Your opinion on KOTOR 2

[Loonerinoes]

It's been a while since Knights of the Old Republic 2 hit the shelves.
Some say this game didn't live up to it's predecessor, some say it did.
Some say that it's a good game. Some say that this almost killed the genre. Some say it was too rushed and so on.

I'm interested in The Escapist's opinions on this game! Graphical, Narrative, all the good (And the bad) stuff!

The bad:

As stated many times earlier...and unfinished game that, while not having any significant glitches across which I've ever run across, did have a lot of 'missing' content. Or in other words, you could sometimes really know when there was supposed to be something else linking the story, but it was just missing, at least until the TSLRCM project brought it back to a fair enough degree.

I guess part of the bad could also be the fact that the combat mechanics and such were virtually copy-pasted from the original KOTOR. I didn't mind it that much, but really that along with the difficulty curve being ridiculously wierd (i.e. hard as heck during some parts at the beginning, then by the time of the Prestige class ridiculously easy) also didn't help. Finally, while the graphics saw modest improvement, it really wasn't all that much new there either, though personally...I don't find that too bothersome to begin with.

The good:

Every other thing I cab think of. Audio was good, the music is damn-sight awesome and I am so glad that Mark Griskey was hired to be the lead composer for SWTOR because of it most likely. A few additional things like crafting items and such are also nice, if you're the min/maxers sorta guy who wants to see how far they can 'break the game' and to me it seems so funny to think of how similar to me sending out my characters to craft on workbenches in KOTOR 2 is to SWTOR's announced crafting idea (that your companions do the crafting for you, rather than you doing it yourself).

The characters felt far more original than in KOTOR 1 too, as did the main plot and the story of the character you play. The setting was quite gritty (you versus both Jedi and Sith who view you as an outsider), the dialogue also had a refreshing take, if perhaps sometimes a bit wierder than Bioware's style would be, and the story itself evolved in a way that you could never quite totally predict and at the end of it all came out as one of the most original takes on Star Wars and the Force I've heard off, second perhaps only to the EU book "Traitor."

A lot of that work was cut out and it wasn't until TSLRCM that you got to see how their original vision of it linking together went. Sometimes several cutscenes and other times just the little things that make it right.

Overall:

Worth getting, I am sure. But I guess it also depends - if you're the kinda guy that says "Sorry, give me something new in mechanics or graphics or GTFO." or if you're also one of those Star Wars canon-fanatics that insists on following George Lucases word on everything in his universe like he's the goddamn Pope, you probably won't like it. But if you like a genuinely interesting story and characters, with an original take on Star Wars, you will want to get this game and play it through to the end, with the TSLRCM patch included as a must too.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I think that I loved it more than the original. I think...I've been getting them confused since it's been so long, and I played them both straight through.

What were some characters from KOTOR and some from KOTOR2?

I remember the party members, mostly. Just can't put them with their correct games...

kotor 1

Revan
Darth malak
saul
bastila shan
jolee bindo
juhani
mission vao
"big Z" the wookie
carth onasi
candorous ordo
hk-47 (<< although these last three are in both games technically)
T3-M4

kotor 2

Atton
Bao-dur
Kreia
Visas Marr
Disciple
Handmaiden
Mira the bounty hunter
and G0-T0 (big floating black ball robot)

(yes i did actually enjoy typing all these down, kotor fanboyism at its core)




ot: i really did like the 2nd one, bugs dont bug me that much at all compared to most people (hinting as to why i love obsidians games) and with the restoration mod, man does it make for some fun, i dont know if i have ever had as much epic fun as i did the first couple times going through the planet onderon (2nd time, when you come back to save/destroy it), going up the long walkway...ahhh nostalgia

they each have their strong points, but for overall polish and how many times i've beaten it, ill say kotor 1, its one of very very very very few games (as in maybe 3-5 games) that has had me drop my jaw in pure epic awesomeness.

 

[Syntax Man]

Plenty of potential, but we have Lucas Arts to thank for it being rushed out to shelves unfinished. Play the PC version with a restoration patch and the game is actually better than its predecessor.

 

[wolf thing]

i love kotor 2 it is one of my favorite games. i played it before the restoration mad and after, at first it was okay but after the mod i became amazing. it had me question my action and the action of the character in the game. the combat was deeper, with different lightsaber stanse and new focre power. it has some trully great set pisec but the only problem is it is really long and does become boring and the end was shit, really really shit.

 

[megs1120]

It's poopy.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Oy KOTOR2 was a mess but still a good game.

 

[WorldCritic]

Awesome game with a great story, fun gameplay, and cool characters, but unfortunately it suffers from a few too many glitches that may corrupt your save files if you aren't careful and there's more than one section of thegame that I dread to play through, but other than that I love it.

 

[God's Clown]

KoToR1 is better just for the simple fact KoToR2 was buggy as hell. I detest games that have a lot of potential but are ruined by bad programmers and testers.

 

[JediMB]

Having replayed the series just recently after the Restored Content Mod was released, I'm honestly torn between which of the two Kotor games I find better. On one hand Bioware's first Kotor while not particularly clever is extremely polished and entertaining, while Obsidian's Kotor 2 has the more interesting plot I find and more options to play the game how you like.

Is it just me, or did the RCM make the ending a lot more confused/confusing than it originally was? I can't help getting the impression that I got multiple different endings mashed together, where I both destroyed Malachor V and left Visas there to guide future arrivals.

But, yeah, overall I have to say that I prefer KotOR II after I recently played through both games. Despite its issues, I love all the improvements Obsidian made to what BioWare created for the first game, just like I do when I compare Obsidian's New Vegas to Bethesda's Fallout 3.

 

[Zukhramm]

To be honest, I did not have anything aginst the ending. The first game was essentially "You saved the galaxy, congratulations!", I don't see how that was so much better. Looking at a list of what the restoration mod does, it seems that general ending is about the same, with some detail added, and if you hate the ending I don't think the mod would change that. Maybe peopel used blame the game being unfinished for something that they simply does not like.

 

[Nfritzappa]

KOTOR 2 was unfinished.
If it was finished it could've easily surpassed #1.

 

[coldshadow]

loved the first game, So I was kinda hyped for the second....but it fell short in many places. probably due to the fact that the second was by obsidian.

 

[Xathos]

I really didn't like it that much. For some reason, I just couldn't really connect with the game. I ended up not caring about the characters or the story that much. I can't really explain it.

I didn't hate the game, but to me it felt kind of meh. It was nothing spectacular, and wasn't all that impressive. Then I heard about the game being rushed out and it made a bit more sense to me.

Maybe I would like it a bit more if I tried to replay it again, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

 

[Ubermetalhed]

It improved alot of things that needed improving in KOTOR and for the first half the story was great. But then it went horribly downhill and the bugs marred what could have been a worthy sequel.

Also, the lack of an ending was shameful.

 

[EricBC]

Unless you were Dark Side, then the whole ending had a kind of Return of The King aspect to it, since you were reclaiming your empire. Which I liked.

Overall though, in spite of KoTOR 1 being a better put together game, there were too many sequences in KoTOR 2 that I remember distinctly as being awesome, so that one wins.

 

[EHKOS]

The Key is to play the second one first. Puts more mystery into without being lost

 

[BENZOOKA]

I've only tried it a little bit and that was few years back. Not enough to form a complete opinion, but I found it a little buggy, confusing and the battle system wasn't something I like that much. But that was, as said, a few years back and just tried it on a friend's computer.

 

[PatrickXD]

I thought it was really hard when I was 10. Then a year ago I played it and thought it was really easy. I've never played the first, but certainly KOTOR2 wasn't spectacular or too generic, it was a good game, however I doubt it could be considered capable of making or breaking an entire genre.

 

[MeTheMe]

Possible spoilers!

OVERALL I thought it was an improvement on KOTOR, the combat, the story, etc, but it was only a very small improvement compared to some glaring flaws, particularly at the end. The end... makes sense, sort of. Either good, or bad, and you leave for some other planet. However, there was some unresolved things, GOTO and the smaller droid, GOTO had some plan for the planet that never was explained. HK-47 was going to have some major part, and even the wookie was to have some part saving you if you had gotten him. They just rushed that ending, and really screwed it up.

However, I might have been able to forgive that, though, it they'd not taken out the side quest for my favorite character ever, HK-47. They completely threw out his side line with the HK-50s and the future HK-51s on the machine planet! I was infuriated! I found this unforgivable, HK-47 was my favorite character, and he gets shafted because of a release date. Thanks.