Kotor 2

[Jick Magger]

I'd recommend the restored content mod, but just bear in mind that it doesn't magically make the game complete or anything, it just adds cut content which makes the game feel a bit more cohesive and gets the game as close to a finished product as they reasonably could do.

Oh, and avoid the droid planet mod, it's shit.

 

[Xor]

I'd forgotten how hideously overpowered the main character becomes near the end, especially if male/with the Handmaiden and high Wisdom. My Jedi Master's attributes right now at level 28 with no buffs are 14 STR, 22 DEX, 24 CON, 18 INT, 42 WIS, 16 CHA, 25 Fort/22 Reflex/49 Will, and 52 Defense. Also, there seems to be little or no mechanical reason to play through the game as anything other than a Jedi Consular + whatever with high Wisdom, because it doesn't die, never runs out of Force Points, buffs the living shit out of itself/the party, and completely locks down (or if Dark Side, flat-out demolishes) entire swathes of enemies. It also still dishes out very good melee damage, though probably only half as much as a Guardian heavily specialized for dual-wielding, extra attacks and high damage.

I think Sith Lord ranks up there, if not better at times. The only reason I say that is Force Crush, which Jedi Consulars do not get if I remember correctly. It combines a stun and massive single target damage. You can chain stun bosses/enemies at a whim, and mostly 1 or 2 shot them in the process.

After reading your post, I am tempted to reinstall K2. I never played with Jedi Consular's much.

Sentinal/Master is a better build. You get way more skill points early on, more feats, and you'll still have more than enough force points. If you play optimally and kill everything you can you'll finish the game around level 30-35 IIRC so you'll still get more than enough force powers. You don't really need the DC upgrade feat from Consular, either - your wisdom and charisma should be more than high enough to regularly succeed with powers that have saves.

 

[Xor]

Why did I ignore the warnings and install M4-78? This thing is fucking awful, even by fan mod standards.

 

[Jick Magger]

Why did I ignore the warnings and install M4-78? This thing is fucking awful, even by fan mod standards.

You're lucky, I didn't have anyone to warn me. Just remembered during my replay that Korriban was a bit of a let-down and learnt there was a mod that expanded the original plans for the Jedi Master there.

It'd probably be a hell of a lot more tolerable if it weren't for the fact that the modders were morons who bought in to the "Environments are automatically better if they're gigantic, even if there's absolutely nothing in them" train of design philosophy, so a majority of the mod is just running from one end of the ridiculously huge map to another doing pointless busywork tasks.

Spoiler

You have no idea how annoyed I was when I found Vash at the end, only for her to die immediately to something contrived and stupid. Almost stopped playing the game altogether.

 

[Xor]

My review of M4-78:
I first realized something was wrong when I spoke to T3 about the location of the planet and the exile's dialog was nothing but restating what T3 was saying in question form. "So you know where the planet is?" Maybe once I could have overlooked but it was four fucking lines of dialog in a row. I can only imagine how fucking awful the dialog is if you use T3 for the droid-only segment.

I only played the first few quests in the mod before getting absolutely sick of running back and forth. Pretty much all the dialog is terrible; whoever wrote the lines had no grasp of HK's character (I used him for the droid segment), and the quest design is among the worst I've ever seen - literally every quest was just run from one NPC to another NPC, back and forth, across giant maps full of nothing. That itself might have even been tolerable (I have a high bullshit tolerance), but all the NPCs are droids and they made the brilliant decision of giving them near-identical names, so I constantly found myself looking in the journal trying to remember who I was supposed to be looking for. After yet another run from the entry area to the end of another area, I was told to go back to the entry area again and talk to someone else. At that point, I stopped.

Thankfully I know enough about KOTOR 2's scripting from having to fix numerous bugs over the years that it was really easy to just manually set the value that advances the plot and I managed to skip having to play through the rest of that shit. I recommend staying far, far away from M4-78.


Finished the game again. I always really enjoy the Onderon/Dxun segment and the subsequent Dantooine confrontation - "It is because you were afraid" might be my favorite line in any RPG. Things go downhill after that, though, and I usually find myself struggling to finish Malachor.

I wonder if anyone has considered asking Chris Avellone if he'd want to go back and finish the ending for KOTOR 2 now that he's not working for Obsidian. It seems like something he might be willing to do, now that he's working on dream projects. I really feel like KOTOR 2 could have maybe been as good as Torment if the ending hadn't been rushed.

 

[Makabb]

Kotor 2 and BG 2 are one of those rpgs that you have to replay on a yearly basis, just to not let yourself forget how good games were and what shit is produced nowdays.

 

[Hassat Hunter]

It'd probably be a hell of a lot more tolerable if it weren't for the fact that the modders were morons who bought in to the "Environments are automatically better if they're gigantic, even if there's absolutely nothing in them" train of design philosophy

The maps were as made by Obsidian and there's absolutely NOTHING we can do to modify that.

Spoiler

You have no idea how annoyed I was when I found Vash at the end, only for her to die immediately to something contrived and stupid. Almost stopped playing the game altogether.

Did you play that in the original or 1.2? That scene has been improved loads. And she can't really live for reasons.

I first realized something was wrong when I spoke to T3 about the location of the planet and the exile's dialog was nothing but restating what T3 was saying in question form.

That does about sum up most of T3's dialogue throughout the entire TSL.

I only played the first few quests in the mod before getting absolutely sick of running back and forth. Pretty much all the dialog is terrible; whoever wrote the lines had no grasp of HK's character (I used him for the droid segment), and the quest design is among the worst I've ever seen - literally every quest was just run from one NPC to another NPC, back and forth, across giant maps full of nothing.

So, which lines were horrible? And did you really only played the droid segment? And with all quests you mean... the only 2 you played out of the 20 or so that exist?

After yet another run from the entry area to the end of another area, I was told to go back to the entry area again and talk to someone else. At that point, I stopped.

*cough* Points at the escort droid who are conviently placed at that exact spot for quick travel. *cough*
Then again, they aren't active during the droid only segment, so...

I wonder if anyone has considered asking Chris Avellone if he'd want to go back and finish the ending for KOTOR 2 now that he's not working for Obsidian. It seems like something he might be willing to do, now that he's working on dream projects. I really feel like KOTOR 2 could have maybe been as good as Torment if the ending hadn't been rushed.

He probably wants, he also wanted to do KOTOR3.
Both are equally unlikely though.

 

[Xor]

A proper review would require me to reinstall the mod and play up to the point where you can actually visit the planet (and actually play the mod again, which I have no desire to do), so you'll just have to be content with criticisms of whatever I can remember.

Responses to T3's dialog are usually written as indirect exposition - you infer what T3 was talking about based on what the responses are. The dialog he has at the beginning of the mod is incredibly direct: it's literally just restating what he said in question form, like a one way phone conversation in a B movie.

I played through the droid segment, then did some stuff as the Exile. If memory serves I was instructed to find a droid to open a door. I can't remember if I wasn't told who the droid was or if it was another case of trying to find one nearly identically named NPC out of a few dozen that made me rage quit. I'm certainly not going to go back for more.

HK's motivation isn't to kill all "meatbags", and even if it was, he certainly wouldn't go around advertising that fact. He's not fucking Bender.

I never saw an escort droid. And that's a rather silly way to utilize the areas you were given. If they're so big that trekking back and forth would be tedious, don't design your critical path around backtracking.

 

[Athelas]

I was dissuaded from trying out the M4-78 mod when I checked out the first few minutes of a playthrough on YouTube and noticed the companion dialogue in which they comment on the planet was spliced together from bits and pieces taken from other conversations. Still, I'm glad that this was split into its own stand-alone mod and that the restored content mod merely restores what was cut (for the most part - I'm looking at you, Jedi padawan Kaevee).

 

[Jick Magger]

It'd probably be a hell of a lot more tolerable if it weren't for the fact that the modders were morons who bought in to the "Environments are automatically better if they're gigantic, even if there's absolutely nothing in them" train of design philosophy

The maps were as made by Obsidian and there's absolutely NOTHING we can do to modify that.

Okay, allow me to correct myself:

The original map plan was fucking awful, Obsidian was right to have scrapped it, and the modders were stupid to have copied it.

Spoiler

You have no idea how annoyed I was when I found Vash at the end, only for her to die immediately to something contrived and stupid. Almost stopped playing the game altogether.

Did you play that in the original or 1.2? That scene has been improved loads. And she can't really live for reasons.

I've played the most up-to-date version on the steam workshop, and it that's what you call an improvement, I don't even want to know what older versions of the scene were like.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Why must there always be a betrayer, who's been betrayed and will betray in turn? Was Kreia just making things up as she went along, while trying to maximize her edginess & contrarianism?

I question the necessity of a betrayer!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I question the necessity of a betrayer!

There should be one if only to cast down the order when they stray far from their roots. Probably something like that.

 

[NecroLord]

Why must there always be a betrayer, who's been betrayed and will betray in turn? Was Kreia just making things up as she went along, while trying to maximize her edginess & contrarianism?

I question the necessity of a betrayer!

Kreia is a deeply misanthropic being and even possibly insane(trying to "kill" the Force by expanding the Malachor wound to encompass all the galaxy). You can see it from how she treats almost anyone who isn't the Exile either with superiority or thinly veiled contempt,whether it's Atton,Bao-Dur,Handmaiden etc.
She does say she loves the Exile while on Malachor,as a mother would a child.
Finally,her treacherous ways certainly fit her character,I think.

 

[Edgetard]

I like how 10 year old me could play kotor 1 and get through it no problem but it took me till my 20s to fully understand kotor 2

 

[NecroLord]

I like how 10 year old me could play kotor 1 and get through it no problem but it took me till my 20s to fully understand kotor 2

Avellone at his finest.
Also, Kotor 2 is one of the best Star Wars stories ever told.

 

[wishbonetail]

I like how 10 year old me could play kotor 1 and get through it no problem but it took me till my 20s to fully understand kotor 2

And i took me till my 40s to understand that kotor 2 is a pretentious crap with nothing behind its nonsensical verbose dialogs.

 

[Infinitum]

Always thought Kotor 2 had a nice, suspense-building story hyping the big reveal up until the Kreia betrayal. After which uh, she turns up super pissed and killing everyone for whatever reason? And she's bossing around the other Sith Lords now, none of which have had any meaningful characterisation apart from looking menacing and occasionally killing stuff. Wall of text about the force. And somehow you have returned to planet what's-it's-name which is now exploding? The end. What? What.

 

[ghostlife]

kotor 2's biggest flaw is all the extremely tedious segments where you are forced to play as your party members

they expanded the feats & levelling in a nice way from 1 though

 

[ghostlife]

actually I take that back, the biggest flaw (in both games) is being completely unplayable on a modern pc

 

[True Ukrainian]

Always thought Kotor 2 had a nice, suspense-building story hyping the big reveal up until the Kreia betrayal. After which uh, she turns up super pissed and killing everyone for whatever reason? And she's bossing around the other Sith Lords now, none of which have had any meaningful characterisation apart from looking menacing and occasionally killing stuff. Wall of text about the force. And somehow you have returned to planet what's-it's-name which is now exploding? The end. What? What.

The last act was heavily cut but most of the dialogue had already been recorded and is in the game. There's a restoration mod that provides a full rebuild of the last act, including HK47's dungeon, your party members following kreia to malachor and confronting her and additional cutscenes which tie up character arcs.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

To be fair, the last act is still quite poorly implemented even with the restoration patch. But eh, it's still better than nothing. And as someone who has never played vanilla, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the patch that rescued the game and turned it into a classic (which I'd recommend to any fan of the RPG genre, unlike with BioWare's KotOR which is way too bland of an experience).

 

[True Ukrainian]

To be fair, the last act is still quite poorly implemented even with the restoration patch. But eh, it's still better than nothing. And as someone who has never played vanilla, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the patch that rescued the game and turned it into a classic (which I'd recommend to any fan of the RPG genre, unlike with BioWare's KotOR which is way too bland of an experience).

The last act is a complete clusterfuck without the patch. The exile abruptly flies to malachor without any explanation, abandons everyone he knows, Mira and Hanharr show up for no reason, same with the droids and kreia suffers an out of character chimp out.

 

[Alienman]

Always thought Kotor 2 had a nice, suspense-building story hyping the big reveal up until the Kreia betrayal. After which uh, she turns up super pissed and killing everyone for whatever reason? And she's bossing around the other Sith Lords now, none of which have had any meaningful characterisation apart from looking menacing and occasionally killing stuff. Wall of text about the force. And somehow you have returned to planet what's-it's-name which is now exploding? The end. What? What.

The last act was heavily cut but most of the dialogue had already been recorded and is in the game. There's a restoration mod that provides a full rebuild of the last act, including HK47's dungeon, your party members following kreia to malachor and confronting her and additional cutscenes which tie up character arcs.

What mod is that?

 

[Absinthe]

It's called the Restored Content Mod. It's considered a must-have for the game. There is also a Droid planet mod, but that's mostly there in case you really want to experience that bit of cut content. It's actually a pretty terrible level.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

It's called the Restored Content Mod. It's considered a must-have for the game. There is also a Droid planet mod, but that's mostly there in case you really want to experience that bit of cut content. It's actually a pretty terrible level.

If you have the game on steam you can just subscribe to the workshop mod and play, avoids having to download external stuff.