Why does everyone hate on kotor 2? In MY opinion Obsidian did just as good a job as bioware and they are both in my top ten favorite games of all time.

I would be happy to read opinions on the games

mostly because it's missing 2/3 of the game... the fan recreation improves it somewhat but some of the audio was never released which limits it some

Well it was unfinished, boring, unbalanced, boring and had no ending that could really be called an ending.

Also, it was boring.

A shame really as I liked the first one, even though it did predictably fall into Bioware's plot tropes.

I just never could get into it, even with the complete mod or what is it called. While it really nailed the atmosphere and tried to do something new with Star Wars, every corner of that game screamed: UNFINISHED!

Far too few sidequests for instance, or I'm just complely blind. And when I finally stumbled upon something that looked liked an interesting sidequest, it turned out to just be a conversation that didn't lead anywhere and was apparently supposed to start the sidequest if the game were ever finished.

I don't know, I just liked original KOTOR far more than the sequel - however, I didn't really like the original KOTOR all that much.

edit: oh yeah and it was sort of boring.

It's by far the most boring game I've played, and I've played some pretty dire games over the years. I think that the real issue is that I spent so long trying to like it on the strengths of KOTOR and NWN2 (which beat the shit out of NWN1). But I had to give up or risk falling into a coma. To be fair, the game gave up way before the halfway point.

I liked it more than the original, mostly for the better writing and some design changes, but neither are great RPGs for me.

There were the beginnings of a very good game there. Too bad they only managed to complete half of it.

Myself, I liked KOTOR2. Hated the unfinishedness - the ending and "final world" are jokes - but I really liked the story. KOTOR has one nice twist in an otherwise stale story, while KOTOR2 has many great small moments in a less conventional story, even if it never has one "woah" moment to compare to the original.

I was anything but bored and found the cast far more interesting than the original KOTOR's mostly-bland bunch. I loved both the player character and Kreia - KOTOR2's attempt to get me to co-develop a character with the game really gelled much better than most other RPGs.

Pet theory, BTW: I think people's opinions of KOTOR2 and Kreia are generally linked. I find people tend to either agree or disagree with me on liking both Kreia's character and the game as a whole.

At the time of release, I was too young to care about the flaws of KOTOR 2, so I loved it. But I never did get past the halfway point I don't think.

I would say KOTOR 1 is better personally, but I think the second game did really cool things. I personally loved how brutally slow the second game starts. The tone set for the game is very dark from the beginning.

People usually hate KotOR 2 because it's a buggy, unfinished mess that should have spent more time in development instead of being rushed out for Christmas by LucasArts.

It also has other problems, though.
Forcing you to put up with Kreia the whole game is annoying (especially since the game makes it rather obvious she's manipulating you the whole time). There's a reason mentor figures are usually killed off early on in games.

Also, the game makes a big deal about balance in the Force, neutrality and all that stuff, and yet when it comes down to it, there are light side solutions, dark side ones, and almost no neutral ones to quests nor any incentives to be neutral except to spare yourself some of Kreia's bitching.
That's a real design fail, imo, no matter how unfinished the game is.

Half finished as it was, I liked it more than the original, and much like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, the fan efforts have helped improve the game immensely.

Whilst the game was buggy (as is the forum at the moment, the bastard post eater monster is still around) and had a tendency to cock up at times, I'd still place KOTOR2 as one of the best games I've ever played

I played 1 after 2. It felt very dumb. Also, after hearing all that stuff about Mary Tzu Revan's genial geniousness throughout the second game, it was odd to roleplay a dumbo with 20 words in his vocabulary, inability to form a sentence longer than five words, a penchant for ending every sentence with an exclamation mark and bad taste in love interests (abysmally bad if you play a female).

In short - not everybody hates KOTOR2.

KotOR 2 was awesome! :)

No, really, it starts great, moves on but the ending is rushed & badly done and there's obviously lots of stuff missing that was meant to be there.

BTW, check out the TSL Restored Content Mod.

But the characters are great, the combat just better, the story deep and complex.
Overall 2 is the higher ambition project, if fails in many ways but you gotta appreciate and love the effort.