So, in the last week or so, I took the chance to play Kotor2tsl again. Twice. I'm nearing the completing of the 2nd playthrough (one LS, one DS). I hadn't played it in a few years, so here's some "updated" thoughts. For the record, I played with TSLRCM and a couple of others merely aesthetic mods (namely: updated shader, hidden-headgear, HD backdrops).
Prologue: one of my favourite prologues in the history of videogaming. It does a lot of things very right, from introducing the player to what's going on, to creating a few knotty threads that the player will have to unravel, to creating a feeling of "suspence" and sort of "mystary".
Peragus: this is the "actual" tutorial level of the game, and a chunky one at that. Well, it's plain hideous, and I always found it to be so. No wonder there's even a "skip Peragus" mod.
Telos: the first "real" location, and it boils down to a handful of copypasted corridors and a couple of exteriors. Yet, there is some stuff going on, a few C&C, and it has a certain "feeling" to it.
Dantooine: 3 exteriors, 3 interiors: the exteriors really suffer from cheap level design, being mostly devoid of anything of interest. Supposedly the player finds xirself in the middle of a big struggle/conflict, but the whole thing is played out fairly low-key, sadly. Again, Dantoine from kotor comes to mind, and the content it delivered.
Nar Shaddaa: probably the "beefiest" location. There is A LOT to do on NS, the level design is fucking terrible (no other way around it, especially when the same location was much better crafted in the much older Jedi Knight games). Again, C&C, a few characters to pick up and a lot of chances to develop party members. Some interesting quests.
Korriban: "a wasted chance" is the way I'd describe it. One devoid exterior and 2 semi-empty interiors. NOT cool, considering how important this planet is in the SW universe. Not much going on here, which is disappointing. Korriban really sucks in TSL, and the devs didn't manage to make it seep that awesome "atmosphere" it carried in kotor.
Dxun/Onderon: Dxun is a corridor-like jungle, to be cleared. The Mandalorian settlement is a joke in area design (HUGE, grassy spaces with 5 relevant NPCs). Onderon provides some awful level design too, the areas are, again, really poor in models, textures, and content. There is one single major quest to be completed here at first, and it will take about 10 minutes (the investigation). Things get slightly more interesting upon returning to Onderon to resolve the civil war, and yet again a planetary-scale civil war is resolved over 2 areas and a couple of fights.
Malachor: more meh. 2 areas total, which you'll have to navigate through more than once, only on different characters. It's only really functional to the narration, otherwise it's another failure: after nagging the player the whole game about Malachor, and eventually bringing xir there, this turns out to be a bit of a letdown both in design and writing.
Ravager: actually this one's ok, for a spaceship.
HK factory: just uninstall. It's abysmal from every possible point of view.
Companions: Atton, Kreia, Visas, Brianna, HK47 (winner) definitively stand out for being mostly interesting and quite well written. Mandalore, Wookie, G0T0, T3, Disciple and Mira, well, not so much. The influence system is a bitch, especially when having to cope it with LS/DS alignment. Converting everyone to a Jedi/Sith is entertaining and adds a "purpose" to the influence system (being dependant on it), rather than the latter just being there for shitty romance options (bioware, hello?).
Itemization: mostly terrible. The items in the game just suck, end of the story. I can't think of anything even vaguely positive to say about items in kotor2. Jedi/Sith robes, on top of everything, 1.are mostly identical and 2.look horrible (and you'll have to look at them a lot, of course).
Economy: risible. It doesn't really have a purpose, there is way too much money available to the player (coming from junk, pazaak, podracing, quests), and close to nothing to spend it on.
Combat: the game is obviously combat heavy, and it's fairly easy, to the point that it's ridiculous after 1/3rd of the game or so. Some force powers are just overkill (TM), especially the lightning thing. Even for melee characters, master flurry really breaks the game, especially when combined with master speed. Whatever the player's build and party composition, combat really becomes some kind of a chore or nuisance after a short while. On the other hand, there are some in(s)ane difficulty spikes in encounters, namely those "1-on-1" unavoidable fights the player is faced with, often with a party member that's not the PC, or a party member the player never really used. Some of these greatly vary in difficulty depending on how early they are met, which depends on which "order" the player tackles the different planets. Honourable mention: Atton VS Lesbo Twi'lek Twins.
Story and writing. Hands down, it's quite good. The writers really make the most out of the medium, that is the videogame, to work through the narration. Making the player use different characters, split his party, complete the same levels from different points of view, it's all nice devices that really enhance the story. C&C are both long- and short-term, and LS/DS add a further layer of "C&C" to the whole game experience (although I usually go for LS, this game and its story are really better if played on DS, btw).
General thoughts: I quite like this game, despite all of the shit I just finished writing about it. It's probably because I'm a storyfag, and TSL really caters to those like me. I think the major aspect in which TSL doesn't live up to kotor is level and area design: the fact that a few locations are brutally recycled from the first game, and that most of them are quite uninspired, shallow and lacking content, really doesn't cope with the story that is being narrated through, and at, these locations (edit: for the record I just counted the locations in both games: kotor has 82, tsl has 63).
Seriously, it's a great game (if and only if once TSLCRM is installed).