant on this too much. I read the Resident Cynic column over at Gamespy just before I reached the endgame, and I mostly watched with a feeling of horror as a great game just fell apart. Enough said.

 

More than the missing content at the end, however, I was rather disappointed that Atris was just another Dark Jedi. After the depth of the original encounter, I was anticipating an encounter with someone who was not opposing me from the Dark Side, but rather from the Light, and the challenge of resolving such a conflict while still keeping my character on the Light Side path. Instead, we got the old RPG cliche of "oh, I'm really evil, let's fight", which was just hugely disappointing. Even if the rest of the endgame content was in place, I'd probably still be ranting about that on these boards.

 

--Lack of Focus: I think this is mostly a complaint about Nar Shadda, which was unfortunately the first place I went after Telos. A little wandering around, trying to figure out what to do next is good, but Nar Shadda felt like a little too much of that, and, although I thought Dantooine and Onderon were fun, and Korriban was a nice, short little side-trip, I felt the whole mid-game lacked focus. Yeah, I was trying to find some Jedi Masters, but it never felt that urgent, since it never seemed like the masked guy was doing anything but staring out the window while I was running everywhere looking for Jedi. This wasn't a big issue, and with a solid endgame I probably would have forgotten about it, but it was in the back of my mind while I was going through the game.

 

Some other Minor Gripes:

 

--Horrible Manual: This is an RPG. If you're not going to put the class progressions in the manual (and average, slow, etc. doesn't count), either make this information available in-game (Troika's in-game help for the White Wolf system in Bloodlines should be an example to anyone making an RPG), or stick it on the CD somewhere so I can print it out myself.

--Combat is Too Easy: KOTOR was consistently challenging. I seldom felt threatened in this game. The constant, amateur ambushes by bounty hunters were almost comical.

--Lightsaber Forms: I could never figure out if the lightsaber forms were having an effect. Partly, this was caused by the complete lack of documentation about the actual effect of the form, and partly because combat was usually too easy to make switching forms worthwhile.

--Upgrades: I liked the new upgrade system, but the clumsy interface system (which was still beter than KOTOR), made managing my upgrades too much of a chore. I needed a better system for figuring out equipment was assigned to whom (including weapons in a character's secondary weapon slot), and what upgrades I had and where they were being used. Heck, just allowing me to switch between upgrades and construction without exiting back to the game world would have been a 100% improvement over the system that was in place.

 

Ok, I've probably rambled on long enough. The game had its problems. On the other hand, I had a blast running a Dark-side leaning character through Peragus last night, and, as soon as a patch is available, I'll be playing through the game at least one more time, so ti can't be all bad.

 

--Magus

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I agree with alot of your gripes, and it seems there alot of other who do too. But in regards to your mentioning fighting Kreia's image in the tomb on Korriban. Are you sure you have to gain dark side points from that encounter? I went through that scene a couple times myself. Is'nt there some kind of dialogue option that lets you through it while either gaining light side points or having no effect on your status? I think you like, initially side with her, then she admits she's a dark jedi and you then you change your mind and attack her. Or was it decide to defend her anyways so she can be redeemed? Something like that.

 

 

2DW2

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I agree with alot of your gripes, and it seems there alot of other who do too. But in regards to your mentioning fighting Kreia's image in the tomb on Korriban. Are you sure you have to gain dark side points from that encounter? I went through that scene a couple times myself. Is'nt there some kind of dialogue option that lets you through it while either gaining light side points or having no effect on your status? I think you like, initially side with her, then she admits she's a dark jedi and you then you change your mind and attack her. Or was it decide to defend her anyways so she can be redeemed? Something like that.

 

 

2DW2

 

I could gain light-side points from the encounter by siding with Kreia, but then Kreia would never de-spawn after the fight, and I couldn't proceed to the next room. I could only talk to Kreia again, and start the whole encounter over from the beginning. I tried a number of combinations, and never found a light-side path that let me proceed, but I didn't try all the paths, so I certianly could have missed something.

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I really liked your thoughts on the confrontation with Atris. A battle (whether it be through conversation, lightsabers or both) between two Light Side Jedi who are in conflict would have indeed been very interesting. However, as it is in the game didn't really bother me since I was expecting it to turn out the way it did anyway.

 

Before the game completely falls apart in the third act, I thought the first two thirds of the game were very solid and held up well in comparison to KOTOR1... except in one area. I was disappointed in the lack of character developement for the party members... other than Kreia. Unless I somehow just missed it along the way, there was far less of this than in KOTOR1.

 

At the end of the first game I really wanted to have more adventures with those characters (even Carth), not because I didn't know who they were.... but because I DID. But at the end of KOTOR2 I didn't really feel like I knew much about most of these people.... they were just sorta tagging along... though the potential was certainly there.

 

I agree that the combat animations for lightsaber duels are well done (though I wouldn't mind if they were slowed down a bit so they could be appreciated more). On the otherhand the shootouts are still silly with characters standing out in the open blasting away at each other... and sometimes dodging laser fire. These don't even come close to resembling scenes like the Detention Cell shootout or the Cloud City escape from the films. I know that shootouts aren't as big a part of the game once you get a lightsaber but I'd still really like to see the developers work on this area for any future games in the series.

 

As for getting light-side points on Korriban... I was able to get them and continue on by continually siding with Kreia. I think on the third time through Kreia finally disappeared and I could move on.

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About Atris:

 

I agree that the revelation that Atris was a Sith came totally out of nowhere and was a real letdown after the brilliant argument with her the first time you are in the Telos Academy. I wonder what was originally planned for Atris. Both her and Nihilus were presented as two of the most important characters in the pictures shown before the game's release. In the game, they don't appear much and don't have anything to do with each other, although there's even a picture of Atris fighting Nihilus.

 

Sometimes I believe that what we're playing is only the first half of the game with some scenes from the very end that now seem totally out of context because of the missing parts.

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I could gain light-side points from the encounter by siding with Kreia, but then Kreia would never de-spawn after the fight, and I couldn't proceed to the next room. I could only talk to Kreia again, and start the whole encounter over from the beginning. I tried a number of combinations, and never found a light-side path that let me proceed, but I didn't try all the paths, so I certianly could have missed something.

 

 

Yes I encountered that issue with completing the coversation but the doors remaining locked too. Like I said there is someway to get through it, and I *think* it involves siding with Kreia initially then turning on her after she admits she's fallen to the dark side.

 

2DW2

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