KOTOR II

[Urza-DSF]

* Horrible combat system. It looks like it doesn't matter where your characters are positioned, and the only tactical options for movement were that the melee chars could try to block the path to your blaster chars. Apart from that, all PCs and NPCs keep standing on the spot where they had been when combat started, and fire away - and I don't think they've implemented the partial cover rules, so firing at an enemy standing behind one of you party members is fine. Never saw an CRPG with more boring combats!

What CRPG has realistic combat in the first place? Since you quoted PS: Torment and Fallout - PS runs off of the BG engine if I'm not mistaken (havent played Tormet yet) and theres no "friendly fire" option in there, only thing that can affect your party as well as your enemies are certain area of effect spells. As for Fallout yes your party could shoot you in the back, but combinging that with the generally small maps and at times narrow passageways and NPCs that you couldnt control meant that Ian with a bust weapon could mean a total party kill.

* Silly sidequests. You enter a bar, meet a completely unknown girl who wants a job as a dancer but needs a partner. With no more conversation happening than "Hi! I have no dancing partner.", you can try to persuade her that she should take you (why?!?), and that you're good enough. If you fail your die roll - no problem, just repeat saying the same phrase over and over again until you succeed your roll. Then you dance, collect some XP, and never see her again. Yeah, a really realistic scenario with really realistic character behavior. Quests only for the sake of increasing the quest-count ("60+ hours of fun!") - completely kills immersion into the storyline and identification with you character for me.

Thats kinda why its a *side* quest. It's standard of any RPG, Computer or otherwise. And the only time you could re-try your roll is when your initially talking to her (for that one example). If you screw her over while trying to help her out then thats it, no going back on the decision. Not only that but what if you actually decided on a character who *was* trained as a dancer at some point? Just because it may not be a common undertaking dosent mean that its completly impossible. Not only that but because its a sidequest it's entirely optional. Your character dosent have any experience dancing? Dont help her out. Just because the option is there dosen't mean you have to take it and "waste your time"

* You meet Canderous what, three times?, and learn on every occasion that he works for Davik. Then you meet him again in the slums, and *again* he tells you (in case you're too stupid to remember) that, surprise!, he works for Davik - and your character is really surprised again, judging from the things you're offered to say! Sorry, but I would prefer fewer sidequests but more variable conversations instead. Is it so hard to implement a flag saying "Has Met Canderous Already", so that when you meet him again, a more intelligent conversation could be possible?!?

I believe it was because you dont have to talk to him all of those times, so they made sure that if you missed one or two of them that you could still get the guy's story. Yes they could have implimented it slightly better, but who is perfect?

* NPCs with a mysterious background - by now, I HATE them. I loved it in PS:Torment that Dak'kon had a secret you could slowly unveil by repeatedly talking to him and persuading him to tell you more. Now Bioware seemed to like their idea so much that they did it again. Okay, so Carth has a secret (a much more cliché one, as it seems) which you can repeatedly ask him about - fine, I'll do it even if his story looks a lot less interesting than Dak'kon's. Then you meet Mission, and you know what? Hey, she has a secret you can repeatedly ask her about! Wohooo! :angry:

Ok...so you would prefer that everyone just tell people that they have just met their entire life story? It's character interaction there, getting to know the backgrounds of your teammates as they come to grow and trust you. Because theres currently no such thing as true AI then the game has to come up with some way to gauge how well the characters know each other.

* You enter the slums for the first time, and meet a merchant. You don't know him, he doesn't know you, and one of the first things he tells you about is his plan to get rid of the current leader and take control of the slums by controlling all food. WTF? How realistic is that? No wonder he hadn't succeeded by then if he reveals his evil plot to every stranger he meets!  :wacko:

Your actually doing this backwards. In the slums your suppost to talk to the old man first, who asks you to collect these datapads that could possibly help out everyone down there. *After* that the merchant will tell you it would better for you (since you already accepted to gather the pads) to give them to him so he could essentially take control of things down there. Yes, it could have been implimented better (ie: not giving him the ability to ask about it unless you've already accepted the "good" side of the quest) but it still does make sense as another light/dark path for your character.

I would have no problems to immerse myself into a Star Wars universe if the underlying story and characters were well-made. But if you take away all the Star Wars merchandise from KOTOR, only a standard, cliché, below average CRPG remains - or what am I missing here?
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Quite a bit apparantly, since you've only really met like a few of the possible NPCs in the game, or actually seen the story apart from the level 1 beginnings. Really its like you read the first chapter of a book and decided that the whole thing was crap because you didnt like the placement of a word or two here and there.

An easier question would probally be: what made Torment and Fallout such good games in your mind? For Torment I have no clue myself, but Fallout is because of the excelent storyline which, franky, is somewhat cliche at the beginning. If you really compared the three games I think you'll see a lot less of a difference between them other than their fictional settings/genras.