No lie, I promise.
I hate Star Wars.
I don’t like RPG’s.
KotOR is an RPG set in the Star Wars universe (about a thousand years before the movies).
It’s fuckin fantastic.
The storyline, acting (albeit only voice acting), environment/ character design, and presentation is so much better than the Star Wars movies that Lucas should ashamed at his inability to make quality entertainment of this caliber.
I wouldnt quite go so far, the dialogues while amusing to listen to are still way inferior to Torment, but
every game that lets me kill the annoying kid sidekick and also the love interest
gets a big thumbs up in my book.
While playing through the game I had the feeling that someone took the bioware designers and sat them in front of a five movie SW marathon and then said: ‘do something that captures the good elements of this, dont be afraid to rip something of.’
And they did and the result was good.
I got it for the PC a few days ago, it is great. The combat system put me off at first, but I’m getting to like it now. Though I’m staying on the light path this time, I look forward to my next trip on the dark side. I’ve taken down the names of several individuals who need a serious attitude adjustment.
I think I’d love this game, and I have the system to make it run well, but I JUST got Victoria and I feel like I owe that game some of my time before I start playing something new. Weird.
Man, I just got through the most emotional and awesome part of the game - this just gets better and better!
Incredible game.
Terrible bugs - it crashes a lot, and there are a bazillion exploits, but if you choose to not use them, it’s a near-flawless game.
There’s one thing I would like to do as dark side that you can’t - leave Carth on Manaan and blow the whole damned planet up. One fell swoop to destroy the two most annoying things in the entire Star Wars universe.
It’s probably the best RPG I’ve ever played. Some of the jerk replies you can give are hilarious.
“Bastila, I think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
What I especially like is that you can leave the characters you don’t like behind, and when you need them, they automatically level up. There is no level building for worthless characters in this game, which I’m pretty sure is a first for RPG’s. The dialogue is both funny and sad at times–I haven’t had a game get me this engrossed in a very long time.
I’m kind of a neutral character now–I’m mostly light side, but there are times I do asinine things because there are some quests I really don’t want to do. However, on my second trip through I’m going to be dark side and kill everyone I don’t like. That involves both Carth and Mission. Carth has his moments, but his constant “explode in anger then whine about his past” really got on my nerves. Right now, my favorite character is Canderous. It’s great to hear him berate me for not being evil. Plus, I like hearing his war stories.
Ana, the key to being dark side isn’t to just kill everyone you come across. The absolute best responses and solutions involve using those people and betraying them. Betrayal is the best!
Check, Munch.
Don’t forget HK-47, the bloodthirsty, homicidal droid. Who would’ve thought a robot had the most dark side alignment of any player character?
HK-47 is awesome, especially when he suggests you kill everyone . . . all the time.
Meatbag.
HK-47: “Shall I blast them now, master?”
I love that guy.
I finished the Xbox version a week ago, playing as a light side character. All in all, it’s the best game I’ve played in a long time, but the bugs almost resulted in me chucking the disc out the window about 10 times.
The save system keeps track of how long you were playing, and at some point it jumped from 18 hours to 114054 hours, and I know I didn’t play for 130 years.
Mild spoilers:
At one point I had the option of fighting - which resulted in dark side points, or talking my way out, which was supposed to get me light side points and some stuff. However, the light side path would freeze the game every time. So I wound up going through all the effort of getting all the stuff the sand people wanted me to get, and I still had to kill them all. It was rather frustrating, and I had a moisture vaporator in my inventory the rest of the game.
KOTR is great. It can actually be compared to Torment, which means it’s a truly great RPG.
I got the game for the X-Box when it came out, and while it’s pretty good, it’s not great. It took me a long time to get really involved in the plot. It wasn’t until my character was around twelfth level before I got to the point where I was engrossed enough that I didn’t want to put down the controller. Still, the Big Plot Twist (if you’ve beaten the game, you know which one I mean) was excellent, and really kicked the game up to another level. But it was a long time getting there.
I had a lot of other problems. Party size was too small, for one thing, and artificially so. I’ve got a team of nine high-level badass mercenaries and Jedis hanging around my spaceship. Why would I only ever take two of them with me, even when I’m doing something insanely dangerous like, say, assaulting a Sith base? I understand the reason for doing this from a game-mechanics perspective, but I hate it when mechanics trump narrative logic.
A lot of the NPCs seemed pretty useless, too. Especially the wookie, who’s AC was pathetic and (as far as I’ve been able to find) mostly impossible to increase. Really, once you’ve been to Dantooine, there’s almost no reason to use any of the non-Jedi NPCs.
The plot was suitably epic, to be sure, but that sense of scale was never succesfully translated into the game-play itself. The levels felt small and linear, and not at all lived-in.
I think the real problem I had with the game was that I came to after playing the pencil-and-paper version that it’s based off of, which offered exponentially more gameplay options. Instead of being impressed by the options it was giving me, I was continually disappointed by the options that were, perforce, left out. When I should have been thinking, “Wow, I can do that?!” I kept thinking, “Oh, they left that part out, too.” I had the same problem with Neverwinter Nights, which was a much more complete translation of the d20 system into a video game format.
Don’t get me wrong: I like the game. It’s a solid effort, and unlike most console “RPGs,” it is a true role-playing game, not just a leveling sim whose plot is on rails. But it just doesn’t meet the bar set by other BioWare games.
I loved this game. I got the x-box version as soon as it came out. The storyline was good, and the personalities given for the characters really drew me in. I tried playing darkside, and felt like a heel betraying characters who I had spent the last game getting to know. Hopefully there will be a sequel.
So has anyone had any experience with the PC version? Most of the people here seem to be talking about the X-Box release, although Munch doesn’t mention which platform he was using.
I’m a little concerned about the bugs (crash to the desktop more than a few times and I’m DONE playing the game), but hopefully BioWare will release a patch if necessary. Is a patch necessary for the PC version?
Thanks.
I’d just like to add to add that not only is SWKOTOR an absolutely wonderful game and was a joy to play, and not only is HK-47 the shiznit, (His previous owner’s line after HK-47 flips out for the first time - “Uhh, yeah, that. Good luck with that” had my entire family howling.) but apparently Bioware hires better writers than Lucasfilm. KOTOR would have made a far better movie than either of the two dog prequel movies or, for that matter, “Return of the Jedi.”
Yeah, I hated the Wookiee too. I left him on his home planet. Let the Wookiees have their stupid little family spat.
I can’t wait for the sequel. I’d pay twice the price. God willing, they’ll make one.
pilot141 I am playing the unpatched release version and while occasionally I have a bug, or it crashes to the desktop (mostly after a long (6+ hours) gaming session) it runs very stable, I had three crashes to desktop and finished the game 4 times. That should be a good indicator.
There seem to be some issues with certain hardware but bioware has already issued a beta patch, so you might check that out if it could be nessecary for your PC.
I agree that with the Jedi most of the other chars are a bit useless, even when some of the later weapons you can get for canderous and co. from the merchant on Yavin are hideously overpowered.
Bubba Ray thanks for the info.