Review More heat on KOTOR 2 - GMR review

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Obsidian Entertainment; Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

<a href=http://www.gmr-source.com>GMR Source</a> has posted a <a href=http://www.gmr-source.com/site/index.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1104966969&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&>mini-review</a> of <a href=http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swkotor_sithlords>KOTOR 2</a>. The score is <b>6/10</b> on account of bad graphics and horrible presentation, whatever it is. I hope that they would start rating box art and manual design soon, because evaluating games based on gameplay is, like, so yesterday.
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<blockquote>What really made me mad was how they said something about 'Whatever I do, my party will follow', um, no. First you have to gain their 'influence' which means even though you might want to sway to the dark side you cannot gain influence unless you impress your party which also means netting a little light side points too. One thing that made my blood boil was the lag I got while playing this. I'm not talking about a skipped animation ( Which also happens alot ) but, the kind of lag you might get trying to play Doom III multiplayer on 128 mb of RAM. And trust me, THAT is NOT fun at all.</blockquote>Check out the comments at the end:
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<blockquote>dude u r wierd man half of wot u said bout the bad parets of the game are like jesus man how the ***** are u gonna no wot iitem u got wit out a item menu i mean seriously u wouldnt even no what it does. and wot if u forgot a quest hmm just sit there lifeless and give up or wait luk in the frigging journal hello anybody home bad review!</blockquote>If that's a representative of Bioware/Obsidian target audience, then it's just sad.
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[FireWolf]

And thus, the pinnacle of the information age.

 

[Jinxed]

I can't understand what that guy was trying to say.

 

[Mendoza]

What really made me mad was how they said something about 'Whatever I do, my party will follow', um, no. First you have to gain their 'influence' which means even though you might want to sway to the dark side you cannot gain influence unless you impress your party which also means netting a little light side points too.

Yeah, having companions who aren't completely servile is such a pain. And those annoying enemies, they don't just die on your command, you have to take the effort to fight them.

 

[FireWolf]

I know, wtf is this interactivity bullshit? I'm going back to Dungeon Siege - A real game!

 

[Andyman Messiah]

dude u r wierd man half of wot u said bout the bad parets of the game are like jesus man how the ***** are u gonna no wot iitem u got wit out a item menu i mean seriously u wouldnt even no what it does. and wot if u forgot a quest hmm just sit there lifeless and give up or wait luk in the frigging journal hello anybody home bad review!

Translation: Dude, you are weird, man. Half of what you said about the bad parts of the game are like Jesus, man. How the Crack are you going to know what item you got without an item menu. I mean, seriously, you wouldn't even know what it does. And what if you forgot a quest... Hmm... Just sit there lifelessly and give up or wait; look in the frigging journal? Hello, anybody home? Bad review!

Sounds like an upstanding member of the BioWare Fan Community.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The comment is pretty spot on in its commentary, though the lack of grammar probably hurts its case.

This review is idiotic.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Yeah, having companions who aren't completely servile is such a pain. And those annoying enemies, they don't just die on your command, you have to take the effort to fight them.

Yeah. Ain't that just a royal bitch?

That reviewer needs an enema!

 

[Spazmo]

I'm reserving judgement on KOTOR2 until I play it (that'll be a first, eh?), but it wouldn't surprise me if it did go Bloodlines on your ass towards the end. Hell, BioWare's KOTOR did. I know the idea was that Malak was throwing everything he had at you just to stall you, but it was just a pain in the ass lazy bit of design. Basically, it doesn't seem to be uncommon for the guy designing the last area to get kind of lazy and just fling the kitchen sink at you.

 

[FireWolf]

The end of Kotor made sense, didn't it? I mean, it was the hub of the Sith Fleet, surely there'd be plenty of troops protecting Malak?

There seems to be a trend in recent titles that they appear either rushed or just plain unfinished toward the end. Half life 2, Halo, Bloodlines, Kotor2 all have been said to have weak endings. I think there's too much of a penchant for publishing a title for specific dates within extremely tight development cycles. It is no good for the publishers, or the developers in the long run and definitely no good for the consumers. Publishers are running acclaimed franchises into the ground with poor sequels (thus reducing the potential for future successes) and developers are given bad press for building incomplete or flawed titles while fans are given sub-par products. All this just to hit the Christmas release date. Wouldn't it have been better to wait for the Star Wars hype of the new movie to release the title?

I still consider it an expansion pack rather than a truely new title.

 

[monkey]

The end of Kotor made sense, didn't it? I mean, it was the hub of the Sith Fleet, surely there'd be plenty of troops protecting Malak?

Meh: if the Sith had tech which allowed them to force-grow hundreds of clones every five minutes maybe, but even then I'd have wanted the possibility that one of my party would be able to shut that cloning area down with some well-placed thermal detonators. There may be plenty of troops protecting Malak, but if I thin their ranks, I should see less of them on subsequent encounters...

And, funnily enough, the Sith wave at the end didn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that that was the toughest series of battle on the Star Forge. Malak was a wuss once you figure out to take out his Jedi batteries first...and Bastila and the droids weren't very challenging either.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The one thing I never got about KotOR is that being Revan, I could never really stand up and say, "HEY! I'M REVAN! I WILL FUCK ALL YOU BITCHES UP IF YOU DON'T FALL IN LINE!" if you do the dark path thing. Even at the Sith Academy, where you basically prove your Sithiness, you're not allowed to gather up the forces there for your army. In fact, about the only thing you do get to do is kill everyone.

It wasn't so much that Malak wasn't protected, he had endless seas of droids, dark sith peons, and other things actually protecting him. It's the damned fact that THE PLAYER doesn't have an army that bugged me.

 

[Mendoza]

Apparently if you side with the academy master on Korriban and then reveal that you're Revan, you don't have to slaughter the academy. I don't know for sure though since I haven't tried it, and it wouldn't affect anything outside of Korriban.

 

[FireWolf]

That was, fundamentally, the problem with KoTOR, the encounters on every world had extremely limited influence on the other worlds, perhaps there was a mention in one or two dialogues about what was going on, but still there was virtually nothing different. That you're Revan seemed pretty immaterial throughout the game. The ending also doesn't make a lot of sense. When you play as the dark sider and go to fight Malak at the star forge, why are you helped by the Republic fleet? The game never actually changed once it was revealed who you were. None of your companions left in protest, nothing of how you're treated is different.

 

[ichpokhudezh]

[Edit: emphasis is mine/]

That was, fundamentally, the problem with KoTOR, the encounters on every world had extremely limited influence on the other worlds

If you discount the fact that the favorite combat tactics for LS were force wave and storm spamming. Or the fact that there was an advice on Bio forums 'even if you're a LS, pick Plague or Kill - it helps', and it did help. Or the fact that a fall to DS did not bring about any repercussions. Or the fact that you just needed to pet a puppy to get your LS points back. Or the fact that there were LS points at all. Or...

KotOR I was a pathetically bad rendering of SW setting (for me).

 

[dipdipdip]

I agree. The boyscout/bully thing didn't seem like an accurate representation of the darkside/lightside struggle to me either.