So.. I've heard about this game for years. 93 metacritic average, by the Baldur's Gate guys. And was pretty sure it was good, but never got around to playing it.

Then it came to Steam for 10 bucks and I felt pretty much obligated.

And I have to say, I am really blown away by this game.

I also like all the little ways it reminds me of Baldur's Gate, in that every party member has a story, and the more you adventure with that party member, the more of their story you learn.

Given that there are 9 potential party members, this seems like it would give the game a lot of replay value.

No spoilers please, I *think* I'm only about half way through, but I'm not even sure of that.

It is a solid game and very fun. It isn't as mature at doing its job as Mass Effect, but it is still brilliant for the time it came out and still worth replaying to me.

Knights of the Old Republic is The Awesome.
I replayed this game... ooh. I don't know how many times! Enjoy!

Honestly? I've only ever played it through about halfway. The first half or so is really cool, but:

– the fact that everything's level scales along with your own makes leveling feel pointless
– the Big Plot Twist* always takes me right out of wanting to play it

*I'm not sure how I even discuss it without totally spoiling it if you haven't gotten that far.

On the big plus side, HK-47.

I thought that Knights II blew Knights I away...except for the INCREDIBLY anticlimactic finish...I loved Knights I, but Knights II has (to me) a better story, better NPCs, better options...just better in most ways...now if Lucasarts had let them FINISH the game...

Also, this makes me sadder stilll that my XBox is dead...dammit.

I missed KotoR the first time around but the continual glowing reviews from my other gaming buddies makes $10 seem like a good deal.

It's alright.  The linearity was sort of a nasty business, as was having to grind through so much before you actually got to be a Jedi, but the big thing that wound up killing it for me was just the suspension of disbelief hit that I took the instant the main plot macguffin was revealed and I realized I was basically playing Final Fantasy with Star Wars chrome.

Once I got off the Jedi world and they revealed the whole star map nonsens, and then got smacked down by Sith for going to the wrong planet first, it sort of killed the game for me, and I've never been able to get even as far as JEdi training in it since.  It was really a big disappointment for me, in the end.

The other thing is – since I don't read franchise books – KOTOR made me realize how profoundly depressing the extended Star Wars universe is.

I mean, here you have a galaxy long ago and far away where, for tens of thousands of years, there is no real technological progress, nothing really new, just the same conflict between the same two factions for thousands of thousands of years on end, and countless inhabited planets with screw-all to do but be caught in the crossfire. You're just minding your own business, tending your dad's power-converter shop, because what else are you gonna do, and boom! your whole goddamn planet blows up because of some fucking Jedi after some crystals or some shit.

Par for the course in medieval fantasy, but given sci-fi trappings, it's just demoralizing.

While I really enjoyed KoToR 1 & 2 and they are worth playing. I never found the replay value to be very high.  There really isn't as much variety to the game as you initially are lead to believe.  Also there really isn't any significant added value into exploring all the character dynamics, unless you are the type of person that really gets into that sorta thing.  For as much dialog and choice I found that it's impact was largely inconsequential to the overall game.  It's very easy to figure out the light side, neural and dark side choices every time and pick accordingly.

While I enjoyed the game overall the I find the 'dynamic' portion of the game to be just a case of going through the motions.  But to be fair I find that to be pretty much the same for every Bioware RPG since the formula was introduced in Baldur's Gate 1.  There really just aren't any surprised in any game past that.

Neverwinter nights suffers from the same flaw.  Lots of work in clicking through very dull character conversations for no real gain.  In the case of Neverwinter Nights 2 having some NPC's follow their prestige classes was more of a penalty overall.

Even while I'm anxiously awaiting Dragon Age, I'm still expecting more of the same.  But I'm certain I'll still enjoy the game for all the other elements of play that Bioware and this style of game do well.

Neverwinter Nights gains a lot from all the user-made modules out there, many of which are quite a bit better done than the campaigns that ship with the game.

But, limits to dynamism, linearity – welp, that's a CRPG for you.

I think there's a difference between RPGs that tell a story and those that are sandboxy, and I think its illustrative of limitations we face in RPGs too. You can't have it both ways, and I think games like KOTOR or FFX at one extreme, and Mount and Blade at the other are interesting examples.

So in KOTOR, you get some variation within a broader arc, but you are still very much NOT in a sandbox. You're on the merry go round, which is awesome and can go at varying speeds but it will never be a sandbox.

Its always interesting to me to see folks' reactions to games. Some folks seem to only enjoy one or the other, or at least have a strong preference.

I guess I don't, as long as the game is really good.

I'm now about 75% done with the game I think, with the "big twist" having happened. It wasn't really, but I actually appreciated the effort. They really tried to give me that "NO THAT'S NOT TRUE!" moment from Empire Strikes Back, and even though they didn't, I still find I want to find out what's going to happen to these characters.

But twists are, I think, harder to pull off in a RPG than anywhere else. FFX is really the only truly amazing twist that blew me away in a game.

Anyway, still loving it.

Fun game. Definitely take a look at the sequel as well. Good times.

Quote from: RPGObjects_chuck;331032I think there's a difference between RPGs that tell a story and those that are sandboxy, and I think its illustrative of limitations we face in RPGs too. You can't have it both ways, and I think games like KOTOR or FFX at one extreme, and Mount and Blade at the other are interesting examples.

So in KOTOR, you get some variation within a broader arc, but you are still very much NOT in a sandbox. You're on the merry go round, which is awesome and can go at varying speeds but it will never be a sandbox.

Its always interesting to me to see folks' reactions to games. Some folks seem to only enjoy one or the other, or at least have a strong preference.

I guess I don't, as long as the game is really good.

I don't disagree with your comparisons as they hold true.  But I'd suggest that if you are doing a story based game, make the story important to the game and use the game itself to tell the story and not just endless pages of irrelevant dialogue.

It's that point that bugs me about these style of games.  It's that you've got all this story, but it has no importance on how the game plays out.  You can very easily skip through all of the rolling text and still know exactly what you are supposed to do.   I still enjoy the games mechanically but I generally find the story is entirely transparent and often meaningless to the game itself.  

I remember choose your own adventure books, you had to read the text to actually make an informed decision on which page to flip to.  Most bioware style games don't have that at all.  You always know which page to go to and that seems like a vast amount of wasted effort.

Games like Final Fantasy on the other hand do a much better job of embedding the story into the experience.  You can skip the text but they rely on stronger cut scenes more spoken dialogue and other tricks to unfold the story in a more relevant manor.

I actually find sandbox games like Mount & Blade or Oblivion do a much better job of rolling you into the story.  In these games it's these story elements that are important to decision making.  You could just randomly wonder around and still, eventually finish the game (maybe).  But in a sandbox game if you follow the story and get involved with what's going on the experience makes much more sense as a whole.  

Back to the Bioware style games, I still love the games, but the story aspects are irrelevant for the most part which is a huge waste of effort on theirs.  I think it's a case of these games wanting to be story games, pretending to be sandbox games and not really doing either really well.  What still makes them really fun though is that the actual play is very, very good.

I think Oblivion, along with Fallout 2 and 3 are the only games Ive ever seen do a good job telling a story AND being sandboxes.

Having now finished KOTOR, I thought it told a good story and I liked quite a few of the characters. The gameplay is the most important part to me though and that was very nicely done.

I also like the fact that it feels very much like playing Baldur's Gate, just with better graphics and some tweaks that I like a lot, like auto-pausing at the start of combat.