Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
So I never really heard anything bad about these games. Whenever they were mentioned, it was someone naming one or both of them as one of the best RPGs ever. They are often put high in rankings for top RPGs/games ever and spoken of as masterworks. I put off playing them for a long time, but then finally this past Christmas sale I picked them both up for $5 and now got around to giving them a go. So far this is what I have found:
-These are not some of the best games ever
-These are not some of the best RPGs ever
-These are not even good by my personal RPG stadards
-These are not even as good as what I think is standard for BioWare
Maybe, possibly, a long time ago when these games were released, cutscenes with voice acting was something of a novelty and that shocked people into thinking they were good. Really, I find most of the interactions with various characters incredibly bland, cutscenes or no. Having been waaay late to several other famous computer RPGs, I am finding these incredibly lacking on the interesting dialogue side, and on the cinematic/personality side they are obviously very lacking compared to nearly anything newer.
As for combat, it is downright terrible. Through the interface it pretends to be tactical, but then you actually try to use tactics and it shits all over itself. Even if you cancel all of a character's actions to give them new actions, instead of doing them right away they will wait for 10 seconds, run off somewhere to do something pointless first, just run around randomly, ignore your command and engage someone closer, etc. If they do ever get around to what you said, the whole battle has changed and that command is no longer useful or relevant.
What that results in is pretty much battles that finish themselves while you are trying to make a different battle happen, that is, unless you accept that the whole system just blows ass and let it do its automated thing. The extra sad part is that this actually works and the game really doesn't seem to need much direction from you at all to finish itself. This manages to hurt the story pretty badly, as threats are non-threats. I haven't experimented with setting the difficulty as high as it can go, but I feel that might be more annoying than useful with the way it ignores my commands.
Then you have the shitty powers system and how you pretty much must go full light side or full dark side if you want anything to be effective. Try to be grey and you will get no benefits and force powers that almost never clear resistance checks. Go light side and your dark side powers will be ineffective as well as expensive. There is a definite only a binary choice here and that is not only shitty for making your own play style, but for going through the story.
The concepts of light and dark side here seem to have absolutely nothing to do with how the concepts typically play out in personalities in other Star Wars media. There is little about patience and rashness, insight and seduction, endurance and elimination, etc. Light side is reduced to simply doing anything that only a decent person would do, and dark side is reduced to being an asshole for absolutely no reason. This does play out in events, but often most ridiculously in conversations. It's also sad that (to me) it often doesn't happen when you want it to, like telling Kreia to shut her condescending bitch face when she butts in to be rude to someone you're having a friendly conversation with.
While I could easily point to many other RPGs for examples on how to do things right, and honestly I would even prefer if it to threw off the tactical facade and be an action game like Jade Empire, the changes I would most prefer have already been demonstrated in a different series: Mass Effect. If I hadn't played Mass Effect games, I would still have plenty of disappointments in KOTOR as an RPG, but I wouldn't have a super clear picture on how to do exactly what it was going for so, so much better. How? Well let's just look over what I complained about.
Story/cutscenes: Mass Effect, and especially the second one, had real cinematic flair and character with personalities that seemed a lot more genuine, not just puppets parroting lines from a script emotionally removed from each other and the context of the situation and environment. This may be a limitation of technology, but playing stuff like Deus Ex and Bloodlines, I'm not so sure about that being an excuse to come off so dry. As I said, even text conversation RPGs have made much more compelling interactions. Still, Mass Effect has a similar universe and presentation concept, so it really shows.
Combat: It is more gun based than Star Wars, but KOTOR still has a lot of gunplay in it. The first Mass Effect was still a bit spotty, but I think by the second the whole concept really found its stride. Your party members would nearly always do exactly what you told them to do. Sure they'd make dumb decisions if left to themselves, but if you made sure your management was smart, you could pull off a lot of great maneuvers with great team synergy. A lot of the powers are similar to force powers, so it clearly shows what could have been. In comparison, KOTOR is ridiculously sloppy and disconnected from your input. If this hybrid can't be done, I say go full traditional/tactical like Dragon Age or full action like Jade Empire.
Powers/morality system: Again, Mass Effect shows how to do it better. There are benefits, but it doesn't utterly nerf half your options if you go one way. And while ME1 still had some issues with how it depicted the "evil" side, ME2 totally nailed it for how the difference of personality tends to actually manifest in situations. It also gives you more of a reason to be evil, because it actually comes off kind of badass, not just being a jerk for no reason. This bring up a smaller problem I had with KOTOR: You can't bee cool looking like Darth Maul or something, you always just turn grey/boring.
So yeah, I find these hugely overrated. The fighting is sloppy and unresponsive, the interactions with NPCs suck, the powers/morality system sucks, the story and quests are extremely boring, and every aspect of what it was specifically going for has been demonstrated in successful form with the Mass Effect series. I will grant some possibility that there is a more manual control over combat that I am ignorant of (yes I know about the predisposition settings) but even if there is and that fixed the battle disconnect, it doesn't fix the other problems.
I know this opinion will be very unpopular with some, but I'm used to having some unpopular opinions and would like to see if there are people who agree with me that just choose to not chime in when there are love fests for these games. I would rank them toward the bottom of the barrel, above Dragon Age 2 but below Jade Empire. There are way more computer RPGs worth playing before these, even really low-tech ones like Avernum. And if you count JRPGs in the list of games to play in your life, there is pretty much no reason to ever bother with these.
-These are not some of the best games ever
-These are not some of the best RPGs ever
-These are not even good by my personal RPG stadards
-These are not even as good as what I think is standard for BioWare
Maybe, possibly, a long time ago when these games were released, cutscenes with voice acting was something of a novelty and that shocked people into thinking they were good. Really, I find most of the interactions with various characters incredibly bland, cutscenes or no. Having been waaay late to several other famous computer RPGs, I am finding these incredibly lacking on the interesting dialogue side, and on the cinematic/personality side they are obviously very lacking compared to nearly anything newer.
As for combat, it is downright terrible. Through the interface it pretends to be tactical, but then you actually try to use tactics and it shits all over itself. Even if you cancel all of a character's actions to give them new actions, instead of doing them right away they will wait for 10 seconds, run off somewhere to do something pointless first, just run around randomly, ignore your command and engage someone closer, etc. If they do ever get around to what you said, the whole battle has changed and that command is no longer useful or relevant.
What that results in is pretty much battles that finish themselves while you are trying to make a different battle happen, that is, unless you accept that the whole system just blows ass and let it do its automated thing. The extra sad part is that this actually works and the game really doesn't seem to need much direction from you at all to finish itself. This manages to hurt the story pretty badly, as threats are non-threats. I haven't experimented with setting the difficulty as high as it can go, but I feel that might be more annoying than useful with the way it ignores my commands.
Then you have the shitty powers system and how you pretty much must go full light side or full dark side if you want anything to be effective. Try to be grey and you will get no benefits and force powers that almost never clear resistance checks. Go light side and your dark side powers will be ineffective as well as expensive. There is a definite only a binary choice here and that is not only shitty for making your own play style, but for going through the story.
The concepts of light and dark side here seem to have absolutely nothing to do with how the concepts typically play out in personalities in other Star Wars media. There is little about patience and rashness, insight and seduction, endurance and elimination, etc. Light side is reduced to simply doing anything that only a decent person would do, and dark side is reduced to being an asshole for absolutely no reason. This does play out in events, but often most ridiculously in conversations. It's also sad that (to me) it often doesn't happen when you want it to, like telling Kreia to shut her condescending bitch face when she butts in to be rude to someone you're having a friendly conversation with.
While I could easily point to many other RPGs for examples on how to do things right, and honestly I would even prefer if it to threw off the tactical facade and be an action game like Jade Empire, the changes I would most prefer have already been demonstrated in a different series: Mass Effect. If I hadn't played Mass Effect games, I would still have plenty of disappointments in KOTOR as an RPG, but I wouldn't have a super clear picture on how to do exactly what it was going for so, so much better. How? Well let's just look over what I complained about.
Story/cutscenes: Mass Effect, and especially the second one, had real cinematic flair and character with personalities that seemed a lot more genuine, not just puppets parroting lines from a script emotionally removed from each other and the context of the situation and environment. This may be a limitation of technology, but playing stuff like Deus Ex and Bloodlines, I'm not so sure about that being an excuse to come off so dry. As I said, even text conversation RPGs have made much more compelling interactions. Still, Mass Effect has a similar universe and presentation concept, so it really shows.
Combat: It is more gun based than Star Wars, but KOTOR still has a lot of gunplay in it. The first Mass Effect was still a bit spotty, but I think by the second the whole concept really found its stride. Your party members would nearly always do exactly what you told them to do. Sure they'd make dumb decisions if left to themselves, but if you made sure your management was smart, you could pull off a lot of great maneuvers with great team synergy. A lot of the powers are similar to force powers, so it clearly shows what could have been. In comparison, KOTOR is ridiculously sloppy and disconnected from your input. If this hybrid can't be done, I say go full traditional/tactical like Dragon Age or full action like Jade Empire.
Powers/morality system: Again, Mass Effect shows how to do it better. There are benefits, but it doesn't utterly nerf half your options if you go one way. And while ME1 still had some issues with how it depicted the "evil" side, ME2 totally nailed it for how the difference of personality tends to actually manifest in situations. It also gives you more of a reason to be evil, because it actually comes off kind of badass, not just being a jerk for no reason. This bring up a smaller problem I had with KOTOR: You can't bee cool looking like Darth Maul or something, you always just turn grey/boring.
So yeah, I find these hugely overrated. The fighting is sloppy and unresponsive, the interactions with NPCs suck, the powers/morality system sucks, the story and quests are extremely boring, and every aspect of what it was specifically going for has been demonstrated in successful form with the Mass Effect series. I will grant some possibility that there is a more manual control over combat that I am ignorant of (yes I know about the predisposition settings) but even if there is and that fixed the battle disconnect, it doesn't fix the other problems.
I know this opinion will be very unpopular with some, but I'm used to having some unpopular opinions and would like to see if there are people who agree with me that just choose to not chime in when there are love fests for these games. I would rank them toward the bottom of the barrel, above Dragon Age 2 but below Jade Empire. There are way more computer RPGs worth playing before these, even really low-tech ones like Avernum. And if you count JRPGs in the list of games to play in your life, there is pretty much no reason to ever bother with these.
Not to mention the game engine is buggy as shit.
