Tell me about Knights of the Old Republic

Cafe Society
1

I’ve heard a little about this game and from what I’ve heard:

1.) It’s one of the better Stars Wars games
2.) It takes place long before the movies.
3.) It’s an RPG

I’ve also noticed that’s it’s fairly inexpensive now and I’m thinking of perchasing it since Class gets out in a couple weeks.

So…My questions.

A.) How does it play? Does it play like the Jedi Knight games(I liked the interface on JK2, but not the puzzles)?

B.) How’s the story? How linear/non-linear is the game?

C.)Is there more to do then just the main storyline? One of my favorite series Fallout 1/2 had plenty to do other then the main quest and a lot to explore. Is it like that? or More like Go to A-B-C-D in that order?

D.) What is the fun factor invovled? Does it evoke the best of the movies and of the pulp genre it descends from?

E.) How long is it?

F.) What else should I know about the game?

Let me say this. I like RPG’s in general(Console and PC), I like shooters, I like adventure games. I have some of the star wars games in my collection, though I only really like the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games and the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games(Tie fighter being my favorite by far).

G.) Should I buy this game?

2

The story really is the game for KotOR. It’s not overly hard, but the story and characters are really well done. It plays like many AD&D games, with a small set of spells (force powers) and an emphasis on lightsaber melee. It’s much more linear, and shorter than, a game like Baulder’s Gate, but it still very worthwhile.

3

I usually wait for prices to come down on games. I didn’t wait on KOTOR and I thought it was worth it. Get it and play it. It is a fairly long game.

4

And don’t get too caught up oogling Mission. She turns out to be 14 :eek:

5

I liked Balders gate even though I wasn’t a fan of the combat interface or the difficultly of some of the areas.

6

It plays pretty much like an RPG. You can pick what weapons to use and let your characters go to town but that’s about it. It isn’t boring like Final Fantasy though.

The story is pretty good but it is somewhat linear. You can choose which locations to go to first but that’s about it.

There’s a little more then the main story but not much more. It isn’t nearly as free as Fallout (love love love Fallout) nor are there nearly as many places to explore.

It’s a really fun game and well worth 20 bucks.

15-20 hours. When finished you can go through it again on the light or dark side.

Yes, for 20 bucks you really can’t go wrong.

Marc

7

All of the NPCs do have sidequests, though; even though you might not get all of them to trigger.

8

The combat follows a paused real time system, like Baldur’s Gate. The combat happens in real time, but you can pause the game at anytime and give orders to all of your characters which they carry out in real time.

It is pretty linear however. Though that does make for a more compact and engaging story.

9

Cool, I was just thinking about getting this game myself.

10

A.) How does it play? Does it play like the Jedi Knight games(I liked the interface on JK2, but not the puzzles)?

It’s not a first person shooter, if that’s what you’re asking. The fighting is turn based (don’t worry, it’s done very well). It’s a third person shooter where you click where you want your character to go. You control up to 3 characters at once, but there are 9 characters to control overall in the game.

B.) How’s the story? How linear/non-linear is the game?

Story’s pretty good, the main non-linear option is whether you choose the light or dark side (by different options/actions when talking to people you get light and dark points)

C.)Is there more to do then just the main storyline? One of my favorite series Fallout 1/2 had plenty to do other then the main quest and a lot to explore. Is it like that? or More like Go to A-B-C-D in that order?

There are 4(?) planets to ‘complete’ and you can do them in any order you want. There are a few side quests and on every planet there’s pod racing and card games.

D.) What is the fun factor invovled? Does it evoke the best of the movies and of the pulp genre it descends from?

Playing a dark character is a laugh, and there is some funny banter between the characters. I don’t know enugh about the pulp genre it descended from to comment on the last bit.

E.) How long is it?

My save game just before the end boss is at 57 hours, but that was the second time I played it through so I knew exactly where to go and didn’t do many side quests.

F.) What else should I know about the game?

Not much really, if you like RPGs then you should get it.

G.) Should I buy this game?

Yes.

11

It’s a great game. KotOR 2 follows the same route, and is even better except for the fact that the ending is shot to heck and back. Lucasarts forced Obsidian to get the game out far too quickly (and Obsidian was in no position to bargain at the time).

12

The combat is most definitely not turn based. I know Bioware likes to say “If you pause a lot it’s turn based!” but then so is Warcraft if you pause every second or so. You give guys orders and they go to town continuously pounding on the target until one of them falls over dead. The combat system is fairly close to the Baldur’s Gate system in style, though thanks to light sabres deflecting shots melee isn’t a completely useless option.

That’s harsher than it needs to be, the combat is no worse than, say, Final Fantasy but don’t expect a whole lot of tactical interaction in it.

13

Some of this has been covered, but I’ll give another take on it…

Not much similarity to the JK games in terms of interface feel and methods of interaction. You can play it entirely with keyboard, or entirely with the mouse (or, of course, a combo of the two) depending on what you like the best. I found the interface easy to ignore, but I’ve read reviews of people who hated it. shrugs Combat is like with Baldur’s Gate and NWN: you can pause and swap through characters to issue specific orders, and assign different default fighting styles to the characters. You can’t, however, make your own AI combat script for for them to follow as in those games however.

Story is good, game is fairly linear however. There are some variations possible, as mentioned (light/dark, male/female), and there are various side and character quests that you can do or not as you’d like.

I mentioned the the side and character quests briefly above, and I’ll go into a bit more detail here. Each planet has a handful of sidequests associated with it, and each human NPC that travels with you has a sidequest as well. These won’t be triggered until you’ve done certain things, however. You can choose what order to visit the planets in, and you can leave one planet in the middle of things and go to another (with a few exceptions), so it helps keep the linear style from being too restrictive.

Wheeeeeee! Most of the fun for me was in the voice acting and dialog. Espically Jolee Bindo and HK-47. For more fun, go through areas with different combos of characters. (For example, going through Korriban with Jolee had me spitting out my tea several times.)

Depends on how many of the side/character quests you do, difficulty level, and if you are a ‘take two steps and retreat to heal’ type. For me, anywhere from a few days (marathon sessions) to a month or so.

There are a ‘hidden’ things in the game directory: dialogs that were recorded but not used (for whatever reason) for example. Well worth poking through once you’ve finished the game.

With the price decrease, you’d be insane not to. :smiley:

It does have many of the hallmarks of Bioware’s games: the combat system, romances (one for male, two for female… but the second one isn’t really kinda in there. If you want more info, I’ll be glad to put it in a spoiler for you.), dialogs, and intra-party character banter. You’ll want to swap characters about frequently just to have the banters occour.

<< No wanna work! Wanna bang on keyboard! >>

14

Let me take a stab at the questions. But first thing first, there are now two Knights of the Old Republic (KOTR) on the market…

**A.) How does it play? Does it play like the Jedi Knight games(I liked the interface on JK2, but not the puzzles)? **

Third person interface, much like JK2 when wieiding a lightsaber. No action-based puzzles, though, and your reflexes doesn’t count for anything. You can always pause the action by whacking the spacebar.

**
B.) How’s the story? How linear/non-linear is the game? **

KOTR I has the stronger story, while KOTR II is a bit weaker They cut out a huge part of the ending. KOTR I is linear while KOTR II has slightly more diverse paths but it doesn’t matter in the end.. Both games have the usual “Dark Side/Light Side” gimmicks.

**
C.)Is there more to do then just the main storyline? One of my favorite series Fallout 1/2 had plenty to do other then the main quest and a lot to explore. Is it like that? or More like Go to A-B-C-D in that order?**

No. KOTR gives an illusion of free-choice, but actually it doesn’t matter. You could go solve quest A first, then B, C and D, but it makes no difference if you go C first. Actually, in KOTR II, if you jump about, you may cause a bug which prevents you from finishing the game.

There are plenty of side-quests, but as you have a party of 3, and it is easy to obtain gody level in skills, you can easily find a combination of characters that will allow you to solve most of the side-quests. The side-quests have no direct impact on the storyline, beside awarding you Light Side points, Dark Side points or improving your relationship with your other party members.

**
D.) What is the fun factor invovled? Does it evoke the best of the movies and of the pulp genre it descends from? **

In a sense, yes. The characters are quite memorable.

**
E.) How long is it? **
24 to 48 hours.

**
F.) What else should I know about the game? **
Get the PC verison. There are mods for both verison of the games and can highly increase your enjoyment of them. The X-Box verisions are not capable of running mods (unless they are modded in the first place…) Also, try to play KOTR I before KOTR II, the story is realted.
**
G.) Should I buy this game?**
Yes, but probably due to the lack of any better single-player RPGs out there.

15

It’s not a marketing gimmick- the combat is played out in what looks like real-time, but all the calculations are done in a D&D-modeled turn-based system. You’ll notice that opponents will take turns attacking in combat, and which character attacks depends on his stats, just as in turn-based combat. The order queueing system gives the player extremely precise control over what happens if they want it (and the AI does a fair job of automating moves if they don’t), allowing players to micromanage as they see fit.

If you pause a lot, like I tend to, KOTOR effectively gives you the same level of control as traditional turn-based games without looking nearly as silly or unrealistic.

16

That should say:

17

A.) How does it play? Does it play like the Jedi Knight games(I liked the interface on JK2, but not the puzzles)?

I don’t believe it’s been mentioned yet, but KOTR does have spome puzzles; for the most part, however, they’re brain teasers, not “keys and doors and levers” puzzles like in Jedi Knight.

B.) How’s the story? How linear/non-linear is the game?

The game is essentially linear.

The STORY is probably one of the best stories in the history of PC RPGs, top ten at least, and is vastly superior to any recent Star Wars movies. For a video game it’s really a highly entertaining story, with memorable characters, great twists, and a wonderful atmosphere.

C.)Is there more to do then just the main storyline? One of my favorite series Fallout 1/2 had plenty to do other then the main quest and a lot to explore. Is it like that? or More like Go to A-B-C-D in that order?

The sidequests have been explained. This isn’t Fallout. It’s a different sort of game.

D.) What is the fun factor invovled? Does it evoke the best of the movies and of the pulp genre it descends from?

Look, I hate PC RPGs. The great, great majority of them, I think, are hideously flawed. I’ve NEVER liked RPGs despite dozens of attempts to play them. But I loved KOTOR, absolutely adored it. It’s just a fantastic, fantastic game.

E.) How long is it?

My first run through was 46 hours, my second was 24. It’s worth two runs through.

F.) What else should I know about the game?

I concur with the sentiment that you should get the PC version.

G.) Should I buy this game?
[/QUOTE]

Let me put it this way; it’s a bargain at the REGULAR price.

I will say, however, that KOTOR2 is not as good. It’s got the same basic cool stuff, but the story becomes muddled and silly and ends about four times. It’s not really much different aside from a bad story, and I’d have preferred either better characters or more connection with KOTOR, but it will be worth a shot if you like KOTOR.

18

For an opposing view: I really didn’t care for KOTOR at all.

I bought it based on the strong reviews and a liking of RPGs in general. I’d played some of the older Star Wars shooters on PC and they were fairly fun. And I liked Baldur’s gate and older RPGs, so I figured I’d like this. Wrong.

I only played for perhaps 3-4 hours, but, for me, it was mind-numbingly dull. A bunch of thin character interactions, some treasure hunting for objects. Do a good thing, light side power increases (duh). The problem solving was deadly dull: go here, talk to this guy, push this button. Next problem. I felt like Pavlov’s dog. And you do a lot of it through popup in-game text boxes. Yep, that’s why I play 3D video games: to read lots of text menus! Meh.

It looked like it could have developed into something kind of fun, but I just couldn’t stick with the plod-plod-plod dullness of the early game long enough to care. Sorry, I just didn’t get it. YMMV.

19

Oh man, I just bought this game the other day for my laptop. You see, when I would make one of may rare visits back home from college, I would spend all my time playing this game on my brother’s x-box rather than seeing my old friends or anything.

So finally I was like “It’s only $20 and I can get my fix any time I want, right?”

Wrong. My computer’s video card is too crappy for it to work. Now don’t laugh. I also need more RAM. But I know nothing about computers and how much it will cost me to play my new $20 game.

So even though my graphics card failed the requirements, and my RAM doesn’t meet the reccommended requirements, it does still run… somewhat. I have frequent crashes and moving around is agonizing.

But even with all this I still play for a couple hours every day since I got it.

20

Get the patch… the game crashed a bit and had a nasty memory leak for me until I had the patch and it went more smoothly. If your card isn’t up to snuff, it may not work as well, but it may do better for you.