Anyone find KoTOR 2 to be more of the same?

X

XS+

Banned
I've just welcomed Mandalore to my party, and I can't help but view the game as a retread more than anything else. It's not a bad game, but it doesn't feel at all fresh, leaving me trudging through the game off obligation rather than anticipation. Because I'm made it this far, I want to beat it, but I'm not enjoying myself. One thing that irks me is the diminished interplay between your party members. In the first installment, almost every action elicited a response from one of your team members. No such reactions are to be found here -- at least, not as frequently as was seen in the first. The game also poses nothing in the form of a challenge; it's an easy adventure, with my party dispatching anything it comes across. The only difficulty I've come up against was a battle against Vrook. Lastly, the level design in this game is just so poor, especially in Nar Shaddaa (sp?). Everything is just so drab and interachangeable, with sparse variety and unremarkable architecture. Again, it's not a bad game, but -- this is so cliched -- I can't help but look at it as an expansion rather than a genuine sequel.
 
The real "sequel" to KOTOR is going to be Jade Empire. KOTOR2 is the result of a different developer reusing the same engine from the first game and adding in a new story.
 
I just started playing the first game, and I don't see what all of the fuss was about yet. Of course, I've just played through the intro and started walking around Taris (Tarsis?), but the battle systems seems horrendously boring at this point, I'd rather play old school Final Fantasy menu-clicking than these pseudo-realtime borefest battles. Hopefully it gets better.
 
I found it to be more of the same minus some of the good stuff from KOTOR. It's not even about technical issues; from the pacing to the planets, the design is just worse.

For example, it seems to be a general consensus that KOTOR really picks up once you become a Jedi, get your lightsaber, and can start travelling around to different worlds. Now in KOTOR 2 they could've done us all a favor and given us a lightsaber and let us start planet hopping right away. Instead they force us to go through two horribly, horribly boring, ugly worlds and if you don't know what to do you wont even get your saber until after the third world. I don't care how it fits in with the story, but roleplaying a Jedi for 15 hours without a lightsaber is just lame. Someone should've had the sense to realize this and nip it in the bud.

I appreciate the influence system, but I almost prefer the way party members stuck to their guns in the first game as it often led to more amusing interchanges between them (as XS+ pointed out). There also aren't any character-based sidequests like Bastila's mother or Carth's son (at least I haven't found any) to indulge in.

Then of course, aesthetically the game is awful from start to finish (especially the finish. Ugh), so that doesn't help anything. KOTOR's worlds at least had some atmosphere to them, Sith Lords' are just bland and lifeless.
 
What makes both of these games shine is the writing and the dialogue trees. There are ups and downs in both games, meaning there are areas that are boring and there are areas that are superb. KOTOR II IMO had more boring areas due to some rather generic level design though there were bright spots. As far as KOTOR II being too easy, that is an easy criticism but of course it depends on how you built your character. You are after all a bad ass and the game does make you feel as you are. There are some tough battles but they are infrequent. Still in the end I thought the game well worth the investment I put into it.

What really irks me about KOTOR II is the severe lack of polish. After playing this I recall the early days of the Xbox when MS was pushing games out the door too early. Glitches galore, both gameplay, sound and graphical put a damper on what should of been a great experience.
 
If it wasn't abundantly clear to you that KOTOR 2 was "more of the same" from the screenshots then you got what you deserved.

I'm almost thinking of replaying KOTOR 1 as a dark Jedi instead of playing this.
 
Yeah I'm also in the "played KOTOR and didn't see the fuss" camp. I know it' quality, but it's just so boring. I got Bastila and just kinda stopped after that. Long forgot what I was told to do next. Oh well.
 
Redbeard said:
Then of course, aesthetically the game is awful from start to finish (especially the finish. Ugh), so that doesn't help anything. KOTOR's worlds at least had some atmosphere to them, Sith Lords' are just bland and lifeless.
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EXACTLY. Would it have been that difficult to have the streets bustling, or the jungles and forests teeming with wildlife? The whole world feels hollow, making it a real challenge to muster up any desire to push onward. The entire world of KoTOR2 feels limp.
 
Now that I'm thinking about it the only world I liked was Dantooine and that was reused from the original game. I finished it last night and have really no desire to play it again from the dark side. The only way I would replay it is to revisit the story and what I thought to be excellent voice acting.

KOTOR II

Knights of the Olde Rushjob
 
My main problem with kotor 2 right now are the worlds, indoor design wise its shit, the outdoor are better but they're rare and mostly devoid of life. Voice acting is better, story is a tad predictable right now but i havent finished it so..

If they could have combined kotor's universe and level design with kotor2's more advanced gameplay mechanics and voice acting, it would have been really good. But so far, its good but now as good as the first one.
 
akascream said:
I lost interest as soon as I heard the developer changed. Same with VtM:next.
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I wouldn't fault the developer. Fault MS for making them rush it. Despite what your reading in this thread though KOTOR2 is still a very good game with great dialogue, story and voice acting. Definitely worth a play through. If you liked the first play the second. KOTOR II has many refereces to KOTOR I and it also continues the story of the Mandalorean wars and why they came about. The story was fascinating as was discovering what role your character plays in the game and on a larger scale the galaxy.
 
I'm not that far but It's annooying the crap out of me, not so much the level design but a game this late in the X-boxes life cycle and it has Slow down, "loot lag", frame rate issues, it freezes, and can we please put some more points where the game loads...please i don't think I do enough twidling my thumbs between the long winded "makes baby MGS cry" speaches and the loading as it is.

As for the interiors...I have this wierd ass Been there done that feeling ESPCIALLY the republic ship that docs with the mining colony...it's the same exact ship in the begining of KotoR1 just you go through it backwards. Oh was the HuD always this annoying like big? The story is so far SSDD...you have a jedi who can't remember his/her past, the whiney bitch pilot and the straight and narrow jedi teacher. Not to metion HK-47 and another astrodroid....lemme take a stab...you get a grizzled take no shit war vet, a wookie with family problems, and an old jedi wise ass?

I'm planning on playing it to the end, if it pickes up later on I'll play thougth it twice (once light once dark) but I hope they changed one thing form thie first that stupid Light/Dark side shift at the end of the game that made playing through the game pointless. Also some of the stuff that gave you dark/light side points in the first game made no sense...I hope they changed that.
 
sounds like a MP2E syndrome.

Its funny how 3d games don't hold up as well when its a 3d engine. Even with improvement to the engine + vfx. Fallout 2 was outstanding in comparision.]


where's anihawk in this thread.. This game is meant to be his GOTY 2004. :)
 
Odnetnin said:
sounds like a MP2E syndrome.

Its funny how 3d games don't hold up as well when its a 3d engine. Even with improvement to the engine + vfx. Fallout 2 was outstanding in comparision.]


where's anihawk in this thread.. This game is meant to be his GOTY 2004. :)
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I think MP2:E is a bit different. The game looks different than MP, and on a technical level it is better. Artistically I think MP does some things better though. However, with KOTOR 2 , and this is from watching some videos on TV, some of the indoor areas looked exactly the same. I mean, EXACTLY the same. I watched a video of KOTOR 2 with the character running in an indoor building and it floored me. And not floored in a good way. I had a huge sense of deja vu because the area the character had been walking in looked exactly the same as KOTOR. Still looking foward to playing this, as I'm patiently waiting for the PC version.

You just need to look at games like MGS3, Halo 2, MP2, to see how games can look better from the original version. From what I've seen and read it looks like little was done to improve the visuals of KOTOR II. In that way the game almost seems expansion pack esque.
 
Odnetnin said:
sounds like a MP2E syndrome.

Its funny how 3d games don't hold up as well when its a 3d engine. Even with improvement to the engine + vfx. Fallout 2 was outstanding in comparision.]


where's anihawk in this thread.. This game is meant to be his GOTY 2004. :)
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Interesting, and I just entered this thread on a whim.

Yeah, it's "more of the same," but I love it. Hell, I only first played KOTOR 9 months ago on both light and dark side, and now I'm going through KOTOR II on dark side after beating it on light, and I'm finding so many new things I missed in the first run. It's great.
Like when Atris pulled out that lightsaber. Thought she was gonna attack right then.

It's also a challenge to gain influence with lightside characters and drag them down with you. I've only lost one bit of influence ever, and it was with Kreia early on. Also got
G0-T0
to reveal all his secrets, and
the girls are fighting over my character.
As someone who's never played a Western RPG before, the focus on characters and dialogue is still new to me, which is probably why I enjoy it so much (I also like making my character a freakin' monster).
 
Wrap report 2 at RPGVault

From a production perspective, the best thing we did was to cut M4-78, the Droid Planet. I won't go into details, but we had this incredible design for a planet of droids. We actually did the first pass on art and built the character models for the location. But we had to look at the schedule and make a big cut after E3. We cut the entire planet.
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As far as the story goes, I think maybe we were trying too hard for an Empire Strikes Back feel especially in terms of the revelations toward the end game and the resolutions - we just wanted the player to feel like there was something more going on, something greater, and it may not have seemed to tie together as well as it should. We could have made more of an effort to keep the game more self-contained, but the more that option was discussed toward the end, the less appealing it seemed - we wanted more of a sense that the saga would continue, that what was happening was only symptomatic of something occurring on an even greater scale. I think this is something that sat well with some gamers, but not others.
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can't speak of what LucasArts wants or if we've had discussions with them, but if we were to do a KOTOR III, I think it would be a large divergence from the first two. We'd need to create a completely new engine, redo the rules system, and take care of a host of other 'things'. Of course, we'd stick to the Star Wars feel and story-driven gameplay. But that's outside of anything we should talk about here.
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Hah, where's that thread where everyone was oohing and ahhing over KOTOR 2 screenshots. Everyone got pissy when I said it looked exactly like KOTOR 1.
 
Odnetnin said:
sounds like a MP2E syndrome.

Its funny how 3d games don't hold up as well when its a 3d engine. Even with improvement to the engine + vfx. Fallout 2 was outstanding in comparision.]


where's anihawk in this thread.. This game is meant to be his GOTY 2004. :)
Click to expand...
Huh? MP2E syndrome? 3D engine? What in the sam fuck? You do realize MP2E will have staying power beyond KOTORII, don't you? I think the underlying problem here is MS did rush KOTORII and there's a little bit of a backlast (although not much) from fans and gamers. With MP2E they had that shit finished well before release, and it showed. Polished to the T.
 
MP2 syndrome? Thats a fucking insult to retro's work, you obviously havent spent much time with either to compare. Its not just the graphics for kotor, its that everything is half polished, the cut-scenes are a fucking nightmare, sometimes the dialogue boxes goes to the next before the VA is even finished, the alien dialogues skip to the next way too fast sometimes, its so full of glitches that we're probably playing something that could be called an early beta.
 
It's unfortunate Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II had to be pared down, but it's the nature of the beast. What is more unfortunate is that the game continually hints at being much larger and much more fleshed out.
 
The comparison of KOTOR II to Metroid Prime 2 is ridiculous. MP2 may not have looked leaps better, but what was there was nice, crisp and polished. KOTOR and its sequel have flawed graphics engines, wonky AI/pathfinding and are riddled with bugs from the graphics to the quests themselves.
 
Help me understand your concept here. More of the same. VideoGames. More of the Same. Welcome to gaming.

"Fault MS for making them rush it."

So MS controls LucasArts now?
 
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