PC KotOR2 - bugged as expected?

[eldaec]

Someone must have bought this by now.

Is it safe to assume that it's bugged to hell and practically impossible to play without rebooting every 6 minutes? And that as such, there is no earthly reason to purchase it until I see a patch?

[Signe]

I bought it for Righ, but he's been playing WoW and nothing else lately.  I'm sure he'll get around to it, eventually.

[Evil Elvis]

Crashed on me once, during one of the FMV's.  Aside from that, I've had no problems.

[sinij]

Crashed on me 4 times in 3 hours I played it. It seems to have problems with cenimatics. Clearly not my system problem since everything else runs fine.

[Fabricated]

I've been playing it for a bit. One of my friends picked it up for me.

So far I haven't noticed anything outside of a minor graphics bug on the Ebon Hawk, some graphical lag in places (less than the Xbox version however, much less), and an odd bug where it turns up the gamma on my monitor and leaves it there upon exiting the program.

[Furiously]

Crashes with videos playing occasionally, seems like switching between the engine and video screws it up sometimes, I've noticed if I skip a ton of dialog, it will sometimes get a bit "off" as well.

Seems pretty fun so far.

[El Gallo]

Played about 6 hours yesterday, only crashed once.  My gamma also gets dark as hell after every cinematic, so I have to reset it every time.  Which is annoying.  Though not as annoying as the fact that

Edit: spoiler tags are unfair to some

[Zane0]

If you have an ATI card, the latest drivers can let you attach hotkeys to your brightness/gamma/contrast settings, which helps with that issue.

The game has only had a few bugs in my experience.  Some skips in dialogue, an occasional disappearing act of important characters, and some dialogue issues is all.

[Paelos]

Mine arrives today. I expect to put about 15 hours into it by Friday when I'll write up a little something here with a bug log and some various pros/cons.

[TripleDES]

Doors vs. NPCs screwed the game up for me a few times. Especially when you need to kill some NPCs that come out of a door you can't open, but then it closes and they're stuck on the other side.

[Yegolev]

These comments sound a lot like my Xbox experience.  My wife and I are wondering if they actually fixed anything in the PC version, or maybe at least added in the sections they quite obviously left out.  The differences between my game (first run) and my wife's two games (second run) are either inspired design or holiday-rush-past-QA.  I am probably being generous with the "inspired design" comment.

[Paelos]

So far I've crashed three times after character creation. I updated my drivers on my card, then played for a solid three hours before crashing again when zoning. I've had a couple of problems with skips and framerate, but fear that game is going to take a dump on me keeps my save rate high. So far, the stability is still a major issue.

[ajax34i]

I crashed pretty badly during install, half way through the first CD.  System froze, so I rebooted, which resulted in extensive corruption to windows\system32.  Had to reinstall XP, the works.  Possibly it was because Norton AV interfered with it, not sure, the pop-up message I had was something about unable to find some file on the CD.

After I reinstalled XP, I installed KOTOR2 before NAV, and it installed ok.

[Alkiera]

Turning off A/V programs during installation of software is a pretty common suggestion.  Most of the apps I recall installing make the suggestion anyway...  I don't pay that much attention since I do not run A/V software.

Alkiera

[Paelos]

I crashed also during install on the insertion part of the 3rd CD. It wouldn't read anything and just froze up. Then it sank my entire windows toolbar and forced a ctrl-alt-del reboot. After updating my A/V card drivers, things are much improved. I still average one crash about every three hours of playtime, and I always quicksave before and after I zone anywhere. That seems to be when my system takes a dump.

[El Gallo]

If you have an ATI card, the latest drivers can let you attach hotkeys to your brightness/gamma/contrast settings, which helps with that issue.

Thank you so much for this.

[Furiously]

I finished it last night. WTF kind of ending was that? Did they run out of money? Did they have another ending but the publisher made them change it? Talk about disappointing.

[Sky]

Worse than HL2? It's the first time I can remember finishing a game and sitting there, keyboard in lap, slack jawed and repeating "That's it? I mean.....that's it? Really? That's it??" I kept expecting the game to go on after the credits rolled or something.

[Paelos]

It's too early to discuss the ending. Don't turn this into a spoiler thread. At least wait until the damn weekend or something.

[Furiously]

Ok - to re-rail - I'd say it will crash every 2 or 3 hours with 1 gig of memory usually when some piece of scripting starts or it tries to go to or from a video clip.

[Paelos]

Ok - to re-rail - I'd say it will crash every 2 or 3 hours with 1 gig of memory usually when some piece of scripting starts or it tries to go to or from a video clip.

That's been consistent with my findings as well. It's obvious to me that there are major transition errors in the game that are causing it to bog down. These could be easily cleaned up with the next patch I would hope, although I'm thinking it won't be out until end of February.

[Furiously]

More annoying is the pathing, or characters just standing around doing nothing in a fight. I've also had a few pathing problems with the main character trying to get to a container to open it.

One other question, do the player characters look about 30 lbs overweight or is it my widescreen monitor?

[Sky]

One other question, do the player characters look about 30 lbs overweight or is it my widescreen monitor?

Tell me you don't know you have to tweak just about any game to get it running in 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio?

Seems in addition to bugs, Obsidian shipped without widescreen support. HTPC gamers not happy, self included. Apparently the first kotor was hackable to widescreen ratios. Even the xbox version of kotor1 was 4:3, dammit.

I really want to check this game out, but with the bugs and 4:3 ratio....maybe not.

[eldaec]

Ok, all in all, no need to buy it till it's half price then.

More beer for me.

And thanks for beta testing everyone 

[Paelos]

We may be focusing on the negative, but let me say that despite the crashes, the storyline is very immersive and complex. You actually get a very good feel for the characters. I bought KOTOR I well after the initial patching phase, so I never encountered any bugs, and I would recommend doing the same with this game. After the first patch, latch on.

[Rodent]

Kotor 2 works just fine for me. I did experience some frameloss when I arrived at Dantooine but that was quickly fixed by re-installing the Catalyst 4.11 drivers. So besides having the same driver incompability as Kotor 1 I have no complaints. Now I can't wait for Kotor 3. I just pray Obsidian keeps the darker theme they introduced, it always makes Star Wars more interesting ( see: Empire Strikes Back ).

[Otis]

I haven't crashed all that often, but it does seem rather buggy for me. About on par with the recent Bloodlines release -- nothing game-threatening, but it does shows a lack of overall polish. I've noticed a lot of wackiness in scripted events, cutscenes, quests, pathing and AI. The story can also become disjointed in areas, and it's obvious that they rushed production near the end of the development cycle.

Those issues aside, I'm liking it more than the first game, and mainly because the storyline and your companions are somewhat improved on the writing-side of things (basically I didn't hate them all this time). It was nice to be saddled with a wise and seemingly neutral character like Kreia at the begining, as opposed to someone like Bastilla in the first game (who'd cause me to cringe each time my character noticed that something was "troubling her").

[Ironwood]

Goodness, but this game is bad.  Really, really bad.  Given that the graphics, engine and - no matter what you guys say - NPC's have stayed exactly the same, you'd expect something really good - a true successor to the first game.


Instead we get an incomprehensible Monty-Haul piece of shit.

Oh dear.

[geldonyetich]

Psh, it's not that bad.  Granted, it is based on the AD&D style of game like KOTOR 1 was, which invites a lot of "hard fight? just reload until you roll better" asshattery.

Planescape Torment heavily superimposed itself on KOTOR 2, which is understandable because many of the same developers are involved.   It's clearly evident in the way they built the individual party members as having a unique ability and hidden pasts.    The dialogue is long winded for the exact same reason: Obsidian made it. 
The darker theme adds character, but it doesn't feel quite as Star Warsy as KOTOR 1.

The game has bugs.  They're annoying, but not neccessarily game breaking.   ATI card users must, yet again, downgrade to Catalyst 4.11 to get the game to work properly.   (The intro video will hang on a black screen regardless - I think you can get past this either by temporarily upgrading to newer drivers or possibly by disabling the videos temporarily.)   That's not a dig against ATI - You can count the number of games that are actually incompatible with ATI by looking at their FAQ - it's about a half-dozen, most of them have released fixes, and KOTOR 1 (and by extention KOTOR 2) is one of the rare few in the whole gaming world to suffer this extent of problems without a fix.    Even NVIDIA users will run into (less graphical) issues with KOTOR.

[sinij]

KOTOR2 bugged to the point of it being unpleasant game. Bugs are everywhere - from engine that bogs down on minimal settings on top-of-the-line machine, to quest/dialog bugs that allow you to do illogical things like complete single quest in few different ways at once to constant crashes unless you happen to run very specific drivers that cause problems with everything else…. and not patch.

Game is good, story is interesting but stay away from it until they get their things together.

[Paelos]

Yes, it's getting ridiculous for me now. I'm crashing all the time on loads, and I'm saving like there is no tomorrow after every single fight. I know it could go down at any moment, it's ruining the experience. I had one completely odd thing happen where it loaded everything but the walls, so it was me standing in outer space looking at floating NPCs and chairs. This game needs a patch badly, and it needs it soon. I've put it on the shelf until I get to the first patch.

[Ironwood]

It's the conversation bugs that annoy me the most.  I had to run through the same conversation 'loop' fifteen times before it would even allow me to see an answer that would let me EXIT the conversation.  Bizarre.

Another truly funny one was when I Force Persuaded some guy to drop off a bridge.  One of my party then started a dialogue about my 'act of kindness.'


I mean, for fuck's sake ?

Don't get me wrong - I LOVED the first one.  It's the best thing to happen to RPG's in a long time.  But this is just an obvious cash in on success and not even a good one.

Bzzt.  Next.

[Paelos]

Yes it's pretty obvious there is crap in the game that must be fleshed out. Hell, in the cantina on Telos, I played the first Pazaak player with just starter cards. After I LOST three matches in a row, she proceeded to declare me the master and handed over one of her best cards. Stuff like that pisses me off. I've destroyed my current game and character and I'll start over again later.

Also, wth is up with the light/dark points? I raped, pillaged, and stole and still ended up on the light side for following one story arc? They need to reevaluate that. I don't want to have to kick puppies throughout the entire game just to use my cool skills.

[sinij]

It is annoying that to keep to the dark side you need to act psychotic at times. There is no helping anyone, even for your own advantage...

[Monika T'Sarn]

Its buggy, but playable - quicksave is fast.

After playing through as light once, and dark allmost to the end, the main storyline makes no sense whatsoever. I just don't get it.
I liked the 4 planets though - nicely different storyline for both sides, with real differences. The npc's are fun,and its great how they change depending on your alignment  Influence is difficult to manage, though - one wrong move and you can't get them back.