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General discussion (archive)How good is Knights of the Old Republic?(72 posts)(72 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 30, 2010
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Roberttitus: Well can you use a gamepad? If you can I would be much more inclined to purchase it.
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Rohan15: It's possible. Xbox designed gamepads work better.
It's without any doubt the greatest Star Wars RPG ever made.
Uh, not possible without an external app like Xpadder and even then it will only work for about 60% of the necessary control functions. You will still need the keyboard and mouse for a large number of actions in the game, so even trying to use a gamepad is generally a waste of time.

That being said, the game is very optimized for mouse/keyboard use and the controls themselves are very good. When I play, I simply use the mouse alone for movement and the number keys for player actions and that's it. This is a turn-based RPG, so you don't need to worry about rapid actions and inhuman keyboard dexterity to play the game; even if you aren't very mouse/keyboard adept, it is still very easy to play.
Posted December 30, 2010
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deelee74: Kotor has a flaw that dozens of other great RPG's tend to have. It starts very slooooooowwwly.
It will take you a few hours to get off the first planet, and that whole 2 or 3 hours is boring. I mean VERY boring. Everyone says the game gets incredible after that, but I lost interest in it after the monotonous beginning. I never played it again.
Baldur's Gate II even has this problem. But I didn't give up on it. Thank god
This is good to know, because I gave up on KOTOR before leaving the first planet.

One of the things I didn't like was the combat. Turn based disguised as action. As soon as you see an enemy, the game will pause, you'll issue a string of commands to your three units to perform, then unpause and look at how things are going. Pause again, rinse and repeat. It's more strategic than action oriented. There's not much button mashing or WASD skill involved, so if you're expecting action, run and gun (or hack and slash) without much talk, you'll be disappointed. It's story and dialogue heavy with character development. Also, aliens speak in alien language with subtitles translating for you to read, so you can't depend on just listening to the dialogue.

I did like this combat system in BG2, but playing it in third person wasn't as fun. Then again, if the first planet is the boring one, maybe I should give it a second go.
Posted December 30, 2010
You don't need to pause to queue up new actions, you can keep adding actions while the current ones are still playing out, making the game a bit more "actiony".
Posted January 01, 2011
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GameRager: 1. It is non turn based if you set it up properly......go into misc options. In there are options to pause the game under conditions like enemy sighted/player hurt badly/etc. Shut them all off and it will never pause when combats come up.


Also, even when it is set to pause when enemy sighted only(at the beginning of battle) you can simply unpause and just attack enemies or heal teammates at will....no need to issue commands to teammates as they will just do whatever attack AI routine you set them up with.....(you can pick a standard action choice/etc for each character in one of the menus for what they'll do during battles.....set this correctly as you want and they'll fight by themselves during a battle when not player controlled at the time.)
That's even better to know. I'd rather let them do their own thing while I do mine than babysit them through, unless there's something specific that needs to be done, where I could simply pause the game and order them to do that. I don't mind pausing, but doing it all the time killed the flow of the battles for me.
Posted January 03, 2011
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El_Caz: This is good to know, because I gave up on KOTOR before leaving the first planet.

One of the things I didn't like was the combat. Turn based disguised as action. As soon as you see an enemy, the game will pause, you'll issue a string of commands to your three units to perform, then unpause and look at how things are going. Pause again, rinse and repeat. It's more strategic than action oriented. There's not much button mashing or WASD skill involved, so if you're expecting action, run and gun (or hack and slash) without much talk, you'll be disappointed. It's story and dialogue heavy with character development. Also, aliens speak in alien language with subtitles translating for you to read, so you can't depend on just listening to the dialogue.

I did like this combat system in BG2, but playing it in third person wasn't as fun. Then again, if the first planet is the boring one, maybe I should give it a second go.
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GameRager: 1. It is non turn based if you set it up properly......go into misc options. In there are options to pause the game under conditions like enemy sighted/player hurt badly/etc. Shut them all off and it will never pause when combats come up.


Also, even when it is set to pause when enemy sighted only(at the beginning of battle) you can simply unpause and just attack enemies or heal teammates at will....no need to issue commands to teammates as they will just do whatever attack AI routine you set them up with.....(you can pick a standard action choice/etc for each character in one of the menus for what they'll do during battles.....set this correctly as you want and they'll fight by themselves during a battle when not player controlled at the time.)
After the first planet, you meet up with a yoda-type of guy who decides to train you in the ways of the force. From here, the game gets more open-ended. You can choose what you want to do, and your actions cause you to go towards the light side or the dark side. So, not only do you start getting the power to kick ass with the force, you also get to choose the way the story develops. It started to get good when I quit playing, but by then I just didn't care.
Posted January 04, 2011
Personally, KotOR is bleh. I'd say play it to see what everyone's talking about, and don't buy the hype. Just play it for what it is.

Personally, I was happy with the "twist" when it finally occurred, as I finally was able to stop asking myself when it was going to happen. Predicatable.

And the NPCs. What a fawning bunch of boring yokels who just love to follow <CHARNAME> around. Thankfully, there's HK, but he doesn't bring the cast out of the red. Ugh, and the talking head dialogue. And if I hear Carth whine one more about those issues of his...

Wait, they all freaking whine. Except HK. Thank goodness for HK. Not so much for the meatbags.

Sorry to offend anyone, the game clearly doesn't have universal appeal.

EDIT: Ugh, and the love interest. The only love interest I've been able to stand in a game is Viconia. This one is...I don't think she's my type, unless she doesn't talk. And I can't imagine how the female lead romance would ever please anyone.

EDIT 2: And do you want to play the evil dark side? Well, tough. You really just get to play a thug.

EDIT 3: And did anyone else find the good-dark endings a bit...boring? Especially the dark-side ending.

EDIT 4: And the game is a breeze. Play on higher difficulty.

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Delixe: I think the problem with Taris is the same problem exhibited in most BioWare games, it's a tutorial in a sense and once you have played it the first time you are not keen on playing it again on your second go let alone your fifth. It's the same with KOTOR2's Peragus, Mass Effect's Eden Prime, Dragon Age's Ostagar and Mass Effect 2's Cerberus facility. Once I have played the game once I find myself impatient and getting annoyed at how drawn out these sections are as i'm no longer a n00b.
+1 for the start of BG1, which I've never tired with. Not so much for BG2, hence the tweak "DungeonBeGone".
Post edited January 04, 2011 by strixo
Posted January 04, 2011
Some time last year RPG Codex had this competition where entrants chose their favorite RPG. My first choice at that time was KotOR (the second was Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines). The prize for the competition is a GoG game of your own choice. I was not a GoG member at the time, but I was one of the competition winners, and so I got to know GoG because of this (and had been a member since).

Without KotOR I may not have heard or become a GoG member. So yeah, quite off topic, but still KotOR is great in my book although I am very much biased since I love anything Star Wars anyway :-P
Post edited January 04, 2011 by tarangwydion
Posted January 04, 2011
I did not like KoTOR (at all : I stopped played, even though I almost always try to finish a game I started), but obviously opinions vary greatly on this game, so if it is sold cheap it might be worth a try
Posted January 04, 2011
I never liked it much... not a big Star Wars fan and I thought it was pretty bland. KotOR2 was more interesting.
Posted January 04, 2011
If you don't care for Star Wars or Mass Effect, You'll most likely hate KotOR. I say save your money.
Posted January 19, 2013
KotOR is just below great. It would be working really well, if they sorted out all the inconsistencies.

It crashes regularly between regions or when I set up droids no matter the settings. The AI and path-finding are dumb. Characters regularly lack behind, though you can only take two with you, without a proper explanation, by the way. Don't use corners in fights, the AI can't handle it. Other bugs occur regularly, like losing your cloak ability after loading a save-game. In one of the first boss fights, you could abuse a faulty design of the environment and stay safe in a corner where the boss couldn't catch you. It was also completely immune to laser fire and didn't try to attack the targets, which were reachable. Again, the AI fails.

You don't have a lot of freedom in your decisions. First of all, all 'bad' decisions are stupidly childish. You can't sabotage your allies or opponents, rip them off or torture them or anything more delicate. No, usually you could kill them. Only the 'good' decisions offer lots of variability and are differentiated. If you do make a 'bad' decision' usually another NPC follower steps in and just stops you, so your light/dark bar is lowered, but your choice does have barely another effect. 'Bad' decisions are also not lucrative. You could sell something to the market for 1000 credits at a point where you already own several k. So what's the point? Dialogue, like in other RPGs can also repeat endlessly and characters just act the same and the same and the same all along.

A part of the controls can't be configured, thanks to consoles I guess.

You can't command droids to a location. They just use their given paths. It would help tremendously to be able to take them with you. I already mentioned the two NPCs, which doesn't make sense. Some NPCs have tight bounds and lived together a life. It can happen that you just cut their bound and one of them stays behind in the apartment.

The alien talk is annoying. I don't why they separated aliens and humans at all. Shouldn't humans be alien in a SW world, too? Usually aliens are scum or outcasts and humans are characters. That's bad writing.

Apart from all of these issues it's a good straight-forward Action RPG with a pause function. Just definitely not even remotely the best RPG.
Posted January 19, 2013
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Perscienter: The alien talk is annoying. I don't why they separated aliens and humans at all. Shouldn't humans be alien in a SW world, too? Usually aliens are scum or outcasts and humans are characters. That's bad writing.
IIRC, there's a human who speaks like a Twi'lek.
Posted January 19, 2013
I love Star Wars. I don't consider KOTOR a very good roleplaying game. It's indeed very similar to Mass Effect, it's got some alignment options and moral choices (not huge dilemmas though, mostly "are you the good guy or are you the bad guy" if I remember well) which make for customisation, and standard RPG attribute management (will you go saber, or gun , or be good at this or that), but it's no Morrowind-in-Space. It's still immensely contrieved, very corridor-ish, in terms of story and landscapes. When you'll realise that you can't jump over a 10 cm fence or walk through a tuft of grass, you'll see the wide landcape as an occasionally branching invisible railroad that you can't quit. And you'll spend all the game crypto-dungeon-crawling through this.

So, it was charming to me, because I like that universe. But a huge disappointment as RPGs go. But it's the sort of disappointment that trained me to be more forgiving to that pseudo-RPG genre. Without KOTOR, I would have loathed Mass Effect, etc.

I'd love a sci-fi TES/Gothic-like. I don't think it exists.
Posted January 19, 2013
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Perscienter: KotOR is just below great. It would be working really well, if they sorted out all the inconsistencies.

It crashes regularly between regions or when I set up droids no matter the settings. The AI and path-finding are dumb. Characters regularly lack behind, though you can only take two with you, without a proper explanation, by the way. Don't use corners in fights, the AI can't handle it. Other bugs occur regularly, like losing your cloak ability after loading a save-game. In one of the first boss fights, you could abuse a faulty design of the environment and stay safe in a corner where the boss couldn't catch you. It was also completely immune to laser fire and didn't try to attack the targets, which were reachable. Again, the AI fails.

You don't have a lot of freedom in your decisions. First of all, all 'bad' decisions are stupidly childish. You can't sabotage your allies or opponents, rip them off or torture them or anything more delicate. No, usually you could kill them. Only the 'good' decisions offer lots of variability and are differentiated. If you do make a 'bad' decision' usually another NPC follower steps in and just stops you, so your light/dark bar is lowered, but your choice does have barely another effect. 'Bad' decisions are also not lucrative. You could sell something to the market for 1000 credits at a point where you already own several k. So what's the point? Dialogue, like in other RPGs can also repeat endlessly and characters just act the same and the same and the same all along.

A part of the controls can't be configured, thanks to consoles I guess.

You can't command droids to a location. They just use their given paths. It would help tremendously to be able to take them with you. I already mentioned the two NPCs, which doesn't make sense. Some NPCs have tight bounds and lived together a life. It can happen that you just cut their bound and one of them stays behind in the apartment.

The alien talk is annoying. I don't why they separated aliens and humans at all. Shouldn't humans be alien in a SW world, too? Usually aliens are scum or outcasts and humans are characters. That's bad writing.

Apart from all of these issues it's a good straight-forward Action RPG with a pause function. Just definitely not even remotely the best RPG.
I'm confused; a few questions if you don't mind.
Do you have an updated version? Occasionally I've had people lag behind but it's actually pretty rare. And I've NEVER had a crash.
And I'm a little confused about "set up droids". I play it constantly and I don't remember that. Do you mean reprogramming droids? I only ever do that second hand. I solve the problem (puzzle) 1st and get XP. THEN I boot up the droid and guess what, MORE XP. At that point it doesn't matter where it goes, you don't need it anymore.
Cloaking? Cloaking is overrated. When you actually need to be stealth to accomplish something the game allows you to do so without a cloaking belt. Piss on cloaking! Spend you cash on something better like a better weapon.
Lastly, I've played as pure good, pure evil, and inbetween and I think all the choices keep the game VERY open. It just requires you do things differently. And if someone in your party tries to stop you from being mean then keep them out of your party, or try harder to talk them down. Jedi in your group can be talked down but everyone else can if you keep at them.
Posted January 19, 2013
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Perscienter: It crashes regularly between regions or when I set up droids no matter the settings.
That's just odd. I've played the game on three different systems over the years and not ever did I encounter major technical issues. I have no idea what's up there.

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Perscienter: You don't have a lot of freedom in your decisions. First of all, all 'bad' decisions are stupidly childish.
Agreed, it's a problem I see in most BioWare games. BioWare didn't learn how to deal with ethical decisions until Mass Effect where it's still a childish and far too simple system following the equation "wuss = good" but at least the alternate path doesn't mean being psychopath anymore who gains nothing from his decisions, the "bad" guy is just as believable there. Sadly in KotOR the system is pure garbage. Being evil doesn't mean getting corrupted by the benefits this path grants, it just means being a sadistic wacko for no reason and is absolutely unbelievable within the game world. And you can't really go with a balance in your decisions as they are so extremely different that switching between them regularly will make your character instantly look like he suffers from a personality disorder. God awful.

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Perscienter: The alien talk is annoying. I don't why they separated aliens and humans at all. Shouldn't humans be alien in a SW world, too? Usually aliens are scum or outcasts and humans are characters. That's bad writing.
As much as I dislike the game, personally I appreciate the alien talk - after all, it's supposed to seem alien to you, not the characters who IIRC don't seem to have any problems understanding it, at least in the common cases. And that humans and the English language dominate the Star Wars universe has pretty much always been the case. Even in those scenes and scenarios where people are a minority the "alien majority" consists of many different races unless of course we're talking about a certain race's homeworld like Kashyyk where you and all your buddies are outcasts. So I really can't complain about KotOR's way of presenting alien races and alien language etc..
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General discussion (archive)How good is Knights of the Old Republic?(72 posts)(72 posts)
(72 posts)