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(Puts on Gloves of Ifrit's Bane)

This might say more about me than about KOTOR but when I stepped out into the first city and was surrounded by stuff to do I quit, uninstalled and deleted my saves. I hate that feeling in RPGs that you are compelled to run around and talk to every damn person in a spawling area to collect quests, find vendors, etc. It's work that I've done dozens of times, never fun. I'm not a fan of the "!" WOW popularized but it was at least an attempt to solve a real problem, the "oh great a new town with 50 fucking NPCs and I've got to talk to every single one" problem.

KOTOR struck me as a very Western game. Art and animation that was "realistic" - that is to say not stylized and more functional than inspired. (Although the hand to hand combat animation was pretty well-done in the way attacker and defender interacted) My character was downright ugly. (Female scout) Voice acting was decent but still a bit slow and stilted in typical gaming style. (I began skipping it quickly) The dark / light choices were a bit Snidely Whiplash / Dudley Do-Right, a binary split between "shut up cunt while I chop off your head" or "why yes I'd love to rescue your kitten from that no-good Hutt."

I was inundated with options that I didn't understand. When you level up you can choose a bunch of different ways to level, and you can also choose not to level at all. It makes the same mistakes so many RPGs make: I have no idea how useful any of these skills are going to be. Is Droid Repairing or Computer Fuxxoring useful? Depends on how many droids and computers I meet, something I can't know until I've played through once. Energy beams are good against droids and shields -- again well how many of those am I going to meet? Telling me what the skills do is not the same as informing me as to their usefulness. I hate the feeling that I'm just guessing. And the fact that I can choose not to level up at all is just bizarre - it's like the devs are encouraging people to be confused on their first play-through so that they can min-max on their second.

The fact that I'm not a big fan of Star Wars probably didn't help me any.

For this type of game (Western-style / skill-based / dialogue trees / paper dolls / windows and tabs) it seemed pretty decent - there was nothing terribly annoying and certain aspects (like the hand-to-hand combat) surprised me in a positive way. I suspect that most people who expect to like it will like it. But in my case it did not defy my low expectations.

The fact that nobody has managed to split the difference between Western and Eastern RPGs seems like a missed opportunity. Japanese art production, animation, and attention to detail merged with a more free-form, role-playing, non-linear structure would be a marvelous thing. I can't help but think that both Western and Eastern RPGs are overly constrained by genre conventions. In some ways both have fallen into the "fans of the genre" ghetto where these games are made for a specific type of player and all others need not apply.

Verdict: If you are thinking about buying buy, at this point it's cheap and you'll probably like it. If this type of game isn't your thing it won't change your mind unless you are a huge Star Wars nerd like WUA.

I don't understand how you can review this if you uninstalled after entering the first city. Are all of the other comments just things you've seen other people say about the game?

I looked at the Planescape box once and didn't buy it.  It was orange and looked like shit.  If you like orange shit you may like the game, so you might want to check it out.

That is no attack on you, but why do people insist on buying games that they know beforehand they won't like? Kotor was a more than decent CRPG, with all the mechanics of that genre. Exploring areas is part of those games, as is finding and doing quests. And hunting down items to equip your party with. Those are not things to endure in RPGs, that are reasons people play them.

When skilling wrong can keep you from finishing the game, that is indeed a problem (like Arcanum). But especially in Kotor it doesn't matter what you skill. The game becomes so ridiculously easy that no matter what you do you will finish it. So all you do along the ride is basically playing your role and learning the skills you deem appropriate for your character (=only roleplaying option left in CRPGs, apart from "good dialog" "don't care dialog" "evil dialog")

So, what made you think you might like it even with your dislike of both Star Wars and CRPG mechanics?

KOTOR skills are simple. Once you get Jedi powers, nothing else matters all that much.

To be fair to Margalis I don't RPGs are the best sort of games for a BiiF. The fact that he basically played through the tutorial and uninstalled makes his conclusions a bit questionable, it came off a bit like someone playing Half-Life 2 and complaining that they didn't like the lack of character customisation or the lack of weapon choices.

Edit: I should note however that the Dick Dastardly/Dudley DoGood responses was fairly accurate.

I initially wanted to write some scathing attack on the original poster, but then I realized something: His opinion of Western RPGs is pretty much my exact opinion of Asian RPGs. I loved KoToR for exactly the reasons he criticized it.

I like games that let me have free run on skill choices, stats, etc. If I want to play through a game with a gimpy character, let me. Nothing I hate more than a supposed RPG system that railroads you through the leveling progression with no choices.

Really though, KoToR is all about the story.

Did you form your opinion of Asian RPGs just by playing the tutorial?

I have played far enough in to a few to at least justify how I feel about them. Though I would not, for example, post a mini review of FF X-2, since all I made it through was the opening cinematic and the first fight before I quit and gave the disc back.

I doubt most make it past the art direction, which is a shame. 

I think the problem with KoToR is that the initial portion of the game is largely irrelevant to character development after you become a Jedi.  You're likely not going to  grasp this until you're done with it. Second time through, I didn't level past 4 until I was able to select my Jedi profession.  Having high repair does lend itself to more humor with HK 47 and playing a puppy kicker has some great moments, but it's really difficult to gimp yourself in any aspect playing this game.

edit: lol, FFX-2.  :roffle:

For me the art doesn't enter into it with JRPG, I am not bothered by 'anime' looking characters or any of the stuff that makes people's hair stand on end in gamer art arguments. It is mostly about the mechanics, especially in combat. Give me a game where I can actually move my character around any day. And yeah I know there are some where you can do that, which brings me to my second objection, which is: I don't want a party made up of 10 year old girls, thanks. (I'm looking RIGHT at you, Eternal Sonata.)

This is not difficult: I played it, it wasn't fun, I stopped playing. I wasn't aware that I somehow owed it to someone to play all the way through a game I didn't enjoy. All told I played for about an hour, that should be enough to get a basic feel for the game.

I heard it was good so I gave it a try. Also partly because I considered it a sort of demo for Mass Effect. Before paying more for a game that rapes my computer I figured I'd pay less for a game many people think is as good or better. I was hoping it would be genre-transcendent.

Maybe I'm just burned out on RPGs. Enter a town, talk to every villager, collect a bunch of quests and such -- same shit as in Dragon Quest 1 no? Some of the villagers are going to tell me about the evil dark lord who threatens to take over the land, some are going to be selling items, some are going to have quests and some are going to make meaningless small-talk. Been there done that for 20 years.

I almost hate to admit it but the presence of "!" would probably have kept me playing.


I don't consider wandering around at town clicking on every person "exploring." It's busy work that a monkey could do. There is no interesting gameplay there and no sense of discovery. Exploring an ancient ruin or a jungle sounds fun. Exploring a town full of blaster salesmen not so much.


Again to have a choice you have to understand the consquences of your progression. For all I know taking a lot of computer fuxxoring may gimp your character or make it super powerful. There is no way of knowing without playing the game first. (Although I would guess that any non-combat skills aren't that important in the end)

Edit: Kind of funny that someone mentioned Half-Life. I got it as part of the Orange Box but I haven't fired it up. I played the demo and that was enough for me. Yes, I hate fun.

Half Life 1? Sucks. Not missing anything. Totally overrated.

/shrug

Whatever.

Are there any other contentious opinions you have about games where you've only played the tutorial or is it all out of your system now?

Any more sand in your vagina that you need to shake out?

I love the idea that you can't review a game that you disliked enough to stop playing. It means the only negative reviews you'll get are from people dumb enough to waste 40 hours of their time on something they don't enjoy.

It wasn't fun. Deal with it. Or post five more times in this thread crying some more.

The thing is I don't think anyone would be giving you any shit if you got to, say, the end of the first planet and THEN said "screw this." A the point where you did, you just haven't seen anything of the game or the story; you just made an assumption and quit, without giving the game a chance to disprove your assumption, or to prove that it was fun despite it.

So does this mean you don't have any other opinions to share with us?  It doesn't have to be just games. I'm sure you have strongly held opinions of various movies and television shows where you've only seen the first five minutes that would be every bit as valuable as your KOTOR review.

An hour is plenty of time to include something fun no?

This is basic game design. Not even game design, plain old narrative design. There are ways to grab people from the start. In medias res?

The first chapter of "A Game of Thrones" has essentially nothing to do with the rest of the book. It's there just to suck the reader in. The same is true of the start of Symphony of the Night or Metroid Prime. Final Fantasy 4 starts off immediately with something compelling. Hell Final Fantasy 1 gives you an opening segment before you cross the bridge which is fairly compelling before the game really opens up. Lufia is another example.

I've heard of people who stopped playing Twilight Princess because they got sick of the starting town -- catching goats, catching fish, etc. I think it's a great game but I won't call that an invalid complaint. The first hour or two of the game just isn't that fun and the only reason to keep playing is the faith that it will improve. (There is an old thread here full of people saying "few hours in, still playing out of the hope it gets better!")


You seem to think that posting the exact same thing five times makes your point stronger. Your whining is so endearing, keep it up.

If the general consensus is that the first hour of KOTOR sucks ass and is not indicative of the rest of the game that's something Bioware should consider fixing in future games. Many people find tutorial levels quite dull, and plenty of games have managed to slowly work in gameplay elements and explanations without having a dedicated tutorial. There is a certain art in making a game fun right off the bat.

Damn I'm glad there were other people who thought this about the latest Zelda.  I made at least three attempts to get into that game, each unsuccessfully.  I think I made it to the Goron level on Death Mountain at least before i quit, but I simply couldn't finish past it.  The game was entirely too linear, unlike Wind Waker that had such an open feel to it when I was out on the water.  The art style in WW grew on me over time, to the point where I really liked it by the end of the game. 

Not so with TP.  First off, I play Zelda games because I want to play as Link, not as a wolf.  It completely broke the connection I had with the character, not to mention that I played Okami right before playing TP.  Second, I don't like cutesy Asian crap (yes, i know it's ALWAYS been regarded as cutesy Asian crap).  That thing that travels on the wolf that makes noises like a Japanese porno all the time.... sucked. 

In regards to KOTOR, I never finished it either.  I played maybe half of the game before it fell into my mental Bioware abyss that ALL of it's games do.  The problem is the min/maxing of the alignment systems in these games.  Everything is either very good or very bad, never falling where I'd really answer.  So invariably I answer how I would in real life which makes a straight, middle of the road alignment character that never really gets access to either of the cool stuff. 

I still feel KOTOR was a success though.  And I don't think KOTOR can be looked at as a Mass Effect demo - ME is one of the first Bioware games that I'll likely finish because it's good/evil system can be increased independently of each other.  The new IP also helps freshen the game genre and one cannot deny the simple polish on ME compared to other Bioware games. 

Wait till ME hits the bargain bin and pick it up... don't base your opinion on a game that is what, 6-8 years old now?

Good comments about ME. I just assumed that because KOTOR is often held up as one of Bioware's best games it could serve as a substitute. (Also I'm pretty good about judging games based on their peers at release)

I think dialogue-tree RPGs are in a bit of bind. If your answers really matter then it makes sense to play optimally instead of to role play. But if they don't really matter what's the point? I suppose the solution is to make them matter as far as plot points and quests but not in terms of gear and abilities. The idea of trying to min-max dialogue choices is silly. If a set of choices is clearly objectively better than another set the game mechanics are sabotaging the role-playing element.

What they needed to do was rip out all the conversation trees so you don't have to worry about which response is best, put all the meaningful NPC interaction into nothing but cutscenes so you don't have to run around talking to people, take out all the leveling options so you don't accidentally gimp yourself, and just railroad you through the plot while you select Fight and target Imp and desperately try to pretend you're doing something besides watching a really slow-paced CGI movie with inventory management.

If you look at a dialogue selection and think "Is it objectively better from a powergaming perspective to insult this guy's shoes or tell him he has a nice hat?  I don't know!  PANIC!" instead of "Oh man that insult is kinda funny and those shoes are totally stupid!" then you're doing it wrong.

That's true, but you have to admit it's not good design when the role-playing conflicts with optimal gameplay.

A role playing game shouldn't punish you for role playing the way you see fit.

It's really hard to gimp yourself in KOTOR to the point that you feel gimped.  I played through it on Xbox, dumped all my points into medkit usage, used the auto-level feature on most of the other party members, and played through just fine.  If you play through a second time to see how the dark side goes, or whatever, then you can min-max your way to godhood.

Like that thing where you don't have to level right away?  Technically you could remain level 2 all through the first planet, letting the other party members protect you, until you become a Jedi.  Then you could spend those accumulated levels on Jedi stuff, and end up with more force powers than the guy who spent his levels immediately on Soldier or Scoundrel or whatever.

You could, but unless you have OCD, why bother?  At the end of the day, the game's just not that hard.

The story and characters are where it's at, and it's there that the choices really matter.  Being an evil Dark Side badass seemed like nothing but laughs and puppy-kicking good times to me through most of the game, right up until it caused the death of a character I really didn't want to kill.  It managed to make me feel bad, because even though I couldn't have forseen their death, still it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been such an "UNLIMITED POWAR! MUAHAHA!" prick.

That's what the dialogue trees are good for, and it beats the living hell out of "Oh Aeris got stabbed in a cutscene, and will get stabbed everytime I play through the game ever."

Personally I think Half Life 2 sucked also.

Anyway, Margalis' taste in games has always been suspect to me since he enjoys FFXI.  :mob:

He probably just likes the introductory cut-scenes. :grin:

Yeah, but part of the problem is that unless you've lived in a cave for the last decade or so, all the "faults" in this game that caused you to uninstall it after the first hour are things you likely knew about before you started playing.  You're playing what is essentially a textbook example of Western-style RPGs, and your complaints seem to be that it's too much of a Western-style RPG.  That's great if you're Yahtzee or something, and it's all a springboard for a humorous rant on the flaws of the genre.  Otherwise you just come off as the guy who doesn't like the racing simulation game because it isn't arcadey enough.

I did note that fans of the genre will probably like it. But I also think it's possible for games to appeal to fans outside of the genre - something this game does not do.

For example I'd argue that to some degree Soul Calibur 4 appeals to non-fighting fans, whereas a game like Virtua Fighter or Guilty Gear is pretty much only for true believers. I think God of War appeals to people in a way that Devil May Cry might not.

It's one thing if I'm finding bullshit faults that are solely a matter of personal preference. But the fact that there is no way to evaluate the worth of various skills is a valid complaint. The fact that the dialogue choices are rather charicaturish is a valid complaint. I reject that those are merely personal taste or that they are features of the genre rather than bugs. Arcade vs. simulation is a stylistic choice, a trite script is not.

Look at how adventure games fell off the map. People got tired of the stupid gameplay convention of clicking on every pixel and trying every item to solve one nonsense puzzle after another. Bad gameplay became a genre convention and "fans of the genre will like this" stopped meaning anything because most the fans moved on.

Many people in this thread seem to agree that the first hour of the game is not that great because it's largely tutorial and therefore boring, and I don't see why that should be considered some sort of immutable design law of CRPGs.

Wouldn't KOTOR be a better game if there was a better indication of what real use your skills would be? Or if you could respec in some fashion? If role-playing your character didn't conflict with a gameplay mechanic that encourages maximizing either light or dark? Seems like the answer is yes. "CRPGs don't work that way" is a weak rebuttal.

Again while I'm not a fan of the floating "!" at least Blizzard recognized that there was a problem that needed solving. Every town in every RPG you play you have to walk around to every damn person and talk to them in the hope they have something relevant to say. Instead of accepting that as a feature of the genre Blizzard recognized that it wasn't fun and did something about it.

I'm not try to call you a stupidiot for not liking the game Margalis, I just found it kind of shocking that one of the more prominant writer types here didn't enjoy a game that's been lauded for it's story more than anything. I will agree, that the game had a somewhat slow start. Just as a warning, the intro to KotoR 2 is even worse - to the point that people wrote mods to allow you to skip it entirely.

While I would have liked the game to give more some more subtle good/bad options, I still really appreciated that there were essentially two different storylines worked through the game, based on how you played it. You had NPCs that would follow you either way, be certain ones favored one approach or the other. Really, I think one of the reasons you didn't get in to the story, is that you didn't get far enough to start interacting with the NPCs.

The whole game was designed to have the NPCs that were with you interject at certain points and start up conversations, which would start subquests and various other things, but really were meant to add to the story at the time. Also, they made it possible to play through more than once, using different NPCs and actually getting a different experience. If you ask people what they remember most about KotoR, it's almost always something to do with the NPCs: HK47, the NPC death WUA mentioned, how much you wanted to kill Carth, etc..

Oh, and as to the skill system - it's based on the standard d20 skill system. Your max skill level is your level plus three. You typically get six to eight skill points per level. If you mess up and ignore a skill that you find you need later, most of the time you can max that skill completely in one to two levels, so it really never was that big a deal.

Really, I think most of all, I feel sad for you in that you will never be in the club that just nods along and smiles whenever you here the word "Meatbag".

I stopped reading this thread halfway down but I just felt I'd share: I absolutely LOVED KOTOR, but the first time I tried to play it I quit once I spent an hour running around on the planet.  It wasn't until later when I played and beat KOTOR 2 that I finally decided to go back and give it a try.  I was rewarded for sticking with it that second time.

I also thought the second hour of Half Life 1 was horribly boring and quit, again taking years off before beating the damn thing.

Hi, I don't like Star Wars or RPGs.  I think I'll review this Star Wars RPG!   :awesome_for_real:

Maybe I should do a final fantasy biif.

Your whole post was spot on, particularly this last bit.

But yeah, KOTOR was a bit greater than the sum of its part, mainly because of the story and certain characters.  I'd like to think that Margalis would have eventually changed his tune had he sticked with it longer, but perhaps not.  I'll categorically state for the record, however, that anyone who managed to get to the HK47 parts and didn't think it was Teh Awesome must simply hate stuff that is awesome.

There's always been a tension between real depth in the interactions with NPC characters in these RPGs and the need to not close off too many options. 

If your character can join different sides in various conflicts, then the actions of the NPCs and the quest stories and whatever have to be designed independently.  It seems like a waste of game design resources, because if two choices lead down two mutually exclusive quest chains, then most players will only see one of the chains, and if being the "good guy" or the "bad guy" in a game like KOTOR means you do significantly different stuff throughout the game, then the devs essentially have to make two games.

That leads to these vaunted morality systems basically adding up to a choice between being a good guy and being a good guy who is kind of an asshole. 

Have you not played this game either?

It's certainly valid to play a game for an hour and review it. Your review will likely be short and negative, unless you're getting paid for it, in which case your review will likely be short and TEH AWESOME!!!!! Hell, I generally don't give games 30 minutes unless they show me the fun immediately.

KOTOR definitely rewards you for playing it longer, but it really does sound like you just don't like the accepted conventions of Western-story-heavy RPG's. KOTOR is kind of the epitome of that genre. Personally, I've been kind of burned out on those type of RPG's too, which is why I've barely scratched the surface of Oblivion.

Yea, I really don't see a problem with the review.  I think it's a valid opinion of the genre that a fuckton of people have, including myself.  Dialog trees suck.  I understand the options that they provide.  But I don't care.  Reading quest text sucks.  I understand that some people like it, but I don't.  There are other ways to engage people in the story.  Use them.  I lasted longer in KOTOR than he did, but for 2 I did the same thing.

KOTOR is a milquetoast fantasy RPG in sci-fi clothing, bound to its console limitations but unable to escape from its PC/D20 roots. The setting is obviously innovative and the engine is an ingenious compromise, but it is otherwise horrendously overrated. Everything from quest/interaction, to combat, to party mechanics, to story, is a simplified derivative of what the Infinity Engine games did, far better, years ago. Nothing is more blatant than simply being able to run around with a sword vibro-blade in the opening village planet, in a Star Wars game. Criminal.

If that is the epitome of Western RPGs, we would be in a bad fix.

Fortunately, Mass Effect (KOTOR 2.0) does successfully depart from a lot of basic conventions, and the new Obsidian properties show a lot of promise in the same way. KOTOR is really a transitional game, making way for a new type of Western Console RPG; it shouldn't be dwelled upon.

It is perfectly valid in the context of these reviews, which is basicslly, did you have fun in the first couple hours of this game? We just feel the rabid need to point out that the game improves as it goes, and ultimately ends up being one of the best RPG games produced.

My standard to rate them is simple, I almost never finish RPGs. I've finished KotoR twice.

Oh and Stormwalz, if I find out that you were the one responsible for writing the Darkside encounter where your party member dies, I may have to kick your ass. Even though it was one of the most memorable moments I've had in an RPG.

Now my perfectly valid review of Chateau Lafitte I once tasted. I didn't like it, I tasted alcohol when I drank it. I don't like the taste of alcohol, but I thought Chateau Lafitte might try to go beyond the alcohol liking crowd. Sadly it didn't realize its full potential. But people who like the taste of alcohol might also like Chateau Lafitte.

It's a valid opinion, but one that probably could have stated better if it was a topic on how CRPG's can be improved rather than a review of the first hour of a CRPG from someone who isn't really into a lot of the standards of CRPG's.  As an indicator to other people whether or not they might like the game, it's about as useful as reading the back of the box.

I think about the point in the game when you uninstalled, and how much you missed - getting to know HK-47, swapping war stories with Canderous, even putting up with Mission and "Big Z," all I can say is that you missed a good one.

The first western RPG I played where I felt overwhelmed by the choices I had was Baldur's Gate 2. I played through my initial disquietude, and I found a direction that took me through the rest of the game. I still find BG2 to be hands down the best RPG I have ever played. Entirely personal reflection, so don't be offended, but I feel a little ashamed that something as simple as choices would have caused in me such a panic.

I'll still put a western RPG down if I feel like I have too many choices, but that's usually if I'm in the wrong mindset (I'm looking at you, Oblivion - who I have finally resolved to play through.)

At the same time, I do enjoy JRPGs; but I can also feel a little railroaded by their presentation. If I don't finish a JRPG, it's usually because I've temporarily satiated some bizarre need to achieve that exists in some hollow part of my psyche.

In the end though, you don't have to share my experiences, so to each their own.

I think the important thing to remember here is the Rule of Opinions and Assholes.  We assume here that you can safely disseminate for yourself what's useful to you and what's not.  I guess it might help you to not think of it so much as a review, but merely a consumer advisory warning.

"HOLY SHIT DIALOG.  NOT FUN.  OH GOD."

I never played KOTOR, so I hold no love or hate for it.

I wouldn't 'review' something after playing it for an hour and not leaving the starting area or tutorial. Sounds like you never wanted to like the game, so it wasn't hard not to. To each is own I guess though.

I never liked the D20 system, and in fact I've bitched around here multiple times in the past that "shitty combat system" seems to be some sort of RPG genre convention when it doesn't really need to be.  KOTOR isn't without it's flaws, but those flaws are far from crippling, because stuff like mechanics and combat aren't what the game is about anyway.

KOTOR is a story where you can affect the outcome, and the "game" stuff is just there to back that up.  At least in my view.  For example, I pretty much hated the Jedi Council.  They were a bunch of pompous helpless weenie douchebags, happy to spew their supposed wisdom at every opportunity, but who couldn't even clean out the Mandalorians pillaging townsfolk in their own backyard until I showed up.  I don't think you're "supposed" to feel that way.  I think you're supposed to want to save the galaxy on their behalf.  But I didn't, I just hated them.

Which made it all the more incredibly satisfying when I completely fucked them over.  The whole chain of events where Revan and Bastila lure the Republic fleet closer to the Star Forge and cause them to be annhilated was priceless.  That bit where Vandar realizes with mounting horror that the Battle Meditation is being used against them and not in their favor?  The moment before their ship explodes where he and Dodonna realize that they're doomed?  I laughed so hard.  I think I may have flipped off the screen as they blew up.

Shit, now I wanna play through this game again.

Polka was 14, man! March and Salsa and Beat (I  :heart: Beat for no good reason) were 8!

TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

 :hello_thar:

I really need to stop reading these sorts of threads.  Makes me want to light many people in this forum on fire.   :why_so_serious:

I don't think you can say it better than this.  And that's cool.  A paradigm shift in the genre.  I get it.  I heard it once described as a movie that you played.  But for some people, the game stuff is at least as important.  After all, there are better movies.

I actually did want to like KOTOR because for years I'd heard people rave about the dialogue.


I can understand this but to me stories based in the Star Wars universe aren't that compelling. I don't now what I was expecting but I suppose that because this takes place way in the past I was expecting something different from just more vanilla Star Wars. Jedi Council stuff feels like old hat now, maybe because I've unfortunately seen the 3 prequels.

I'm not totally opposed to stories told in the Star Wars universe but at least try to do something a little different. KOTOR is what, 1000 years in the past? Yet it seems pretty much the same as the prequels which were what 20 years before the main movies?

Margalis, it's true that it's a prequel in a sense.  The point is that it's a prequel written by people who know how to write a good story and not one written by George "Destroyer of my Childhood" Lucas.

And to be fair to the OP, the point of a BiiF is to review a game based on the first few hours of playing.  It clearly wasn't fun for some people.  Hell, it wasn't fun for me either and if it hadn't been so heavily recommended years later I would never have picked it up again.  I changed my tune later, but my first impression of the game was very poor.

The KOTOR2 story -- if you ignore the, um, "end" or at least read up on what got cut -- actually rather cleverly back-edits the KOTOR1 story making it more complex. Then again, once I grasped what KOTOR2 was doing, the whole game was a rather good commentary on the intersections of free will and destiny, with one of the primary NPC's being basically a philosopher who is entirely bitter that the existance of the force infringes on the basics of free will.

KOTOR1 was worth it mostly for the dialogue -- HK47 was quite fun to have around, and I even got amused with Carth and Bastilla arguing. Especially when you egged them on.

Sadly,  KOTOR  suffers from "Being Dark Side Means Being a Douche" but 2 was far better on that front that one. In the second, you get quite a bit of the light side/dark side points from conversation. It's not entirely what you do, but why you do it. (And they do give you "Lie: I'm just trying to help!" sort of options.

My biggest problem with KOTOR is that it doesn't play with my graphics card all of a sudden, and I'd just gotten my son to try it (he's 12) and now it locks everytime an ion or plasma grenade goes off.

I firmly believe that if KoTOR2 had been finished it would have been a much better game, or at least interactive story. As it is unless Team Gizka ever finish their fix I would never recommend anyone bother playing it simply because there's way too many unfinished or just hinted at side plots that make the whole thing confusing in terms of trying to follow the story. Which is a shame because like Morat said I think they were trying to tell a far more sophisticated tale than KoTOR's basic Dark vs. Light, pick one and chain lightening shit! Which was great fun and had some great moments but really was vanilla Star Wars.

 i think it peaked when I had the option to tell a bunch of jerks to give me their weapons, money and force intimidate them to jump off Nar Shaada.   :why_so_serious:

People who are complaining that Marg didn't play enough of the game to review it need to look at the caption under the BiiF forum.

(http://forums.f13.net/Smileys/classic/uhrrr.gif)

That's been covered, smart guy. Discussion has moved a bit away from that.

Edit: Anyhow, rules or not.  A BiiF can still be subjectively bad in someone's eye.  The framework doesn't shield you from criticism.

I only made it about halfway through the first page.  Every single post up to that point was commentary on how Margalis shouldn't review the game because he didn't finish it.  IN THE BIIF FORUM.  The :uhrr: overwhelmed me and I stopped reading.

Rating: Don't Read.

Don't be fucking retarded, nobody said he had to finish the game.

Yes really. I'm perfectly aware that this forum is for fast reviews. But not even getting out of the tutorial? Give me a break.

I didn't get out of the first tutorial the first time through. In fact, I hated the game for being so awful.

That said, quit bickering.

Aww c'mon. The game wasn't that terrible was it? I'm sure that there was nothing wrong that couldn't have been fixed with the addition of half a dozen big eyed androgenous pre-teen characters. :why_so_serious:

I didn't start working here until near the end of Jade's development.

If you're talking about the one I think you are (SPOILER: you Jedi mind-trick Zaalbar into killing mission), that was Drew Karpyshyn, now the lead writer for the Mass games. He had to lobby hard to get that in the game.

Then sitting down to play a story-based game set in the Star Wars universe was probably never going to end well for you, regardless of how well the skill selections were annotated.  There's nothing wrong with passing judgement on a game after an hour of play, but writing a review that amounts to "I played Stuff I Hate: The Game.  I didn't think it was very good." is bound to get people rolling their eyes.

I'd have been ready to review Lineage II after about an hour of gameplay. I think something like KOTOR is different in that it takes acclimatization to the story world and system, one of those things that's got to get its hooks in and evolve essentially to full gameplay before I could, in any intellectually fair sense, dismiss it. I am, of course, taking this position from an educated standpoint: I almost quit KOTOR after the tutorial regions but then started really digging it once I was cavorting around the galaxy. I'm super-disinterested in pre-IV star wars, too. Clone wars shit bores the crap out of me. the old republic did have its draws, though, and that's entirely the game dev's fault. :)

Good for him. Games should do more of that sort of thing, and it was a very "realistic" (from a Dark Side POV) thing to include. To me, that really drove home the Dark Side as being more than a greedy, callous, dickwad sort of thing. Being an ass to strangers, taking their stuff, and killing off random NPCs pales next to that sort of thing.

I will say this about KOTOR -- the reveal of one of the central plot points, complete with flashbacks, was VERY well done. Kind of doesn't hold up on replay, but at the time I was surprised.

KOTOR2, I liked how your half the exposition in the game was cleverly hidden as dialogue choices. Nobody had to tell you all the stuff you should have known -- what happened, and how you felt about it, was right there as possible responses to organic feeling conversations. Not as easy as an exposition, but a lot more effective.

Exactly.  It's like sending a vegan to review a steak restaurant.  What the hell is the point?  Doesn't matter if the review was an hour or a week.

Srsly, someone get me a pc version of a jrpg to biif. Do they even make such a thing?  :awesome_for_real:

Grandia II.  FF7 was also ported to PC.  Both are rather old though.

You could play FF2 or FF3 (4 and 6 in JP) on an emulator.  You'd probably have an easier time getting past the art direction with these.  The results may result in your imminent death, however.

This was good stuff, for sure, and there wasn't enough of it.

Sadly, most of the dark side options were about being a big dumb psychopath more than anything else, as we all know. In that sense, the end-game shift from brute to amoral superstar was certainly welcome, but it didn't lend any sort of overall coherence to the personality of the main character or to the story arc. KOTOR II -brilliantly- even makes use of this sad house of cards to help build Revan into a mysterious and inscrutable figure with an agenda that the player of KOTOR 1 has no conception of.

Guh. As far as RPGs in general go, I'd really prefer it if developers could abstain from adding 'evil choices' entirely if they fail to make sense in the context of a greater narrative -- any conversation node that people immediately dismiss until they're going through their mandatory psycho-killer playthrough.. what exactly is being accomplished with that, and who are you appealing to?

Again, I wouldn't be opposed to a Star Wars based story if it had a little of something I haven't already seen a billion times. KOTOR is based 1000 years in the past or something right? Could anyone have guessed that by playing? Everything about it is essentially contemporary.

 :why_so_serious: it's star wars. it's george lucas. After the prequels. Come on. It's gotta be awesome after the shit storm that was Episode 1.
Right, let me try hinting on KOTOR 2 awesomeness

How about a game that actually explains why seemingly random people joined you? and a game that actually justified you as an evil that must be stopped because no matter where you go, people die and you get stronger (more levels) from planet to planet, leaving a trail of slaughter behind you? Despite all of this hatred they were all wrong, because they simply too prideful to admit their mistakes and still insists theirs were the right way?  Yes. The Jedi is represented in a totally different light in the sequel. KOTOR 1 was too black and white, the sequel shone brilliantly despite the hacked ending, the script made for an awesome story. I didn't care if the combat sucked, the writing was good enough for a movie. The Exile's story is MUCH better than Revan and it's a shame EA is making Bioware go MMO route with the license instead of tying up the loose ends.

The stuff you saw before the rise of the empire was all clean, shiny, and well-polished with vast structures of nobility.

After the rise of the empire, thematically, it was a darker, more rugged time. The juxtaposition was like moving from the roaring 20's to the depths of the depression.

That's one cool idea that they had that basically got rolled over by the prequels being a load of cack.

I'd forgotten about that part -- when you're talking to the Jedi Masters, and you're explaining how you've grown stronger in the Force, and they ask you why you didn't wonder about how leaving a trail of blood behind you as you rampaged from planet to planet managed to make you stronger in the Force.

Damn, I wish they hadn't had to rush the ending on that game. :(

It is set X hundred years before the Star Wars movies. Those are already 'long long ago' or whatever, so I'm not really sure where the bar should be set for modernity in them, or even if it should matter.

Not that I'd know about stuff like this ( :oh_i_see:), but I'm fairly certain it's set about 4000 years before ANH.  It's kinda strange that people are complaining about it being tied to heavily to the original canon, as it has always been my impression that people liked the game so much more exactly because it it wasn't slaved to its source material.

Yep, pretty much following the continuity for that period that Dark Horse established with the Tales of the Jedi comics.

Is it time for our nerdhug?

In Star Wars, interstellar spaceflight has existed for tens of thousands of years and technology is supposed to have basically finished advancing a long time ago.  Not stopped advancing because of some dark age, but just... finished.  You can buy a sentient robot or an FTL drive capable of crossing the galaxy at a backwater junkyard, but things don't just keep getting better until everyone ascends into gods or something.  Even with something like the Death Star it's more a matter of "I can't believe anyone would ever build a gun that huge!" than any particular technology nobody has seen before.

I'll break your arm if you even try it.

How do you know it doesn't have anything you haven't seen?  You stopped after the tutorial and right where the story even starts.  It's been a while, but I don't recall them throwing everything at you right away either.  It wasn't until the big reveal in the middle that I went "Oh shit!" and really got sucked into the plot.

Also, BioWare games are about the story.  If you're more interested in playing them for the game system, don't bother.  They do a good job of turning popular PnP systems into computer games, but their effectiveness depends entirely on the PnP game system not sucking.  (Mass Effect is a step in the right direction.)

Because people here complained so much I played again and made it about 3 hours in.

I'm not expecting wooden ships but 4000 years in the past? It seems to me it could easily take place almost concurrent with Episode 1. It doesn't feel any different to me. The tech looks the same, the races are the same, the overall atmosphere is the same. You still have Twileks dancing to the beat of those yellowish alien dudes, still have basically the same weapons, etc. I guess it couldn't be concurrent with Episode 1 in that there is a large Sith army and lots of Dark Jedi around, but in terms of the actual universe it doesn't feel older, just different, like an alternate reality.

The game does pick up a bit when you get Mission, in part because Carth is the most boring generic guy ever, and in part because 3 teammates is more exciting. Still my overall view of the game hasn't changed. The voice acting is all over the place, the evil choices are unintentionally silly. Don't even get me started on the people who have a disease that makes their entire body structure change in a flash of light, or the dead apprentice who's body is lying 20 yards away from the entrance gate yet has not been spotted in years. This whole undercity section comes off as terribly contrived to me.

I'll be honest and say that the story really isn't very quick to get into. The first planet (for me anyway) didn't even really start to pick up until near the very end but I enjoyed lasering NPCs and such so it wasn't so bad. I'll still hold that it's worth it but the game's real strengths come from getting to know a few of the NPCs in your party and the main storyline as it develops. The problem being it develops slowly. I don't know if anyone would jump on you so much for quitting after the first planet though I still think it's a mistake and you'd be missing out on a great game. There's just something that gets people about basically playing the tutorial for a game and then declaring it unfun.

Also as has been said, the dark side choices don't get a hell of a lot better. There are a few major choices in the game that are actually well written and you can get dark side points without feeling like you're just some sociopathic thug. These usually revolve around the dark side being the easy path to power and give you a choice between the right but difficult choice or the dark but easy and straightforward choice.

Most of the dark side choices are less evil than thuggish if that makes sense. When people think of evil they think of grand designs to take over the universe, not kicking puppies and other douchebaggery. I almost wonder if would be better to have the good and evil campaigns be more distinct, with somewhat different structures. It must be problematic to construct a single narrative that supports meaningful good and evil choices.

Also some of it is inconsistent. For a while I wasn't looting people's boxes because I was afraid it would make me evil, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I can chop down their door and steal their shit and that's not evil? Similarly I killed a female bounty hunter just to collect the reward, and while you can spin it as some greater good shit it still felt evil to me.

I don't think I'm going to play any more. If it gets better after this I'll never know. Maybe giving up 10 minutes after the tutorial ended was a bit much but 3+ hours of playing time should be enough.

Just skip it, KOTOR 1 has very little in interesting choices, a few characters actually showed great development but Carth is just a regular Bioware character template that resurfaces again and again in other Bioware games (Baldur's Gate Anomen, Mass Effect's Kaidan). The only interesting part is the Disney-esque princess in the tower shit with a twist near the end.

This really makes me want to play KotOR 2 again.

I can see Kaidan (heck it is even the same actor) but Anomen? Anomen was totally different!

No, you need to experience Carth and Bastilla, so that in KOTOR2 when you listen to HK-47 mock them, it's even more hilarious.

Maybe it ended up being used in KotOR2 (too long ago to remember), but I remember an HK-47 cut-scene clip from the first game about them which had me rolling on the floor.  Carth's angst and Bastilla being love-sick.  I still play it from time to time.

Mass Effect is so much better about the morality system, where it's more a ruthlessness than thuggish evil.  Even KotOR2 is better, but then exploring the grey is (thankfully) really what that entire game is about.  The Black and White morality of Star Wars has always offended me though.  I'm a solid grey, and they don't account for that as someone complained about above.

HK-47: Mockery: Oh Master, I do not trust you! I cannot trust you or anyone else ever again.
HK-47: Mockery: Oh, Master, I love you so very much, but the others cannot konw. Come, let us press our slimy, mucus covered lips together in the cargo hold.

Those two. :) Thought they were KOTOR2, but maybe not. :)

they are. Bioware romance are mostly crap. The Carth being a pussy at the end of the Dark Side play was hilarious too.

It's something in the lines of 'I'll get you next time--- DECEPTICONS RETREAT!' from sunday morning cartoon after I told him I was gonna kill him.

That's them!

I've made a few changes that may make it more to your liking.

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/JKOTOR.jpg)

(That's for calling me a nerd in your review, which I didn't notice at first.  I mean sure it's true, but still...)

Thanks for making mountain dew jet from my nose at work, asshole. 

Also, that's why I can't play JRPGs- they give me the same feeling I think I'd have if I drove around playgrounds all day in a white panel van.  The last TV commercial I saw for a JRPG (Sonata something) featured a 10 year old in a maid's outfit. 

WUA, that was gold man.

Needs more panty-shot.  It IS 12+ after all.

Well, in the defense of Eternal Sonata, you're pretty much playing as a party of kids the entire way through.  I think at some point you've got a pair of 8 year olds in your group that are some sort of forrest guardian or whatever (the main character from the commercials is like 14 or some such).  I didn't really notice an attempt at all during the game to objectify them at any point.  Polka (the main char) is just really wearing some sort of dress,  but I suppose someone that has problems with the art is going to see what they're predisposed to see.   I didn't feel very  :pedobear: playing it, but I didn't play it for very long.   The story, unfortunately, was pretty poor and the amount times the game insulted your intelligence by ponderously explaining a completely fucking obvious plot point you just witnessed drove me over the edge.  Also, far, far too much combat.

Still, even if you can get past the art work, there's still going to be a lot that most people here won't like with JRPGs.  They're mostly turnbased or some sort of hybrid realtime.  They're all fairly linear for at the very least long stretches of the game.   Most are likely to be around 30+ hours in length.   You're not going to be making a lot of choices, they'll be made for you and there's rarely any sort of good/evil path.   But even with all I've just mentioned, most won't get past the art.  There's also the fact that there isn't a good JRPG on either of the next gen consoles yet.  Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, and even largely Lost Odyssey are poor examples of the genre even if ES and LO have a few things going for them.   The ones I haven't mentioned are even worse from all accounts. 

I guess it just doesn't bother me,  and I find myself enjoying both RPGs and jRPGs.  Hell, my favorite jRPG, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, tends to push the  :pedobear: envelope concerning one character.   Then again, that's a game that had a BSDM villian, collectable gay porn cards, a gay vampire wrestler as a main character, and the subplot line that bordered on necrophilia (no corpse sex, I assure you).  Still, what emerged is a game that didn't treat anything seriously yet managed to have a compelling plot, a great combat system, and a series of truly memorable moments that managed to leave just about every RPG experience in the dust.    So, am I just really well grounded and secure or irrevocably twisted and perverse?

 :oh_i_see:

Ha ha ha.

But seriously, I would have liked KOTOR a lot more if there was one non-ugly face I could choose from.

My fem puppy kicker towards the end of the game had some awesome evil-force lines all over her face.  :awesome_for_real:

The art direction in KOTOR and other Western RPGs has generally been rather poor.  I don't remember it being bad as Oblivion where everyone had Downs or jaundice.

Western RPGs do seem to take the route that customisation is more important than art quality. Although at least part of this is that Western RPGs also tend to go in for much larger numbers of mobs since you don't get nice set sized encounters like most JRPGs.

I still really want a decent fantasy RPG where I get a cool looking cloak, just because I love being a walking cliché.

I was always that ethnically ambiguous bald guy with the goatee.  He was pretty badass looking.  And awesome for a dark side character because... well... goatee!

(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/SWFAN.jpg)

One of the KOTOR2 guys looks like Jesus (the Let's Play guy used him and referred to him as 'Jedi Jesus'). In either Kotor1 or 2, there's a guy that looks like Keanu Reeves.

Everyone looks a bit constipated, and I'm pretty sure in the first one some of the NPC faces are drawn from the PC face pool, which leads to some amusing moments.

I dunno.  Bald Vaguely Filipino Revan never met his twin, but then that's the only face I ever played through with.

I think they do a replacement. You know if Default NPC face is PC face, swap for another face. I'm almost certain I've seen NPC's wearing some of the "other choice" faces for PCs in one of the games.