RJ Savoy
(Finished it a while ago but I didn't get to sorting my thoughts.)
Coming to the Star Forge. Several cutscenes, well made for the time, though they show the ship coming down smoothly then I'm told Carth gave it a rough landing.
Bastila is being tortured. This will somehow tempt her and not repulse her. She is stated to be invaluable to the war, which does not show in gameplay.
I get light side points from a conversation and I have no idea why. I keep reaching the cap then something pushes me down regardless.
The Rakata planet is pretty, reminds me of one from Mass Effect. I have to wonder, though: if this system is unknown, how come so many Republic ships have come close, including plenty of recent ones?
Not much to say about the story here, it's just a series of Macguffin chases. The Rakata Elders don't help. They will not use their technology to fight the violent tribes outside... but are perfectly happy to send an untrusted outsider to do the dirty work. The Rakata should have some aura of mystery and ancient power about them, but they are too obviously plot-driven for that to work.
Oh, and two counts of my Revan being referred to with the wrong pronoun.
The conversation at the Temple entrance showcases Bioware's annoying railroading. I don't mind having to take 2 specific companions to the place, but drop the pretence that I have a choice.
Floor tile puzzle is interesting but needed better camera placement.
So the Star Maps were symbols of imperial glory. They seemed rather small. Would make sense if we only saw an outcrop of a much bigger structure.
I get dark side points just for giving orders to Dark Jedi even though I was trying to spare their lives. And light ones I don't know where from. All the best dialogue choices are dark side, I have to talk as blandly as a Sunday school bulletin.
"I get tired of slaughtering these mindless training droids!" Yup, that how I feel about this combat system.
Then Bastila as a Sith. This is the worst part, I never got the feeling before that she was on the brim of falling and the dialogue is insultingly dumb. Nor it seems does my place on the spectrum have much effect. I was surprised that in the end I could save her through dialogue, but it the choices felt arbitrary. It feels like the writers knew this had to happen but had no idea how to go about it.
I know some hated the Star Forge for its constant fighting, but it was the one place where I kind of liked the combat, using Force Wave and grenades to good effect (and bringing along a non-Jedi). The only difficult fights were Bastila and Malak. The last one had me first laying down all my mines, then spamming the speed effect to stay away and lure him onto mines, destroy the bodies, toss my saber and heal. If I let him duel me I die quickly.
Malak got some depth on that last conversation, but he's still underwhelming. The cutscenes of the Star Forge being attacked are good, though the cheering at the end could have more visual flair.
All in all, a good game but with some bad design and writing problems. I'll write an overview later.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
LEGENDARY GALE
Steam downloaded another update for II today.
Huh.
but HOW?
I can't take this teasing anymore.
RJ Savoy
I played through the Sith Lords again over a few days, and my opinion remains that it is a very well written, thematically powerful mess of a game. The combat has some tweaks from the first game, but what this unintuitive, worst-of-both-systems, opaque and glitchy construct needed was a complete reworking. It's jarring that Bioware's next game was Jade Empire, where the combat is actually pretty good. This second playthrough was less painful than the first thanks to knowing to take healing straight off, but I still found a few fights only beatable with luck and glitches (Kreia especially, it was mostly running away and saber tossing) while most were just tedious spamfests of Force Wave and Death Field. The mechanics are wonderfully integrated with the setting, but in themselves they are bad.
The ending, as has often been said, is rushed to where it feels almost surreal. After you face the Jedi masters, everyone somehow goes to Telos academy, then we appear on the station, then it's off to Malachor with barely a word of explanation. But even before the pacing, revealed information and playability are badly lacking.
There are several points (coming to Telos, landing at the poles, facing the council) where dialogue plays for several scenes, lasting perhaps quarter of an hour, with very little player input. There is no option to scroll back, pause or save during these, yet they deliver crucial information. A pause option, token playable interludes or being able to replay cutscenes would make all the difference. The designers knew what they wanted to say, but not how to say it in the context of a game. The first game had nothing like this except for Manaan, and I think it's a big factor in why the Sith Lords is considered better written but less fun.
Then there's the information given to the player. Things like party members' backstories and goals requiring influence are fine; having the plot roll on without explaining why is not. The first time I played, I did some odd choices and missed the Jedis' reveal of what the Exile is and I had no idea where Kreia went. This time round I got that but still don't know what happened at Malachor. Planescape: Torment gave me all I needed to know in one playthrough (but then it benefits from being far more linear).
Related to this is the influence system. It can be very clever (I liked how roughly dismantling a droid is badly seen by T3) but it relies on going round the Hawk every few levels chatting up everyone to see if there are new options. I got into Handmaiden's good books with the straightforward but painful method of fist-fighting as a consular, but for the others I have little idea. There's so much locked behind abstruse barriers.
Nar Shaddaa has the most characters and sidequests, but is also wearying to a strange degree. There's so much running around bare corridors with the plot advancement barely discernible. It transmits despair and bleakness rather too well. And finally so much happens that works on it own but makes no sense in context. Sith welcome you at the academy entrance but fight you when you step inside, you enter a small cave on Korriban after finding an unkillable Sith is chasing you, characters move between worlds to where the plot is happening, Nihilus and Sion are badly underused even for their stealthy nature, and the Storm Beasts on Malachor do not fit (force ghosts, animated corpses, malfunctioning droids or even shyracks would be more thematically fitting).
Rating by storytelling alone, my ranking is: Sith Lords > Empire Strikes Back > Knights of the Old Republic > A New Hope > The Force Awakens > Revenge of the Sith > everything else.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
That all you got?
Well KOTOR 2 wasn't made by Bioware. Obsidian made it.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Disasturbator
>Jade Empire, where the combat is actually pretty good.
Uh,I don't agree with that,it's actually worse,the controls are what ruin it for me
edited 5th Apr '16 5:03:39 AM by Ultimatum
New theme music also a box
So did you use the Restored Content Mod or.
That all you got?
Yeah, the RCM makes it a lot better. Plot wise, at least.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Even with the restored content, the ending still feels pretty surreal, I'd say. Obviously, bit of an improvement, but G0-T0 seems to just sort of randomly declare that he's going to stop the Remote for really tenuous reasons, you never actually get the chance to save your defeated party members (though presumably they all leave the planet with you), Bao-Dur disappears and I'm pretty sure he's dead but there's no real indication of how or why, and if Atton beats Sion he just sort of turns up inexplicably at the end having apparently chosen to wait just outside.
Not really the modmakers' fault, only so much you can do with general incomplete content.
edited 5th Apr '16 6:08:20 AM by Lavaeolus
Disasturbator
On my first playthrough (without mods) I did every world but Nar Shar and ended up somehow with a broken save
New theme music also a box
RJ Savoy
Save often and in different slots. F4 after every conversation.
I played the Steam version. My first playthrough was from physical discs (remember those?) with the restoration mod (but not the droid planet). I'd like to mod it for the next time but I don't know which are compatible, I'll have to enquire on the Steam forums.
I played Jade Empire with the mother of all annoying glitches (I had to reinstall it each I started it so it would save) and on a computer that lagged so much I could never get the combos to work right, but I'll still place it several orders of magnitude above real-time with pause on three characters with D20 stats. The levelling is simple and intuitive whereas in KOTOR I don't know if it's worth using an off-hand. The different styles have obvious strengths and weaknesses and there's tactical potential in switching quickly, unlike the mathy and opaque attacks of KOTOR where any one-on-one fight is spamming the one that works best. I can customise the interface easily, no endless scrolling. My companion stays by my side instead of rushing across the map. Above all, I felt engaged, whereas RTWP is as detached as turn-based but without the potential strategic depth. And how often I tried to move the Exile out of danger but they first needed to fight for one more round. KOTOR has very good animations but I found the fighting mostly an exercise in frustration and exploiting glitches.
I forgot to add though that the pre-rendered cutscenes are a delight, especially for the time.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
The Steam version has Steam workshop on it. The Restoration Content Mod team were alerted ahead of time and it was basically the first mod working for the revamped Steam KotOR II.
It was a surprisingly in-depth update, really.
So wait, what's up with a final confrontation with Carth on the Dark Side Path in KOTOR 1? I am replaying KOTOR, going for Light Side this time, but my previous run which was DS, all that happened was he ran away like a punk and left poor Mission with me. (I didn't want to kill her...)
But apparently you can find him on the Star Forge after you kill Malak? That never happened for me. Me and my sweet Evil Bastila conquered the galaxy and that was that. I always wondered where Carth was and thought him just running away like that was anticlimactic and I'm annoyed now about why I didn't have that big final confrontation.
That all you got?
I think that was cut, but I'm not sure.
That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.
Well I'm playing the Restored Content Mod for KOTOR 1 so I could see this if I end up going DS after all. I dunno if I will or not. I think it would be fairly interesting to play LS right up until the Revan reveal and then go DS. It be like you're deprogrammed and finding out who you really are again. Then again, I don't even know if you can do this. I would assume the ultimate decision is when you fight Bastila and that's when you're locked into Light or Dark.
If that could work, I could just play LS right up until there, save then continue on with Ligh tSide ending and then reload, do Dark Side and see that final showdown with Carth. (I saw the scene on YT but I didn't click on the video)
From what I remember: only if you romance Carth and choose to reclaim your title as Sith, at the end, after beating Malak, Carth will arrive on the Star Forge. He offers a "last-shot at redemption", paraphrased, wherein you kill Bastila (and thus shut off her Battle Mediation, turning the tide of the battle in favour of the Republic) and then you both die aboard the ship together.
In the main game you can't actually accept his offer, and instead you either kill him or have Bastila do it. I think the Restored Mod adds it back in as a new ending, though. It is up on You Tube and relatively short, if you don't want to go all the final bits just for that scene.
edited 8th Jul '16 5:44:32 PM by Lavaeolus
Hm, fair enough. Thank you. I don't think I want to romance Carth, though. I was thinking of trying to the Juhani romance now I have mods to make her not hideous and to actually complete said romance, such as it is.
Plus I never even had her on my first run 'cuz I killed her.
But goddam does Taris drag on too long. I guess maybe they wanted you to REALLY care about these people who wee gonna be killed in a few hours by Malak. But still, just so tedious on a replay.
In good news, some kind folks elsewhere provided me with scripts to skip the Taris and Leviathan turret minigames! My KOTOR experience just got a whole lot less stressful and more enjoyable. (I'm really bad at that minigame and having to watch those cutscenes again and again and again.... But yeah, thank you Internet people)
Technically, I think there's nothing that prevents you from romancing both Carth and Juhani. I haven't done it, but I think Juhani's romance content consists of a single conversation partway through the game, with no real follow-up.
You aren't going to be very satisfied with the Juhani romance subplot. It does have a "conclusion" of sorts, but a very vague and unsatisfying one that isn't even acknowledged after the fact, or in the ending.
Which was a very disappointing cop-out on Bioware's part, especially since I think it actually had the potential to be the best-written romance in the game. They've gotten better on the LGBT stuff since then, thankfully (although there's still plenty of room for improvement).
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
Juhani's half-assed romance is Lucas Arts's fault, not Bioware's. Lucas Arts refused to let Bioware include a full-fledged lesbian romance.
Ah yes, I remember that now. Correction: it's a very disappointing cop-out on Lucasarts' part. (Sorry, Bioware.)
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
The rumors of a reboot are getting stronger,
though I'd still take them with a significant grain of salt.
Disasturbator
Since its around April I think we can rule that one out as a late April fools
New theme music also a box
I have to say that so far the combat in the first game has been quite easy, whereas several times in the second I felt I only succeeded by exploiting glitches. During the long sequence after meeting Bao-Dur, I had no healing ability (a mistake I now know to avoid) and there were very few medpacs around. I ended up keeping the game running for several minutes doing nothing to let health regenerate. (Planescape: Torment had similar moments, it's bad design to let characters heal with no ticking clock.) And during the last fight with Kreia I ran around until only one of her weapons was chasing me and took them down one by one.
Also in the second game every party member has boosts that must be unlocked with dialogue and special skills, whereas in the first it all comes by itself with advancement.
The first game is definitely more straightforward, but the second had enough to make me want to play on. I remember more than a decade ago I gave up on Baldur's Gate because combat was boring and opaque, I had no idea where to go and the side quests were of little interest.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.