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
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.
Charisma affects bonuses towards light and dark side power usage. It's a shame you can't use certain restricted powers such as force heal if you're going dark side etc but neither side has large advantages over the other. (And if I'm off on what you use and can't use depending on your alignment, correct me. It's been awhile).
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.
Yeah, but she knows more than everyone on the ship combined. Cut her a little slack. Again, she's definitely not condescending towards characters with high wisdom who can match her wits. Towards "simpletons" she's pretty keen and that's a feature of her character. You're brushing over the character flaws of other NPCs a bit too much, but she's most present in the game and thus a continual dialogue landmine for those who wanted to be pure fighters. I see what you mean.
Jolee's sometimes a better example to follow. He's crusty and agitated, sometimes mirroring Kreia's soothsaying comeuppance, but he veers towards a lusty light-sider. That quality gelled with me and probably a lot of other KOTOR players. He's easier to get along with by a good margin.
The other points you mentioned I would almost completely agree with. The light/dark side options can get awfully comical and there's basically zero advantage to playing neutral throughout KOTOR. There is one perk to staying neutral in KOTOR 2, but it's only for story benefits. The Mass Effect games didn't change this formula much, though, and they generally gave you fewer options with which to solve a conflict: mean or righteous. The renegade quips in the latter two entries were a little more believable, though, yes.
Story/cutscenes: [...]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.
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.
Deus Ex (a game then 3 years older) and Bloodlines (released one year after) don't eclipse the KOTOR games in terms of presentation. I think more could have been done with the cutscenes and you see this grow quite a bit in the Mass Effect games, but those were half a decade out, and thus are extremely unfair comparisons.
Kreia's behind-your-back conversations, Malak's entrance, the Jedi academy training... Those were bad presentation?