So I bought KotOR...

[Commissar Draco]

Star Wars is the worst setting ever made in any genre, thus any media taking place in it can only be terrible.

Star Wreck sucks much more... Star wars Had Episode 5, Kotor II and Star Wars Academy... Star wreck has bunch of Sodomites and furry deviants running around in pink pijamas doing greater good.

You should be more informed if you don't want to herp and derp some extra beyond your usual quota.

So some spin off made by third party about Star Treck meeting Babylon 5 proves what? There is quality material done in Star Wars setting done by or licenced by Lucas (among pile of shit).

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It proves you have to come up with better nicknames, because that one has been taken for twenty years.

Not to mention you only hate on Star Trek because you're a retarded fundie luddite.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, some of the finest work done by the designers of Wasteland 2 was this:

 

[laclongquan]

KOTOR is a good game...

If you larping an unclothed girl running around.

 

[Roguey]

We're on topic. KOTOR is a terrible game, 9/10 Codexers agree. And you know who the tenth person is.

Volourn? Skyway? Lesifoere? Racofer? St. Proverbius (check out his official Codex review)?

Turns don't do any good for combat if it's still meaningless autopilot combat.

Autopilot won't cut it versus every encounter.
I play a stun-reliant dual-blaster scoundrel and I have to make sure that as much as possible is stunned. I also have to keep shields up, heal, switch target and use some buffs or CC skills. I pause just as much as I do in any IE game. OTOH I know D&D a lot better than this system (whatever it is).
The combat isn't great but it's good enough. The game has nice music and atmosphere, and certainly not a worse story than any other Bio game.

Ranged characters in kotor are terrible, this is something Obsidian fixed. I'd rather not get into "Is combat good if you have to pay attention while playing a gimped character?" but I will point out that Dragon Age Origins also required you to pay attention during certain encounters. A problem both share is that there's rarely any need to alter your tactics. When I played kotor (both of them) the vast majority of the time I just pre-buffed with the speed/armor/stat spells, spammed flurries, stuns, and force lightning, and focus fired on individual units when necessary. Heal up and repeat. The two Mandalorian encounters in the first one were the only places where I actually had to use other things.

Oh yeah and the system is dumbed-down Star Wars d20

 

[abnaxus]

We're on topic. KOTOR is a terrible game, 9/10 Codexers agree. And you know who the tenth person is.

Lesifoere?

 

[Roguey]

abnaxus

And you know, with a bit of tweaking here and there, those were pretty much the words she used to describe Witcher 2. And in eight years its best elements will also be completely surpassed and people will look back and wonder why anyone ever made such a fuss over it with those outdated graphics and cinematics, stilted dialogue trees, and clunky context-sensitive-combat-animations-with-no-canceling. It's what happens when you're all style and no substance: good for now but not enduring.

 

[abnaxus]

I guess she was still a teenager back then, in 2004?

Also, that looks like a post from Larian forums.

 

[Falkner]

With the weird way the kwans denote dates it could also have been 2008.

 

[Infinitron]

With the weird way the kwans denote dates it could also have been 2008.

No, the year is always last.

 

[Falkner]

Really? I could have sworn I have seen dates with the year first. Or was that another system?
I wish everyone could just adopt the logical system of simply stating dates from smallest to largest unit - Day, Month, Year.

Sorry for the derail, I'll let you get back to sharpening your forks for Lesifoere, or however that's spelled.

 

[Turjan]

Really? I could have sworn I have seen dates with the year first. Or was that another system?
I wish everyone could just adopt the logical system of simply stating dates from smallest to largest unit - Day, Month, Year.

The Swedes use Year, Month, Day. It's actually the best system to sort stuff chronologically, as it follows the same order as normal numbering from large to small.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Poor Lesi. Going down the storyfaggotry-road so badly that KotOR comes across as a game with "wonderful, wonderful characters and story". Someone should post that back to her current raving&rambling blog. How can you criticize sexist cookie cutter fantasy after loving KotOR?

 

[Gragt]

I'm pretty sure we all liked crappy stuff during our youthful and ignorant years. Myself I used to like tripe like Star Wars and Indiana Jones until I grew up.

 

[Roguey]

Really? I could have sworn I have seen dates with the year first. Or was that another system?
I wish everyone could just adopt the logical system of simply stating dates from smallest to largest unit - Day, Month, Year.

American logic is that since most people say it like "It's July 23rd 2012" instead of "the 23rd of July 2012" that's how it should be written numerically.

Poor Lesi. Going down the storyfaggotry-road so badly that KotOR comes across as a game with "wonderful, wonderful characters and story". Someone should post that back to her current raving&rambling blog. How can you criticize sexist cookie cutter fantasy after loving KotOR?

By her own admission she thought feminism was dumb and internalized a lot of misogyny back then, in part because she grew up consuming a lot of bad western fiction (like kotor). That's why she hates it so much now.

 

[Sceptic]

I'm pretty sure we all liked crappy stuff during our youthful and ignorant years.

Thankfully, for some of us this was pre-internet, so our shame isn't eternally preserved

Also, I don't think my tastes have changed much since like 16 or so. And much less so in gaming.

 

[Ulminati]

Poor Lesi. Going down the storyfaggotry-road so badly that KotOR comes across as a game with "wonderful, wonderful characters and story". Someone should post that back to her current raving&rambling blog. How can you criticize sexist cookie cutter fantasy after loving KotOR?

By her own admission she thought feminism was dumb and internalized a lot of misogyny back then, in part because she grew up consuming a lot of bad western fiction (like kotor). That's why she hates it so much now.

Oh Crazian girl, you so funny. Never change

 

[zerotol]

KOTOR II is an unfinished piece of shit. It has no ending, no conclusion and that wrecks the entire game IMO.

 

[Mother Russia]

KOTOR II is hugely overrated. It had a plot with GAPING holes, unfinished endings and last levels and shit letdown bosses. First, that bald sith was a cheap ass boss who kept coming back to life. Then, the other dude who destroys fucking planets gets taken down easily via lightsaber. I mean, why the fuck did he use a saber anyway? Why not the same force power he used to kill the planet??

KOTOR was actually really good. Yes, it was the beginning of the gay assed decline of bioware, their last game before they went full derp. But it was still pretty good, even with all it's flaws. True, I might not look at it so highly if it weren't star wars...

 

[Turjan]

Then, the other dude who destroys fucking planets gets taken down easily via lightsaber. I mean, why the fuck did he use a saber anyway? Why not the same force power he used to kill the planet??

If you accept the stupid premise of the game that your character is a void in the force, it actually makes perfect sense. Nihilus cannot suck the force out of you if you don't have any in you. This doesn't make much sense with the force=life theory, but maybe the author liked midichlorians :D.

 

[sea]

From what I've seen so far here being on here for a short time, any abuse given is mostly a mix of low blows and high lows, pissing contests and writing Stephen King novels. Quetz's conspicuous departure from our little joust is likely just the tip of iceberg. And that's not even including the stuff in Retardo Land.

This is gonna be fun.

Nobody on the Codex bothers giving serious analysis to games like KotOR because the discussions have already been had a hundred times over.

I think KotOR is a decent game - good, but very flawed and with a lot of really cringe-worthy design decisions. I guess I'll give the bullet point version.

1. Presentation. This is the one thing KotOR nails. Sure, these days it doesn't look great, but at the time it was one of the most graphically impressive RPGs around. Not only is it technically competent, it also looks, sounds, and feels Star Wars - which is important because most of the game's appeal is fan service.
2. Character system. It's fine for a Star Wars RPG. Lots of options and skills available, very D&D-like which of course makes sense given the roots in the Star Wars tabletop. Jedi are monumentally overpowered next to gunslingers, but othewise it's competent and well adapted.
3. Combat. I think this is where KotOR mostly fails. On paper it sounds good - it's much more action-oriented, which fits Star Wars very well, especially the "interactive Star Wars movie fantasy!" thing the game tries for. Some of the skills, like throwing lightsabres around, and force powers, are cool. However, combat is ruined largely by the real-time-with-pause setup, which is not turn-based enough to satisfy turn-based fans and not a true action system and thus lets down action fans. Additionally, it has huge issues with encounter design and enemy balance - tons of dungeons full of the same copy-pasted mooks over and over, with very little variation in fights. Only the absolute hardest battles in the game require any sort of strategy whatsoever. The game has almost no challenge except for the final boss, who is either extremely easy or painfully hard depending on your character build.
4. Level design and dungeons. The second huge failing of KotOR. Environments look great but are mostly boring and full of the same trash mobs with little else to do. Many levels are needlessly oversized, and the game suffers from a lot of crappy nearly-endless dungeons, or areas that make you walk for pointlessly long periods of time just to get from A to B (especially when you want to leave a planet). Then there's crap like the stupidly annoying underwater section on Manaan, and the huge and mostly empty Dantooine and Tattooine areas. Could have been fixed with a few more things to do and see in these areas other than grind trash mobs.
5. Quests. Mostly crap. There are a few good ones, like the trial on Manaan that spans multiple sub-quests and has lots of outcomes, the two warring families on Dantooine, the jilted ex-wife on Tattooine, etc., but overall there are way too many standard fetch and kill quests. The one major exception is Korriban, which is mostly excellent (lots of different solutions and a good finale), although a bit contrived.
6. Writing and story. KotOR has good characters - they're all cliches, of course, but they're well developed and likable. As usual, this is a core BioWare strength and I think KotOR is one of their best games in this regard. The story is pure fanservice fluff, but the twist is fine, if a bit predictable and silly. The game really shines in conversations and quest situations - there are often quite a few options and many of them are entertaining. Dark Side is pointless canon-wise but has some of the best chaotic evil stuff I've ever seen in a game - it's a lot of fun to just be a complete dick for the lulz. That said, some writing and voice acting are painfully bad at times, especially the early game.

I think most people on the Codex who hate KotOR hate it because it's a BioWare game, and the start of the BioWare trend of prioritizing presentation over gameplay (not to mention that it has legions of fanboys that love it unconditionally). As an RPG, KotOR is very, very mediocre - but as a Star Wars experience, there was nothing like it at the time, and it was one of the first RPGs to truly embrace a 3D presentation and higher production values. I do think that the presentation is an accomplishment, and worth playing the game over if you like Star Wars; I just wish it didn't lead to BioWare games getting simpler and dumber over time.

 

[Metro]

Never cared for it. Even after the seventh playthrough.

 

[Jaesun]

So we finally know who Skyways alt is.

 

[convivialist]

Holy shit, guys. I also bought KOTOR from the Steam sale because I would have sworn that in all my time lurking the Codex I kept seeing "KOTOR" on all the hardcore elitists purists' lists of "must play classic rpgs." Then after playing it a while I came here to see if there were any threads about it where I could see an explanation of what's so good about it, and instead I find a thread about how much it sucks. How did the OP and I both make this mistake?

To be honest, I haven't played very many CRPGs. Can someone recommend a game that has good presentation (yes, things like atmosphere and immersion are important to me, not just fucking gameplay, though gameplay is also important) and isn't dated as hell, but also has many of the strengths of a great CRPG? In particular I'd like to see a game that actually gives the player lots of options about how to go about things--I always hear CRPG elitists talk shit about JRPGs for being linear, but every time I try a CRPG it's just as linear as any JRPG I've played. KOTOR for instance just railroaded me through the entire first area (Taris) in the game. Sure, there are a bunch of boring side quests I could do in any order, by the main storyline required me to do everything one way (why even have dialogue options like "Sorry, I don't trust you, I'll find some other way off this planet" when I know there's no other way off the damn planet?)

 

[oscar]

Yeah, leave Bloodlines as well.

No. Bloodlines rocks.