Playing KotOR for the first time, does it get better?

[Wyrmlord]

You're playing the wrong one, skip to 2.

Two.

Kotor 2 is where shit gets good in its own right.

KOTOR 2 makes all the best parts of KOTOR 1 better, they were very specific. Each character is more unique in how they handle in combat, they are more weapons and abilities, each character has better background, the story is better, your own jedi can grow even more powerful in different directions, the world is still very interesting.

KoTOR 2 is still better, though.

*sigh*

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but these are such same-ish games, that I can understand a person who says both are good or both are bad, but not those who prefer one over another.

Bizzare, Codex. Both games have long railroaded intros and long railroaded outros, with a brief freeroaming chapter in between. Both involve one of the messiest pausable real-time combat systems one shall see. Both have forced mandatory party members that you must bring along for pure narrative purpose, irrespective of functional use. And so on.

Especially the last point. Imagine Fallout 2 if Myron was mandatory for San Francisco. That's the exact equivalent of being forced to drag along the ex-Sith-army Scoundrel in various parts of KotOR 2 or the 14 year old Twi'lek for one section of KotOR.

 

[Roguey]

Silly Wyrmie, pipka was referencing that one bounty hunter's dialogue when you keep trying to talk to him. It was a genuinely funny moment. I wouldn't really call the combat messy either, the problem is that it's nothing but "mash special abilities to win, isn't this awesome?" with very few exceptions.

Unless, like me, you chose the mage jedi class, in which case there really isnt much after that, as the final boss is nearly impossible to defeat. By my calculations even with fully leveled warrior jedi with best gear, your attacks will miss him in 60% of times. What chance do you have with a mage is a stupid question.

Funny thing about KOTOR is that it shares a flaw with Fallout: namely that you can go into your inventory at any time and mash healing items and stims to your heart's content with no penalty (TSL kinda-fixed this exploit by limiting you to one item per round but that doesn't make it any more difficult). Force breach all the tanks so you only have to fight him twice or so and you can win through attrition.

 

[DarthBehemoth]

KOTOR 2 story is much better than KOTOR 2, if you look at the comments, you can see that most people praise the story not the gameplay.

 

[SuicideBunny]

it has better combat and crafting as well, though not by much. if you disregard the story completely, 2 is still the lesser/least evil out of those three games.

 

[Roguey]

The Sith Lords does not have better combat. It's just as mindless, only this time you get more feats and powers in your dumbed-down d20. And Peragus and Nar Shaddaa are still total shit and there's nothing as comparably bad in the first.

 

[Spyronoid]

Does it have hot alien sex?

 

[Sith Holocron]

Does it have hot alien sex?

Not when the writer has this to say about writing romance in games:

So, I generally despise writing companion romances (I think unrequited and/or doomed ones are ultimately more dramatic)

More on this can be found here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=19765&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

[Wyrmlord]

KOTOR 2 story is much better than KOTOR 2, if you look at the comments, you can see that most people praise the story not the gameplay.

The makers of the KotOR games themselves don't think highly of the stories they wrote for these games. (Assuming a silly thing like story has any useful purpose in a VIDEOGAME.)

Chris Avellone said that KotOR 2 suffered from a kitchen sink approach, where every silly idea they had was thrown into the game, until a lot of time was spent on small elements of the game, while the actual story structure was left superficial.

As for KotOR itself: David Gaider, who wrote HK-47 and a few other situations/characters, was surprised by the excessive praise given to his narrative contribution to the game by critics. He didn't even think HK-47, his own creation, was funny.

So what's the point of talking about the story in the KotOR games, when the makers of BOTH games really just gave a damn to the story? It's plain irrelevant.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Assuming a silly thing like story has any useful purpose in a VIDEOGAME.

That's just plain unforgivable for non-arcade games. Especially RPGs where combat can become a chore very very soon.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Especially RPGs where combat can become a chore very very soon.

Be careful in universalising this statement.

 

[DarthBehemoth]

KOTOR 2 story is much better than KOTOR 2, if you look at the comments, you can see that most people praise the story not the gameplay.

The makers of the KotOR games themselves don't think highly of the stories they wrote for these games. (Assuming a silly thing like story has any useful purpose in a VIDEOGAME.)

Chris Avellone said that KotOR 2 suffered from a kitchen sink approach, where every silly idea they had was thrown into the game, until a lot of time was spent on small elements of the game, while the actual story structure was left superficial.

As for KotOR itself: David Gaider, who wrote HK-47 and a few other situations/characters, was surprised by the excessive praise given to his narrative contribution to the game by critics. He didn't even think HK-47, his own creation, was funny.

So what's the point of talking about the story in the KotOR games, when the makers of BOTH games really just gave a damn to the story? It's plain irrelevant.

KOTOR 2 may have some shit parts, the story is great wether it was intended or not

 

[Deleted Member 10432]

Peragus is p. well-designed. Not as good as the Harbinger, but not bad either.

no not really and the fish planet is probably the worst of the 4 as i recall, you have to do some shit with some court trial that really doesn't matter and then you run around really slowly underwater for awhile to do some shit and make some goodie two shoes choice or make the ultimate evil doer choice

but if you play for a little longer you get the chance to murder carth and most (not all) of the other shit characters so that's a plus i guess

It's funny, because it's actually the second-best-designed quest in the whole game (the best is the Korriban betrayal one). And there are al of two or three with any actual complexity, anyhow.

KOTOR 2 story is much better than KOTOR 2, if you look at the comments, you can see that most people praise the story not the gameplay.

Wyrmlord cannot into storyfaggotry.

 

[Storyfag]

As for KotOR itself: David Gaider, who wrote HK-47 and a few other situations/characters, was surprised by the excessive praise given to his narrative contribution to the game by critics. He didn't even think HK-47, his own creation, was funny.

*That* would explain why HK is a cool character despite having been written by that hack!

no not really and the fish planet is probably the worst of the 4 as i recall, you have to do some shit with some court trial that really doesn't matter and then you run around really slowly underwater for awhile to do some shit and make some goodie two shoes choice or make the ultimate evil doer choice

but if you play for a little longer you get the chance to murder carth and most (not all) of the other shit characters so that's a plus i guess

It's funny, because it's actually the second-best-designed quest in the whole game (the best is the Korriban betrayal one). And there are al of two or three with any actual complexity, anyhow.

Yep, the Korriban quest is actually neat. When you go to Korriban late enough in the game that you know your true identity there is a way of progressing through the Korriban quest that ends up with the Master of the Sith Academy swearing fealty to you

 

[Sacculina]

Yep, the Korriban quest is actually neat. When you go to Korriban late enough in the game that you know your true identity there is a way of progressing through the Korriban quest that ends up with the Master of the Sith Academy swearing fealty to you

Stop! Stop! Damn it, you're making me want to give this another shot. But at no point in this game was I having fun. PlayingThief for the seventh time is still fun.

I'll probably do it anyway. :storyfag:

 

[visions]

Especially RPGs where combat can become a chore very very soon.

Be careful in universalising this statement.

I'd say that even in a game with pretty much universally praised combat, it can turn into somewhat of a chore, if it's the only thing a game has going for it, so I have to take long pauses in between playing it. Take KOTC for example, oh hai yet another gang of Hill/Frost/Fire Giants that do not pose any serious threat to my party while I slaughter them by blocking the chokepoint with my fighters/summoned elemental and spamming aoe/single target direct damage spells with my casters. Very good game of course, but I've seen people claim something to the effect that "every combat encounter is interesting/meaningful"/ "no trash combat", which is not really true.

How many rpgs are there actually with no "trash combat" which can turn into somewhat of a chore?

Silly things like exploration, setting and story provide additional motivation to slog through the more repetitive combat encounters. Of course, one could argue that similar motivation is provided by the promise of upcoming, better designed combat encounters, but at least from my perspective, these things do not operate on the same level. Things like exploration (of the world/setting), story and dialog seem better at maintaining a sense of immediacy (wanna see a little more of this, so I'll wade through these fairly boring encounters), than the knowledge that there'll be more interesting combat encounters along the way (fuck it, will get to it later anyway, will have to just play something else for a while to break the monotony... oh shit suddenly two months have passed since the last time I played).

This becomes especially relevant when considering games that do not have sufficiently interesting combat and char systems to function as their main attraction, and let's face it, this applies to most post 2000 rpg's (the exceptions that I can think of being Wiz 8, TOEE and KOTC, possibly Prelude to Darkness as well, but haven't really played it, also perhaps Arcanum for solely the char system). All rpgs would benefit from something besides the combat/char system to keep the player interested, and story is one such thing, so I wouldn't disregard it as pointless.

 

[Regdar]

So, I generally despise writing companion romances (I think unrequited and/or doomed ones are ultimately more dramatic)

 

[Ebonsword]

This is one of BioWare’s most beloved RPGs, so what am I missing here?

I think that you're missing the fact that force-pushing an enemy across the room and then shoving a lightsaber through the head of his friend is pretty damn entertaining.

Also, HK-47 is quite awesome.

Finally, as rare as sci-fi RPGs are today, they were even rarer when KOTOR came out, which made it a real breath of fresh air after years of slaughtering orcs and skeletons in dungeons and catacombs.

 

[Roguey]

*That* would explain why HK is a cool character despite having been written by that hack!
...
Yep, the Korriban quest is actually neat. When you go to Korriban late enough in the game that you know your true identity there is a way of progressing through the Korriban quest that ends up with the Master of the Sith Academy swearing fealty to you

Guess who wrote/designed Korriban? David Gaider. When I stepped on that planet and immediately noticed the huge shift in tone with pretty much every NPC becoming a camp gay scenery chewing large ham I thought to myself "Gaider had to write this" and it felt so good to be right when I looked it up later. And I'm still left wondering if it was his idea to have Jolee affect that southern-ish drawl when he pretends to be your slave even though it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Stinger]

Eh, HK47 didn't become awesome until Kotor 2.

His best lines like "Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope." Are all Kotor 2.

 

[sea]

The problem with KotOR is that there really isn't much of a game there except for the plot twist and some occasionally entertaining side-quests. The warring families on Dantooine, for instance, and some of the ones on Tatooine are pretty good. Once you get the midway point and the DRAMATIC REVELATION, unless you want to basically screw over everyone in the game, there isn't much else to do. Filler combat, filler quests, it always feels like the game is going somewhere but never gets there. In the end I think most of its success comes down to the fact that it was one of the few Star Wars games to capture the spirit of the films decently (if only by just ripping them off)... and as one of the earlier examples of a mass market Western RPG designed around consoles, it had all the right ingredients to become a "modern classic" without necessarily being all that good.

The Sith Lords, despite still having mostly the same shitty gameplay, actually made skills a bit more relevant to gameplay than they were in the original, and it actually did something new and interesting with the setting. It's far more intelligent and interesting than anything to come out of Star Wars in decades, so much so that it's a must-play for RPG fans. However, when you get right down to it, it's an average game at best... with a good story and some great characters to make the ride a lot more interesting.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

KoTOR stays the same shitty quality throughout most of the game. Its only slightly less shity in Manaan. However killing of your party members almost made completing the game worth it.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The Sith Lords, despite still having mostly the same shitty gameplay, actually made skills a bit more relevant to gameplay than they were in the original,

I used to think that KotOR would improve if there were more opportunities to use the unused and underused skill checks, but frankly it did not.

Somehow, having enough skill checks does not go that far in making a compelling gaming experience. Neverwinter Nights 2 and expansions had a lot of skill checks, but in the end, it didn't satisfy me as much as I thought.

Many people prefer Fallout over Fallout 2, even though Fallout 2 has far more skill checks. One didn't need a high Lockpick or high Repair or high Traps or high Steal in Fallout, except for one or two occasions. It didn't hurt Fallout.

 

[Sacculina]

Eh, HK47 didn't become awesome until Kotor 2.

His best lines like "Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope." Are all Kotor 2.

That's why I was disappointed. After finding seven companions I couldn't force myself to like, it became my personal mission to seek out that psychotic charmer--except it turned out that the only thing distinguishing him from the other soulless twats in this game is the word 'meatbag', which I'd already heard in KotOR2.

 

[Esquilax]

As for KotOR itself: David Gaider, who wrote HK-47 and a few other situations/characters, was surprised by the excessive praise given to his narrative contribution to the game by critics. He didn't even think HK-47, his own creation, was funny.

*That* would explain why HK is a cool character despite having been written by that hack!

No joke, when BioWare isn't trying so hard, they can sometimes come up with some decent characters/dialogue. In Mass Effect 2, Mordin and Legion were cool characters because the writers weren't thinking about them in terms of "OH MAN HOW DO I MAKE SURE SOMEBODY WILL WANT TO WRITE ABOUT HOW THIS CHARACTER'S URINE MIGHT TASTE LIKE?!?!?!" and instead just wrote them in a way that was more natural and made more sense.

That being said, even if Gaider originally wrote HK-47, he was a million times more memorable in the sequel. He was much funnier, more menacing and more clever in the sequel. I can't remember a single quotable line apart from "meatbags" in KotOR I, but he had so much awesome dialogue in the sequel. Shit, even T3 was interesting in the sequel!

Fuck, if KotOR II had more time in development it would have been storyfag HEAVAN.

 

[anus_pounder]

Didn't HK47 make fun of Carth and Bastilla in KotOR2 ?