Volourn said:
"and the shortness of the damn thing."
Funnily enough, it took me longer to finish ME than KOTOR.
I don't doubt that, but you're part of a small clique. I clocked ME in 21 hours, and that wasn't a rush job. I dawdled around chatting to all the NPCs, doing side missions, etc. it's not like I bombed through the MQ.
I did pretty much the same thing with KOTOR1. I think I clocked 40 hours on that beast - give or take.
Most reports on t3h internet have been kinda similar. The main discrepancy is that people bombed through ME far quicker than I did. I bet you could clock ME in under 10 hours if you really wanted to. I think you'd struggle to do that with KOTOR1.
ME is not a long game by any description.
Volourn said:
'People' ar edumb. ME is more complex than KOTOR. It's silly to say otherwise.
I found KOTOR's bastardised 3e rules to be a bit 'meh', but there's still more to it than ME. Character development in ME was, to be honest, pathetic. You had three rather rigid choices of class. A DPS class, (Soldier) a Debuffer class, (Engineer) and a Crowd Control class with a pathetic DOT on the side. (Adept) Apart from the Infiltrator, the cross-classes are a waste of time.
In KOTOR, you had three main classes, but you could customise these a lot more than in ME. You could tweak your attributes, choose specific feats, take specific skills - then you could mix things up with a certain Jedi class. Okay, it's still a bit narrow in comparison to say, NWN2 - but it's more leeway than you get in ME.
In ME you could equip a gun, armour, omni-tool, and bio-thingy. You could also upgrade these things.
In KOTOR, you could equip a gun, a melee weapon, armour, implants, belt, headgear, shield. All of this altered your character's capability in the field to a much greater extent than in ME. Having trouble with grenades? Equip a detonation kit! Character getting splatted with too much regularity? Swap out that vibroblade for a carbine!
Volourn said:
Plus, none of the best KOTOR side quests top NWN's top side quests. None of them.
I can't remember the side quests from either game very well, so there must be some truth in that. Pazaak? Fuck that, if I wanted to play cards, I'd ask my friends.
Volourn said:
Both NWN OC and KOTOR are mid 70s affairs. ME is much better than that, and most definitely not dumbed down.
What's wrong with the mid-seventies? Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs and Station to Station were all awesome albums!
I've stated before that I quite enjoyed ME, but it's froth - and, honestly, representing it as anything more than froth ignores its strengths. KOTOR1 may not be, say, RoA, but it has a little bit more to it.