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Bargain bin already! - Prediction: token patch, zero apology

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

LucasArts has shot themselves in the foot. I'm afraid (for all of us) that it's too late to hope for them to truly correct their errors. This long delay for the patch is an indicator that the company is already cutting their losses and moving on. The price of the game is already falling rapidly at retailers.

To see just how worthless the disks are to those of us who pre-bought the game or bought it in the first week: an auction just closed on a popular auction site (no names) at just above thirty percent what I paid on pre-order. The market is determining the real value of the game, as the word spreads about how weak this offering is.

I say we stick it to LA this way: all of us who hate this half-*craft* piece of *work* should simply put them up for sale on *popular auction selling sites*. Flood the market. They're already selling for way below half of the original price. If we all put ours up for sale, the price would drop below twenty percent of original price...One hundred percent of which LucasArts will never see.

I was hoping for them to come through and correct their mistakes. I was hoping they would realize how sales were going to be hurt because of the overwhelming negative response to their slop.

But now I see the truth: they tricked a bunch of us into buying early, and now they are pretty much just going to abandon it. Mark my words: the patch will be nothing more than a "token patch" They view us as guinea pigs in a failed experiment.

... who's next in line?

OK Game, But Moderately Disappointing...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The first thing you need to know about this game is that you absolutely have to download the latest patch before playing it; the game is nearly unplayable otherwise. That patch addresses most of the worst complaints here, but there are still annoying bugs in the game even after the 1.0b patch (e.g., when you arrive at the hidden base on Telos be sure NOT to select the dialog option "We'll give up our weapons; we didn't come here to fight" or else you'll be stuck there with no one to get out; as I found out the hard way). Your companions have a REALLY hard time following you as you explore, and if you try to move any place too quickly you'll find yourself fighting alone. Enemy AI is terrible; opponents will always attack you on a straight line, so if you want to win fights cheaply, just hide behind a box or a tree and attack from there. The puzzles are even more simplistic than in the first game, and the gameplay is much less challenging (especially if you're playing on the light side and don't have to fight other Jedi Masters). Every dialog featuring T3-M4 is pretty much messed up for some reason or other. And despite the fact that you can influence your party members towards the light or dark side, they'll still always act the same way (even if they're purely dark side some characters will always object to killing innocents or helping the bad guys, and vice versa). Your choices really don't seem to effect the story one way or the other.

And the story, actually, is the bigger part of the problem: basically there is no real story here. Dark Sith Lords have returned to plague the Republic once again, and they want you dead. You meet a bunch of characters who really can't tell you much more than what happened in KOTOR 1 (so basically, if you played the first game you'll get tired of talking to your companions pretty quickly). There are probably more side quests here than in the first game, but they are completely unconnected with the main plot of the game, and end up feeling like drudgework, needlessly making you go from one part of town to another and back again. The planets to explore in this game are actually a lot SMALLER than they were in KOTOR 1, because despite the fact that you're exploring many of the same worlds, the gamemakers have not included nearly as many shops, caves and tombs to explore as the original. This is especially the case with Korriban, where you'll find all the old tombs sealed off, or Dantooine, where about half the old planet is now off limits to exploration! Carth and Bastila make VERY, VERY brief cameos in one of the many uncontrolled cutscenes scattered throughout the game (which allegedly help to advance the plot). And they really are just cameos thrown in there at the last minute for the sake of including them, as they do absolutely nothing to affect the storyline. And don't get your hopes up for the ending; this game will leave you asking "So what?" when you see the horrendously short and unsatisfying five second generic ending scene.

All in all, it's not an entirely terrible game. It's probably worth three stars for big Star Wars fans. But the combination of easy game play, uninteresting characters, incomplete storyline and unsatisfying ending make it a bit of a let down, and a huge disappointment for anyone who has played KOTOR 1.

Good, but not great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: February 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I loved the 1st game and thought it was 5 stars easy. This one is not quite as good, but still I enjoyed playing it.

Good things:
-You play as a Jedi from the start
-Upgrades to weapons and armor is more interesting
-More feats and powers are available
-Charisma, Intelligence, and Constition are more important than in the 1st game (when you could stack the other powers and basically ignore Charisma and Intelligence completely)
-Plot is not a retread of the 1st game
-Plot is darker and in some places (Dantooine in particular) kind of sad, which is good because at least it is different
-Datapads open when you get them so you don't have to fish through your inventory looking for them
-Ability to create items from components and chemicals and to break down other items into components and chemicals

Bad things:
-Plot has some serious holes
-Game has some serious bugs (freezes and chrashes mostly)
-Some planets don't look very good (Malachor V looks awful, D'xun has some very 2D images)
-Some of the characters are pretty lame (and to all those people who compared Atton Rand to Han Solo - are you serious? Han Solo was totally cool; Atton Rand is just whiney and sleazy.)
-HK-47 was not used nearly enough
-Took much too long to get a light sabre

I liked the ending and I like Bao-Dur because his speech patterns were very different than any of the other characters in either game and he had no arm and horns so that is always interesting. This game is worth playing; just not up to the level of the 1st.

is lucasarts/obsidian running their final tests onthepublic?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: February 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

this game at present is in terrible shape. my character has things coming out of his head. also for some reason the camera spins wildly around my character at some times. it appears to be the same engine that powered kotor because it definitely isn't any better looking...so why the problems? lucasarts says low-end video cards are responsible for these errors...sorry guys. my comp is: 2.8 ht p4, 1gig ram, 9800 128mb ati radeon. this game should run fine, especially since it isn't anything comparable to high-end games (in looks) like doom3 or half-life 2, which both ran great on my comp. fix it lucasarts/obsidian! i wouldn't recommend buying this game until these major bugs are fixed. wait a couple of months till they release the real game. avoid!!!!

No ending at all!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: March 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is incomplete and has no ending at all! Story doesn't make sense, lots of bugs... Furthermore, lots of stuff leaved unexplained because developers just simply went over and cut a huge part of the game.. While doing so, they forgot to fix the story.. So you will see some scenes that means nothing, some quests that go nowhere... Stay away from this game and save your 50 bugs and spend it to something else..

Grabbed Us, Picked Us Up, Slammed Us Down

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

My daughter and I are great fans of good stories. We loved the first "Knights". My daughter has been writing her own short stories based on its characters for over a year now. We bought this game with a lot of anticipation. We couldn't wait to play.

We were very "WOW'ed" to get started. We were absolutely gripped, and all we talked about all the time was what was happening with "The Handmaiden", "Kreia, that witch", and "Visas". We were having an absolute blast.

We were having so much fun that we overlooked glitches in the script (odd conversations at weird times, characters that did not realize that the story had moved past them, etc). We overlooked bugs in the program. We overlooked sub-plots that sort of dropped out of the game (I never found a way to activate our good old combat droid we found in a closet).

Why did we overlook so much? Because we were having a blast. The story had so many elements that we could not wait to see resolved. We had so many characters to talk to (even though we ran out of stuff to say quicker than we hoped). We thoroughly enjoyed getting to know everybody. It became an obsession with us.

When we got towards the end of the story, my 13-year-old and me sat down and determined to play it through. We sat for hours and pressed through fight after fight, villain after villain, eagerly awaiting to know answers to all the story hooks that we had been presented with.

--- WARNING! SPOILER! ---

Then comes the last level. First, we wander around to find our evil mentor. Then, our little droid friend sits to operate some machine we've never heard of. Then, Mira wanders in looking for us. Then we watch in horror as our ship falls to its death in a canyon. "WOW!" we were thinking. "THIS IS AWESOME!!"

Why did we think this was awesome? BECAUSE WE COULD NOT WAIT TO SEE HOW IT ALL TURNED OUT, THAT'S WHY.

Then, after we defeat our nemesis and listen to her give us a huge speech that makes it sound like we might get to do something absolutely huge, here it comes: the ending.

What happens? We do not see anything about the droid or Mira. What were they doing? We'll never know. Our destroyed ship flies up (did our friends find a galactic repair shop at the bottom of that canyon?) and apparently rescues us. The planet is destroyed. We fly away.... and then the credits appear.

My daughter and I stared, wide-eyed, in disbelief and extraordinary frustration. The story ended without resolution of so many things that I cannot begin to make a list. All our friends? No good-bye cut-scene or anything. Who lived? Dunno. Who died? Dunno. What ever happened at Malachor? Dunno. What is our character gonna do now? Dunno.

We felt quite cheated. In fact, we both may have accumulated some dark side points as we considered how we had been betrayed by the game's producers. There was an excellent story there, and they bailed on it, leaving us with a lot of hours chewed out of our lives for no real reason at all.

A huge disappointment for the fans

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is truly unsatisfying, bugged and incomplete. Just one of the many unfinished products; those are so common nowadays.

Do not Get it under after patches

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I give you this warning to any who would want to buy this game. It is estimated that due to being rushed out the door for christmas that the delevopment team cut out 40 percent of this game.

Official Game Reviewers gave this game high remarks. That's because they played the first part of this game. If you play this game to completion you will find that halfway thru the game to the end it looks rushed and unfinished. There are bugs everywhere, Random crashes, items disappearing.

There are references to missions that never appear, missions that you complete but in the end find out that no matter what you do you get the same result.

They are planning a Bug fix for this game, The developers of the game are waiting for approval for a Content fix from Lucas Arts. There is not much hope from Lucas Arts of any patch, they have our money and will run with it.

This game has been sabatoged as a result of money grabbing for christmas by Lucas Arts. Do not get this game and boycott any future Knights of the Republic Games til they actually finish making a game before releasing it.

Buyer you have Been Officially warned, you buy this game you WILL be disappointed.

Rushed, bugged & unfinished

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: March 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

* MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

I really can't understand the amount of accolades and awards this game has been getting. As a huge fan of the original I went into The Sith Lords assuming that nothing could go wrong. Obsidian (the developers)are made up of the people who created classics such as Fallout, The Baldurs Gate Saga and Planescape: Torment.

After a few hours into the game however it suddenly becomes apparent that LucasArts decided to publish a unfinished product. It contains a myraid of bugs, unfinished dialogue and underwritten characters. With most of the new NPC's you can use up all your dialogue options within a few hours of recruiting them. As for the ending it consists of a five second (I kid you not) video. No explanation or conclusion. Nothing.

A few skilled individuals at the official Obsidian forums have delved into the games files, and found *huge* cut quests, dialogue options, planets and a ending that is so well written it rival's that of Planescape: Torment.

All this is for naught though, as you will see after playing through the game that LucasArts decided to take the quick buck and knocked the product out for a Christmase release (in the U.S.) without giving Obsidian time to implement these final additions.

This has resulted in a huge profit for LucasArts, but leaving the majority of gamers who brought the product with the sense that they have been ripped off. I urge those who feel as dissapointed with the game as myself to go to Obsidians forums and see the evidence for yourself. (You'll have to be quick though as LucasArts is currently trying to close them down, due to a petition started there asking LucasArts to fund a patch.)

Buy the game if your a fan, but don't expect to find a worthy sequel to Knights Of The Old Republic.

The Sith Strike Back: Return of the Exile

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 24
Date: September 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A New RPG

The first Knights of the old Republic (KOTOR), was one heck of a game. It took everything that people loved about the classic trilogy and expanded universe of Star Wars, and packed it neatly into an epic RPG where everything you did had either light side or dark side properties. Sure there was light-saber combat, but the game was more about storyline and immersion than anything else. The countless hours of voice-acting and intriguing dialog choices, to say nothing of conversations that would or would not take place depending on what you did, created an experience that sent shockwaves through the video game world. Of course there were also some bugs to be found (okay, a LOT of bugs), and some of the mini games were pointless (anyone else get tired of playing gunner when it's almost impossible to lose?), but on the whole, that game was awesome, giving you everything from jedi mind-tricks and choking of smart-mouths with the force to dancing with twileks and finding out your own dark "Luke, I AM your father" secret. So naturally, the second KOTOR has a lot to live up to.

You Should Not Have Come Back

If the first KOTOR was A New Hope with the plot twist from Empire Strikes back, this one is probably Empire Strikes back with the plot and pacing of A New Hope. In a move that sits particularly well with me, the dialog and plot are both much darker and much funnier this time around. I knew that from the moment I found myself half-naked tallking to a prisoner in a cell in a station where hundreds lie dead on the ground and psycho droids roam the halls. As the title of the game suggests, this time around everything revolves around the Sith (well, that and finding out why you were banished in the first place). Pretty much the whole game has you playing cat-and-mouse with the Sith, trying to figure out who exactly the real bad guys are. Is is the tortured zombie Darth Sion, who is only kept alive by his own hatred and dark-side power, lusting for revenge on his old master? Is it Sith Lord who wears the creepy Sith Mask, so consumed with hunger for force energy that entire planets are devoured by his hunger as he roams the galaxy in his ghost-ship? Or is the true villain the one who manipulates these Sith fools, using them to make YOU stronger?

Pluck of an Old (Fashioned) Sith

Instead of the same old questions of simple "Do I kill the guy or give him ALL of my money" good and evil, a lot of situations in this game are grey areas. You COULD help someone, but it may hurt them more in the long run. You COULD listen to someone's innocent comments, only to discover that they are pure evil. And you COULD hurt someone very much by allowing them to get too close to you. Really, if there is one thing that makes this game fascinating, is the way that puts such a wonderful spin on things, making you repeatedly question your actions and why you are doing the things that you are, forcing nice people to kill when YOU are the good guy, making people betray their master to serve YOU. Perhaps the ultimate question of the game (and it's proved by the very end) is just how far are you willing to go in order to help someone you believe in or destroy something that you hate. Far more is at stake than just the Jedi and the Sith, or even just the Republic. What will you do? Sacrifice your soldiers or save the galaxy?

The Weapon of a Jedi Knight

Some people will undoubted become irked at the fact that they can't have a light saber from the get-go. But storyline is key here, and now that almost all the Jedi are dead, and most of the Sith as well, light sabers are becoming a little rare. And what with people hunting Jedi down and all, well you get the picture. Consider this though, what is a Jedi without his light saber? Have you ever thought about it? A jedi who's an expert marksman would be a dangerous foe, and a jedi with a sword is kind of like a samurai... And much to my delight, when you begin the game you DO have force powers.

I Want to Learn the Ways of the Force

When I heard about how this game was going to have all these new force powers, at first I was irritated. Great, more confusion, more head-scratching and decision making distracting me from the game. But as the game progressed I discovered something wonderful. Instead of forcing you to choose, the game helps you along by making the choices far more obvious. Certain types of Jedi gain certain abilities automatically (bonuses that come from leveling up in a certain style), and certain super-cool powers can only be obtained by types. In other words, a weapons master can't throw lightening around like a jedi master. More choices, but the impossible ones aren't shown, and the crucial ones are automatic. Nice.

Fastest Ship in the Galaxy

Really you've got to love most of the changes that have been made in this game. The card game has been expanded and so has the racing (and both have gotten a lot more sophisticated). You can break down components, build new ones, create upgrades, choose fighting styles You have three extra levels of Jedi on top of the old for dark side and light side, and dialog options change depending on your skills. Of course the game is also a lot easier on normal now (which some may not like), and there is a lot more soloing this time (which adds to the narrative, but forces you to use certain characters). I particularly loved the fact that Jedi can now equip armor of certain types and still use force powers. That and the fact that I never ran out of money (like I frequenly did in the first game the first time around).

From a Certain Point of View

What really makes this game shine though, is the story. Granted, it may not be as ambitious as the first game, and a few critical moments could have been better (I wanted a LONG battle with the main villains, not a quick death for one of us), but on the whole I think the story of this game is better. Essentially you start the game full of questions and end it in a similar way, but along the way to the answers to your main questions you pick up a variety of characters who are just full of surprises, and keep you guessing as to how you should play things out.

You can try to get close to one character or another, but inevitably you're going to alienate someone, and as certain characters will give you bonuses as you teach each other various techniques, you're likely to quickly start playing favorites. While some characters will just plain shut up if you have nothing to talk about, and others will allow you (glitch time) to have the same conversations over and over again, on the whole the character interaction is incredible, augmented by some wonderful voice-acting. Depending on what you say and do, you may find yourself with not only a love interest, but a love TRIANGLE, and in this game no one is quite what they seem (even the droids).

While the influence you exert over others (turning them light or dark side and opening them up to you) is great, many will doubtless be delighted with the prospect of training their own apprentice(s) in the ways of the Force. There is just something insanely cool about training your own private army of Jedi, don't you think? Of course it can go so many ways depending on how you play...

It also seems to me that the characters in this game have a much stronger sense of identity and personal agenda than in the first game, and the conversations feel more personal. In particular I found the new female characters fascinating, as the manipulate Kreia tries to teach you, protect you, and control you, the Handmaiden tries to preach to you, learn from you, and respect you, Mira tries to decypher you, and Visas just plain worships you (or does she?). The frustrating but interesting thing about the characters is that you'll only get certain ones if you are light side/dark side and you can only figure out what they're really up to if you use your powers of persuation in a concentrated effort. And of course there are also characters that will or will not join you depending on whether you are male or female (how about that?). Some people will comepletely overlook this part of the game and not talk to anyone, but they will never understand the true motivations of the characters, and certain won't have any padawan learners to educate in the ways of the force.

All in all, the story and characters are pretty great, and definitely worth playing the game through more than once to see the full scope of. Your fist time through will doubtless still leave you wondering about the future at the end of the game, as some big questions are still left unanswered (can you say KOTOR III?).

The Droids You're Looking For

And then there's the droids. Is it possible for our psychotic assasin droid to get any more sarcastic and cynical (and demented)? And what about our little astromech droid? Now you can converse with the cute little guy the way Luke and Obi-Wan did with R2 (how cool is that?). In addition to these guys though, you also have a floating orb that follows your resident mechanic/melee expert, and a new floating torture/assasin droid that is more than he seems.

You Don't Know the Power of the PC

Of course there are some nice additions to the X-Box version of this game that bear mentioning. There are mods of every shape and size out there on the Internet that will supposedly allow you to do everything from grabbing Kreia's final attack technique for your own use (three flying lightsabers!), to making your character take on the character model of one of the Sith Lords (a friend of mine bragged that he WAS the dark lord with the Sith mask). And then there's that HUGE mod that will make the game like twice as long (seems pretty ambitious, borderline getting carried away).

Add to that the improvements of PC soundcards, video hardware, and monitor resolution and many will say that there is no contest (no graphical slowdowns if you've got the right hardware). Personally I think it all comes down to a question of whether or not you can tolerate playing a game like this with a mouse and keyboard. In the end though, either version of the game will do.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

There were times early in the game where I was so incredible sucked-in that I could think of nothing else except that I hadn't played a game I enjoyed this much in ages. The storyline really is that good. There were moments when I thought this was going to be the greatest game I ever played (the flying creature from The Phantom Menace who faked being fooled by my mind-trick was one for the ages, as was Mira's description of how to deal with a guy that a girl likes). Some of the lines characters said were so close to classic Star Wars lines I was laughing hysterically (not to mention some of the wacky things you could say in reply). And no matter how slice it, saving the galaxy, fighting dark lords and wielding light sabers is mighty cool. Sadly though, glitches, gameplay flaws, and weak confrontations with the biggest bosses left this one a bit short of perfect. It's still definitely worth playing though. Especially if you liked the first KOTOR. It's also nice and long. It took me 50 hours to beat the first time through. May the force be with you...

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