[sub]Disclaimer: This is my first review, so I'm mostly making it up as I go along. Any feedback would be much appreciated, negative or not. I may not have played KOTOR 2 for quite awhile, but I remember enough to make a review of it. I'll try to spice it up with some lovely Google Images results. Oh, and it's long. Very long. Like... Something long. And no, I'm above a dick joke... I think.
Disclaimer2: None of the image jokes will make sense if you're just skimming.[/sub]
*AHEM*
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords [sub](what's with all the colons?)[/sub] is a game that absolutely refuses to leave my mind because I can't decide whether or not I like it. Now, the reason I haven't done a game review before is because this is usually the problem with just about any game I play. But "Coat-or-two" is different in one particular way. It feels like it was player-made.
Allow me to elaborate. Awhile back when I was into playing that and the original "Coat-or", I enjoyed all the mods that came out for it. Hell, some of them were probably as good as the original game [sub](If you haven't played the Brotherhood of Shadow; Solomon's Revenge mod for KOTOR 1, here's my review: WELL WORTH THE NEARLY AN ENTIRE GIGABYTE IT TAKES UP. Linkies [http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/Brotherhood_of_Shadow_Solomons_Revenge;99985])[/sub] . To me, joy was downloading a new mod and seeing how it changed gameplay. Okay, that may be overstating it a bit but I really did enjoy adding a bit of player-created content to enhance the experience and "Coat-or-two" plays more like the ultimate mod.
The game used the same engine as the original with changes to combat amounting to some minor changes in aesthetic, the moves you pull off and, probably my favourite addition to this game, the ability to add a weapon to a special secondary spot which allowed you to switch to it on the fly. I'm not sure why I liked that option so much, but I guess it just made for a more strategic approach to gameplay; even though I rarely ever switched from my ultra-super-mega Darth Maul-but-blue double-sided lightsaber (which the only downside besides being apparently less accurate is that you're always reminded of the Phantom Menace while playing and hoping none of the enemies will yell "NOOOOO!" from behind a laser shield when you kill their buddy and then send your bisected remains down a huge Sparta hole).
This guy should have saved before battling.
In terms of the story, it's told in the usual Bioware sci-fi RPG, or sequel to a Bioware sci-fi RPG in this case, way; that is to say you go around to different planets on an explorable ship on which you can talk to your party members [sub](while anyone watching wonders why you seem to talk so much more to the female characters except Kreia)[/sub] until something or other happens and you get to do the final mission of which there is no "stop and return to the ship" button. There are two major differences, however, in "Coat-or-two"'s story-telling from "Coat-or-one". The first is the decidedly darker and more mysterious tone. This is quite a bit hinted in the title and in the box art I flashed earlier that the game has taken the "make it a shit-load darker than the first" way of sequel making that Empire Strikes Back and arguably Mass Effect 2 took except taking it to an extreme. For what it's worth, the parts where the game asks you to put on your "dark-and-depressing glasses" [sub](right next to the David Caruso one-liner glasses (you know you own a pair)[/sub] are mostly well done. From what I remember, the environments for when the game goes dark are very creepy in their own right without needing to try too hard. This may be partially down to the music, but it's been so long since I played the game I've mostly forgotten that part. And when you're about to face one of the titular Sith Lords, you definitely feel the fear coming from just their presence.
The second major difference is one that annoys the hell outta me. The influence system. Now, the idea is that every conversation you have with a character increases or decreases your influence points, changing whether or not they think of you as an annoying prick or the person they'd gladly jump in bed with were this not a 12+ rated game and, as everyone knows, no one who has reached the + part of 12+ would want to see that. [sub]/sarcasm[/sub]. The only problem I found with this was that the system meant that you could supposedly make whoever you want into a force-user and turn formerly evil people towards the light or vice versa. The problem with the former is that you will often only discover who can be turned into a force-user and how so late into the game that you will have missed too many influence points oppurtunities to persuade them to train, leaving you raging at the game that you are one dialogue option away from getting another force-user on your team but apparently you haven't been hugging that person enough to get it. The latter is annoying as hell because, to get influence with someone on the "opposite side of the Force", you have to choose all the dialogue options from that opposite side of the Force while they're around which results in you accidentally switching sides yourself with no way to wink and the game and tell it you were just doing it for influence. On the plus side, there rarely are straight up light or dark characters with most of them being much more three-dimensional than the Jeebus or Satan archetype. Well, except HK-47 but he gets away with it for being both badass and a droid.
Of course, the absolute worst part of "Coat-or-two" are the two "stupid, but you gotta do them" scavenger hunt sidequests. I am of course referring to constructing a lightsaber and rebuilding the best character in the game, HK-47. The first one is very annoying since neither you or your party can use lightsabers without completing it first. Literally what you have to do is find lightsaber parts in all unspecified locations. If you I didn't look up how to get them on an IGN walkthrough first time around I would have probably spent almost the entire game without a lightsaber. As it was, I only spent most of the game without one. The biggest problem with that is that I do not believe it is explained why traders only have one part of a lightsaber on the off-chance that a random Jedi will come along and only want that single part of a lightsaber. As for the HK-47 part, most of the time the only way to get parts to rebuild him is by killing the ironically less powerful HK-50s, which again brings up a problem because HK-50s are only encountered at pre-determined parts usually near the end of missions. This means that you will go through a lot of the game without good ol' HK by your side which, for anyone who played the original, is almost as unbearable as the whole flipping business with the lightsabers. Now this whole business segways me nicely to the whole business about the game being unfinished...
It's pretty well known among people who played this game that it was unfinished, and even more so to people in the game's modding community. LucasArts wanted for a holiday release, but Obsidian didn't have a finished game yet. Obsidian is forced to cut a load of awesome-looking content and ignore bugs and release a game below expectations and way below potential. Even those who liked this game better than the first have to admit that it could have been so much more with a little more time in the development hole. This brings me back to my original statement, that "Coat-or-two" feels more like player-made content than a real game. The reason for this statement is the part which most games end up being remembered by. The final levels that conclude the game.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Quite simply, it is feels quite rushed. When you get to Nihilus' ship, you're expecting something far more powerful out of him. This is the guy who has been set up the entire game as some amazing force to be reckoned with who can consume planets like so many Big Macs, yet when you fight him.... eh. He's just another asshole to be reckoned with. At the halfway point of the fight, Visas says how he's too powerful and gives you the choice to sacrifice her to weaken him and I was literally going "Wait, what? Are we watching the same fight or something because from where I'm standing this guy is getting owned!". As for Malachor V, damn do I have a lot to say about Malachor V. It's been awhile so I don't remember the exact order of events, but too much is left ambiguous. Firstly, you have some of the most unbalanced piles of fuck in the entire game roaming the planet who take away most of your health from just one battle when you're playing as your own super-leveled player character. As if that wasn't annoying enough, they then make you take the little bastard droid, identical to the one Luke used in Episode IV to practice his saber skills while Obi-Wan was being a dick and making sure he couldn't see in case the droid chose to zap him in the balls, and having to either face them with your lazer which, by the laws of continuity, isn't be any more powerful than the aforementioned fucker in Episode IV or float as fast as whatever the hell it is that makes you float will carry you away. And then, when you get inside some Sith place the name of which I forget, the design of the level really makes you think it was designed by amateur modders. Quite simply, it's a load of metal halls with I swear literally hundreds of Sith of varying power levels just running and attacking you. The huge quantities of these enemies that shoot on sight and the way that they spawn help ruin any chance Obsidian had of persuading people that the game had not just been rushed by LucasArts.
Then, the final two bosses. Darth Sion, one mean beat up asshole who is ironically harder to kill than the aforementioned planet gobbler. I like him mostly because, unlike Nihilus who you just have to take people's word that he's powerful along with some scary cutscenes and the design of his ship and talks in some weird hissing language that seems almost more funny than threatening, Darth Sion damn well backs up his claims to power with his scary grizzled Scottish voice and the fact that in both of the two previous meetings you've had with him you end up running away from his overpowered might (with him even chopping off one of Kreia's hands rendering her usually worse off than others when it comes to battle). And then, the icing that seals the deal as "rushed", the ending fight with Darth What's-Her-Name aka Kreia. You fight her, and then she summons two floating lightsabers to fight you off. Now, this sounds cool, but the execution is less than you'd expect. The lightsabers themselves are literally just Jedi opponents with no force-powers and made completely invisible apart from their lightsabers and there is literally nothing stopping you from just running behind them and killing the unarmed Kreia (except for the fact that the *ahem* "floating lightsabers" will probably kill you in that time). And then, comes the ending exposition just before the bad-guy dies. In fact, that exposition takes the place of a proper ending. All that happens is that you can ask what happens next for each of the different party members and Kreia tells you. Then you get a little cutscene showing your ship flying off and supposedly rescuing you and the rest is left ambiguous and never shown.
In conclusion, this game is one I would love to see remade. Usually this only happens when the games are old, but this game deserves to be fixed, not by modders, but by the developers. Modders can only go so far, but there is no way they can bring in the original voices of the characters for a simple modding project. Oh, and I just realised. I totally forgot to compare how the graphics improved between "Coat-or-one" and "Coat-or-two". Well, it seems that the two perfect images to compare them came up on the first page when I searched "knights of the old republic 2". So allow me to leave you with this, to show how much better "Coat-or-two" is at modelling breasts.
Note: I discovered while creating this that one of the two KOTOR 2 restoration mods I had been waiting for for quite some time has been finished, and the link is here [http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/TSL_Restored_Content_Mod;111657]. I consider it my obligation to play and review when I get the time and when I find the install discs. I'll keep you posted if and when I get to it.
Disclaimer2: None of the image jokes will make sense if you're just skimming.[/sub]
*AHEM*
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords [sub](what's with all the colons?)[/sub] is a game that absolutely refuses to leave my mind because I can't decide whether or not I like it. Now, the reason I haven't done a game review before is because this is usually the problem with just about any game I play. But "Coat-or-two" is different in one particular way. It feels like it was player-made.
This is the first image Google found that didn't have
hotlinking blocked.
I like how the GameSpy logo looks almost like an evil spirit
who has possessed the player character.
hotlinking blocked.
I like how the GameSpy logo looks almost like an evil spirit
who has possessed the player character.
Allow me to elaborate. Awhile back when I was into playing that and the original "Coat-or", I enjoyed all the mods that came out for it. Hell, some of them were probably as good as the original game [sub](If you haven't played the Brotherhood of Shadow; Solomon's Revenge mod for KOTOR 1, here's my review: WELL WORTH THE NEARLY AN ENTIRE GIGABYTE IT TAKES UP. Linkies [http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/Brotherhood_of_Shadow_Solomons_Revenge;99985])[/sub] . To me, joy was downloading a new mod and seeing how it changed gameplay. Okay, that may be overstating it a bit but I really did enjoy adding a bit of player-created content to enhance the experience and "Coat-or-two" plays more like the ultimate mod.
Welcome to the third Google image result.
"Older members of the International Fencing Association thought
that this year's tournament had tried too hard to make the sport
more interesting and that referee Jackie had gotten alot taller."
"Older members of the International Fencing Association thought
that this year's tournament had tried too hard to make the sport
more interesting and that referee Jackie had gotten alot taller."
The game used the same engine as the original with changes to combat amounting to some minor changes in aesthetic, the moves you pull off and, probably my favourite addition to this game, the ability to add a weapon to a special secondary spot which allowed you to switch to it on the fly. I'm not sure why I liked that option so much, but I guess it just made for a more strategic approach to gameplay; even though I rarely ever switched from my ultra-super-mega Darth Maul-but-blue double-sided lightsaber (which the only downside besides being apparently less accurate is that you're always reminded of the Phantom Menace while playing and hoping none of the enemies will yell "NOOOOO!" from behind a laser shield when you kill their buddy and then send your bisected remains down a huge Sparta hole).
This guy should have saved before battling.
In terms of the story, it's told in the usual Bioware sci-fi RPG, or sequel to a Bioware sci-fi RPG in this case, way; that is to say you go around to different planets on an explorable ship on which you can talk to your party members [sub](while anyone watching wonders why you seem to talk so much more to the female characters except Kreia)[/sub] until something or other happens and you get to do the final mission of which there is no "stop and return to the ship" button. There are two major differences, however, in "Coat-or-two"'s story-telling from "Coat-or-one". The first is the decidedly darker and more mysterious tone. This is quite a bit hinted in the title and in the box art I flashed earlier that the game has taken the "make it a shit-load darker than the first" way of sequel making that Empire Strikes Back and arguably Mass Effect 2 took except taking it to an extreme. For what it's worth, the parts where the game asks you to put on your "dark-and-depressing glasses" [sub](right next to the David Caruso one-liner glasses (you know you own a pair)[/sub] are mostly well done. From what I remember, the environments for when the game goes dark are very creepy in their own right without needing to try too hard. This may be partially down to the music, but it's been so long since I played the game I've mostly forgotten that part. And when you're about to face one of the titular Sith Lords, you definitely feel the fear coming from just their presence.
It looks like my face...
Can separate paragraphs.
YEEEEEAAAAAAH!
Can separate paragraphs.
YEEEEEAAAAAAH!
The second major difference is one that annoys the hell outta me. The influence system. Now, the idea is that every conversation you have with a character increases or decreases your influence points, changing whether or not they think of you as an annoying prick or the person they'd gladly jump in bed with were this not a 12+ rated game and, as everyone knows, no one who has reached the + part of 12+ would want to see that. [sub]/sarcasm[/sub]. The only problem I found with this was that the system meant that you could supposedly make whoever you want into a force-user and turn formerly evil people towards the light or vice versa. The problem with the former is that you will often only discover who can be turned into a force-user and how so late into the game that you will have missed too many influence points oppurtunities to persuade them to train, leaving you raging at the game that you are one dialogue option away from getting another force-user on your team but apparently you haven't been hugging that person enough to get it. The latter is annoying as hell because, to get influence with someone on the "opposite side of the Force", you have to choose all the dialogue options from that opposite side of the Force while they're around which results in you accidentally switching sides yourself with no way to wink and the game and tell it you were just doing it for influence. On the plus side, there rarely are straight up light or dark characters with most of them being much more three-dimensional than the Jeebus or Satan archetype. Well, except HK-47 but he gets away with it for being both badass and a droid.
Don't like my characterisation,
Meatbag?
Meatbag?
Of course, the absolute worst part of "Coat-or-two" are the two "stupid, but you gotta do them" scavenger hunt sidequests. I am of course referring to constructing a lightsaber and rebuilding the best character in the game, HK-47. The first one is very annoying since neither you or your party can use lightsabers without completing it first. Literally what you have to do is find lightsaber parts in all unspecified locations. If you I didn't look up how to get them on an IGN walkthrough first time around I would have probably spent almost the entire game without a lightsaber. As it was, I only spent most of the game without one. The biggest problem with that is that I do not believe it is explained why traders only have one part of a lightsaber on the off-chance that a random Jedi will come along and only want that single part of a lightsaber. As for the HK-47 part, most of the time the only way to get parts to rebuild him is by killing the ironically less powerful HK-50s, which again brings up a problem because HK-50s are only encountered at pre-determined parts usually near the end of missions. This means that you will go through a lot of the game without good ol' HK by your side which, for anyone who played the original, is almost as unbearable as the whole flipping business with the lightsabers. Now this whole business segways me nicely to the whole business about the game being unfinished...
Get it? Segway?
Why yes, I did watch Iron Man
last night, why do you ask?
Why yes, I did watch Iron Man
last night, why do you ask?
It's pretty well known among people who played this game that it was unfinished, and even more so to people in the game's modding community. LucasArts wanted for a holiday release, but Obsidian didn't have a finished game yet. Obsidian is forced to cut a load of awesome-looking content and ignore bugs and release a game below expectations and way below potential. Even those who liked this game better than the first have to admit that it could have been so much more with a little more time in the development hole. This brings me back to my original statement, that "Coat-or-two" feels more like player-made content than a real game. The reason for this statement is the part which most games end up being remembered by. The final levels that conclude the game.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Quite simply, it is feels quite rushed. When you get to Nihilus' ship, you're expecting something far more powerful out of him. This is the guy who has been set up the entire game as some amazing force to be reckoned with who can consume planets like so many Big Macs, yet when you fight him.... eh. He's just another asshole to be reckoned with. At the halfway point of the fight, Visas says how he's too powerful and gives you the choice to sacrifice her to weaken him and I was literally going "Wait, what? Are we watching the same fight or something because from where I'm standing this guy is getting owned!". As for Malachor V, damn do I have a lot to say about Malachor V. It's been awhile so I don't remember the exact order of events, but too much is left ambiguous. Firstly, you have some of the most unbalanced piles of fuck in the entire game roaming the planet who take away most of your health from just one battle when you're playing as your own super-leveled player character. As if that wasn't annoying enough, they then make you take the little bastard droid, identical to the one Luke used in Episode IV to practice his saber skills while Obi-Wan was being a dick and making sure he couldn't see in case the droid chose to zap him in the balls, and having to either face them with your lazer which, by the laws of continuity, isn't be any more powerful than the aforementioned fucker in Episode IV or float as fast as whatever the hell it is that makes you float will carry you away. And then, when you get inside some Sith place the name of which I forget, the design of the level really makes you think it was designed by amateur modders. Quite simply, it's a load of metal halls with I swear literally hundreds of Sith of varying power levels just running and attacking you. The huge quantities of these enemies that shoot on sight and the way that they spawn help ruin any chance Obsidian had of persuading people that the game had not just been rushed by LucasArts.
It's looks like I'm being used...
To separate another paragraph. YEEEEEAAAAAAH!
To separate another paragraph. YEEEEEAAAAAAH!
Then, the final two bosses. Darth Sion, one mean beat up asshole who is ironically harder to kill than the aforementioned planet gobbler. I like him mostly because, unlike Nihilus who you just have to take people's word that he's powerful along with some scary cutscenes and the design of his ship and talks in some weird hissing language that seems almost more funny than threatening, Darth Sion damn well backs up his claims to power with his scary grizzled Scottish voice and the fact that in both of the two previous meetings you've had with him you end up running away from his overpowered might (with him even chopping off one of Kreia's hands rendering her usually worse off than others when it comes to battle). And then, the icing that seals the deal as "rushed", the ending fight with Darth What's-Her-Name aka Kreia. You fight her, and then she summons two floating lightsabers to fight you off. Now, this sounds cool, but the execution is less than you'd expect. The lightsabers themselves are literally just Jedi opponents with no force-powers and made completely invisible apart from their lightsabers and there is literally nothing stopping you from just running behind them and killing the unarmed Kreia (except for the fact that the *ahem* "floating lightsabers" will probably kill you in that time). And then, comes the ending exposition just before the bad-guy dies. In fact, that exposition takes the place of a proper ending. All that happens is that you can ask what happens next for each of the different party members and Kreia tells you. Then you get a little cutscene showing your ship flying off and supposedly rescuing you and the rest is left ambiguous and never shown.
This came up first when I Google Image'd "conclusion".
And this is totally what I think when I think "conclusion".
And this is totally what I think when I think "conclusion".
In conclusion, this game is one I would love to see remade. Usually this only happens when the games are old, but this game deserves to be fixed, not by modders, but by the developers. Modders can only go so far, but there is no way they can bring in the original voices of the characters for a simple modding project. Oh, and I just realised. I totally forgot to compare how the graphics improved between "Coat-or-one" and "Coat-or-two". Well, it seems that the two perfect images to compare them came up on the first page when I searched "knights of the old republic 2". So allow me to leave you with this, to show how much better "Coat-or-two" is at modelling breasts.
Yes, these both turned up on the first page of results.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Note: I discovered while creating this that one of the two KOTOR 2 restoration mods I had been waiting for for quite some time has been finished, and the link is here [http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/TSL_Restored_Content_Mod;111657]. I consider it my obligation to play and review when I get the time and when I find the install discs. I'll keep you posted if and when I get to it.
