I have mixed feelings having recently replayed it for the first time in ages. I mean, it's certainly still a very good game, overall I had a great time, but it's also not quite the "wow, this is one of the best things ever" feeling I had back in the day. Possibly a heresy to say that, but there it is.

I think the story holds up, and the way they just nailed the "feel" of Star Wars and the balance of making something slightly new while following the tropes from the films. Plus there's lots of good side stuff on most planets. I especially liked all of Kashyyk and the valley of the sith on Korriban (though I do wish the tombs were bigger, creepier and more elaborate). All of that is still A+. I even think the graphics look fine, there's lots of good designs (I love those sith star destroyers, and the disk-headed astromechs). And the combat is good, I think it's a great mix of turn based with something that looks and feels dynamic.

But there are also issues:
There are too few skills, and most characters will never even be much good at the few there are. Hell, your player character can master three of the four "important" ones (computers, repair, demolitions and security) in addition to persuasion and treat injury sufficiently to essentially not need any other characters for anything other than combat. I mean, I like most of them, like their dialogues and voice actors, I just feel they're not distinct or useful enough from a gameplay standpoint.

As good as the story and even some of the sidequests can get, the dialogue options we're given are often lacking, and even back in the day the lack of nuance was annoying. Even in the black and white world of SW we should be able to play a good guy who doesn't sound like a sanctimonious idiot, or a clever villain not obviously evil like you're Dr Insano.

It's also a pity we don't get any real sense of consequences of our choices. There's no Fallout style outro, just "the end", and who you killed, who you saved and most of what you did is just... tears in the rain.

Oh, and Manaan sucks. That's it.

I still think it's a very good game, but it also feels a bit shallow as an RPG.

Anyway - what about you guys? How well does KOTOR hold up for you?

I really fucked it up playing KOTOR 2 first, now every time I try to get into the first one I just lose interest halfway through, like there's nothing *wrong* with it, but like you say everthing is so black and white, so typical of what I'd expect from a Star Wars RPG that... ehh

i replayed it 5 months ago and i still enjoyed it, if you compare it with modern RPG yes it has less gameplay option, but the story and characters are still very good even for now

Tried playing it after KOTOR 2, but the first part (Taris I think?) just dragged on for waaaaaaaaay too long and got bored, so never finished it.

I played KOTOR 1 for the first time about 5 years ago and I wasn't hugely impressed. As a fan of PC RPGs and earlier Bioware games, it felt much more linear than I had expected. The first planet dragged on and it took much too long for the game to give the player any real agency about where to go/what to do. I also strongly disliked being railroaded into being a Jedi on the second planet. I had hoped the game would give the player more flexibility and allow me to choose to be a soldier/trader/smuggler etc. if I wanted to. But no, I was forced into being a Jedi, whether I wanted to or not. I eventually got bored of it and quit playing.

I mean, the Star Wars tabletop RPG has other classes besides Jedi, right? Not everyone is forced to go through the Jedi academy. So, in that sense, the game doesn't seem to be an attempt to faithfully recreate the flexibility and feel of the tabletop RPG, in the way that many of the Infinity Engine games did.

Another thing I dislike about it is that it represents the period where Bioware were turning away from making faithful recreations of tabletop RPGs for PC, in favor of more streamlined console experiences.

That was my impression of it, at least. I'm not saying it's a bad game. I'd say it is above-average, but nowhere near the 9+/10 masterpiece that it seems to be regarded as. Perhaps I was expecting too much given the hype, but it certainly wasn't the Star Wars version of Baldur's Gate 2 that I had hoped for.

I think that highlights an intrinsic problem with Star-wars based RPGs then. If the PC has to be a Jedi, then it is railroading the player and removing a large part of their agency. To me, part of the fun (and replayability) of an RPG is being able to choose your class and customize your character. Perhaps it would have been better to design it differently - make it more open and/or perhaps don't make the final boss a Sith? There have been plenty of decent Star Wars video games where the player doesn't play as a Jedi: Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, the recent Outlaws. Perhaps it could have been modeled more after those?

Another option is to allow the player to recruit a jedi NPC into their party, to handle the jedi stuff (after all, Bastila is a Jedi). It's not easy to complete Baldur's Gate 2 without some sort of mage in your party, but that doesn't mean the PC has to play as a mage. That's fair enough, if you're not a fan of the Infinity Engine games. However, a large number of CRPG fans are/were. The Baldur's Gate games had a strong appeal to fans of tabletop D&D, partly because it was a faithful recreation of the tabletop game. It was like a simulator of tabletop D&D, with most of the depth/complexity, which you could play by yourself or with some friends. It was marketed that way, and it worked. Same with Neverwinter Nights, which was marketed as a faithful PC implementation of 3rd edition D&D and was also hugely popular.

It seems we're coming from two different perspectives on it.

I always thought KOTOR 2 with the restoration patch is better. I did not like you spend 10 hours not being a Jedi and most of the game is collecting the random Mcguffins. I also thought Carth and Bastilia were insufferable.

It's not a bad game, but Obsidian made it better.

It wouldn't be "better" it would just be a completely different game. I mean, it's ok if you don't want to play a Jedi... but it's not really a flaw, it's just the premise of the game which you apparently don't like. And that's fine, but it shouldn't be confused with flaw. I mean, is it a flaw of The Witcher that you have to play as a witcher? Not any more than having to play a superhero in Batman Arkham games. It's just what the game is about.

You also have to remember that the goal in KOTOR wasn't to just make "a" Star Wars game, but "the" Star Wars game, to very clearly evoke the original movies. That's why you start on a ship under attack and boarded by the sith, why the Ebon Hawk is basically an ersatz Millenium Falcon, that's why you have a wookie and an astromech among your companions and why the finale is a big space battle around an evil space station while you fight the Dark Lord. There are of course twists to some of those, like the translator droid being also an assassin, but that's till the core of it. So you can't really fault the game for commiting to a specific goal and executing it pretty much perfectly, even if it's not for you.

But then, I don't personaly have a problem with an RPG having a more strongly defined player character rather than a full freedom in creating one. I think both approaches have their merits, and it's all about how it's implemented. Yeah, but outsourcing critical climactic stuff to another character isn't very dramatic.

It's interesting everyone seems to dislike Taris, because I really enjoyed that part of the game. I enjoyed meeting Mission and Zalbar, helping the people... it's low level stuff, but mostly well thought out and despite locations being small it creates the sense of a detailed, living planet very well, so when it gets destroyed, undoing everything you did to help the people there, it has real dramatic weight and gives the player a good sense of "now it's personal". In fact I don't think the "light side" arc of the player character would make much sense without getting invested in Taris and witnessing it's destruction.

Of course it's possible I'm projecting some of the roleplaying that only happens in my head :D

Oh, and I also like Carth. I like how twisted it is that we spend so much time earning his trust (or fighting with him) because of paranoia, only for it to turn out his suspicion about us was more than justified. It makes the big twist even better.

But I agree, Bastila is quite insufferable, though to be fair I think she's supposed to be, though maybe not quite as much as she ended up.

No. It does not hold up. It's a product of its time.

Well, 'better' is subjective and a matter of opinion. And yes, you are right: there have been very good RPGs where you play as a specific, pre-defined character, the Witcher being a good example. However, I think part of the problem I have with KOTOR is the way that is presented to the player, which in my opinion is actually somewhat dishonest.

You start the game by choosing a character class for what seems to be a freeform character defined by the player: Scout, Soldier or Scoundrel. So, the game initially gives the player this illusion that they have some freedom of choice of character class. However, as soon becomes apparent - none of that matters. By the time you get to Dantooine, the game turns round and basically says to you: "Ha ha - fooled you! We're going to send you through the Jedi academy anyway. That class choice that you made during character creation - it doesn't actually matter. We're going to force you to play as a Jedi anyway, because that's how we want the plot of this game to go."

This is one of the big issues I have with the game, that the illusion of choice is too thin. The Witcher makes it clear to the player right at the start that you are playing as Geralt of Rivia. This is a pre-defined character, this is his background, this is what he's like. Ok, fine. But with KOTOR, it starts by dangling these faux choices in front of you, which gives the impression of free choice. But then, after 8-10 hours of play (too long), it tears that away and forces you down a pre-defined path.

So, I have a peev with how it is presented to the player. If an RPG is going to make me play as a pre-defined character, then be up front about it so I know what I'm getting into. Don't try to make it look as if I have something resembling the character creation choice of Baldur's Gate, when it isn't really true.

When you know who your character is, it would have been weird if you didn't became a jedi, and with the ennemies your are facing, a blaster or a blade are useless.

But yes, it will be nice if one day we get a Star Wars game where you play a non jedi/sith like " Rogue One " movie or " Andor " TV show

It's just strange to me to imagine anyone really thinking they wouldn't be playing a Jedi in this game. I think that was pretty much an obvious and well advertised selling point (like I said, it's in the title). So it's hard for me to think of it as any kind of bait and switch.

I'm sorry, I don't want to be dismissive of your opinion, but "I have to play one of the eponymous cool space wizards who have always been the main characters in this franchise" seems to me like a bit of an odd complaint to have.

The thing I find most disappointing with old games is when they crash just as much 10+ years
after release as they did on launch day. I seem to recall one of the planets in KOTOR having
that problem.
Also DA Origins and The Witcher never bothered to fix these issues.