Star Wars: KOTOR

Playtime: 47.7 Hours

I did a single playthrough with all default settings on the "canon" path, which is a Light Side playthrough romancing Bastila as a male Revan (which doesn't actually have much story implication). Everyone is max level, with Revan ending with a split Level 5 Scout / Level 15 Jedi Guardian build - final party was Jolee & HK-47. I'm pretty sure I completed all quest (including Genoharadan, I recovered LS points later) aside from a few glitched/incompletable items, which I had to remove using the save editor - this includes all companion quests. Playthrough was done on the current Steam version with DLC included, so I did make use of the Yavin space station shop quite liberally.

KotOR is a really cool game that I should have played much earlier, but I guess it's better to have played this late than never. I didn't actually realize prior to starting it that the combat is somewhat a turn based system taking heavy inspiration from DND for combat, status, and persuasion rolls, which made it a bit difficult for me to adjust at the start. I never really got used to them or liked them much, but they did get progressively easier to ignore as my powers and equipment improved and made combat much more consistent. The scale of the worlds also came as a bit of a surprise to me; after the massive adventure of Taris, every subsequent world felt pretty small and empty in comparison, each consisting almost entirely of landmarks used exclusively for quests and nothing else. I'd say in general that the scale feels very similar to DX Invisible War, in terms of level size and the scale of each location/planet; this makes sense as both games are console ports to some degree.

I quite liked the story and setting. I've never been much of a fan of Star Wars but I was able to recognize many of the locations, species, and other references in this game. I really appreciate that they decided to set this game in a relatively unfamilar period of time, allowing for more complete control over the way the lore fits into the universe instead of having to randomly cram the importance of the characters into the scope of the Clone wars or the Rebellion. I'd say my favorite planet is Manaan for the general vibe and the Selkath, who are my favorite alien race in this game. Other planets I liked a lot were Taris (close 2nd!), Dantooine, and Kashyyyk. The remaining planets weren't bad, but I can definitely see Korriban, Tatooine, and Rakata being very tedious on subsequent playthroughs. The game also heavily suggests a planet order of Tatooine/Kashyyyk, Manaan, then Korriban for completion instead of making them truly independent, which couuld harm replayability. It's also really cool to see the relatively primitive personal mission system in this game, later expanded significantly for their other works in Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

While I think the dialogue and overarching story is written well, it does still fall into the general envelope of Star Wars where very little nuance is attempted between the LS and DS factions; LS is infinitely merciful and without any backbone, while DS is aggressively psychopathic and genocidal. Few characters truly manage to straddle an intermediate zone between the two extremes, without suddenly flipping a switch one way or another. There is also quite an issue with the timeframe of the game, which suggests that the entire Sith fleet and army came about in just a couple of years, including the conversions of all previously-Republic officers under Revan's command, all new recruitment and command stations, the expansion of Czerka Corp, conquering and stabilizing an unquantified number of worlds, and the production of almost their entire fleet (note that Sith dreadnoughts and fighters are a different design than those of the Republic, so they must have been newly produced). This was probably done to keep Revan's age young, but does sacrifice a lot of explainability, making this even feel less real. Based on the given timeframe, the entire war realistically had a very minor impact on the galaxy - the Sith simply did not have time to expand to more than a small selection of worlds.

The characters are a pretty distinct weakness in my opinion; lots of prominent characters (read: crewmates) were not particularly interesting or likeable to me. The standouts to me are defintely Jolee, HK-47, and Canderous, who are more ambiguous or evil in alignment, yet not as singlemindedly shitty as lots of random Sith characters. Jolee's ability to discern a balance between the extremes, HK-47's funny quips, and Canderous growing as a character without sacrificing his innate "badass-ness" make for interesting and entertaining characters. Most other companions are inoffensive but mediocre, but Carth and Bastila - the two most prominent companions - are pretty much insufferable yet they also get the most screentime; there's only so much arbitrary pushback I can get from characters before I stop caring. Carth in particular was a terrible choice of a first companion on Taris, since you get to hear him complaining about shit for 7 hours before you can kick him out for someone better. Even Revan doesn't have much of a chance at a defined personality - most dialogue is obviously just LS or DS with little in-between, you can't define a tough LS character or a charming DS character. Speaking on the overtly binary nature of characters, Bastila's alignment switch both ways occurs almost instantly from the perspective of the player pretty much over the course of one conversation, which mostly shows how weak-willed she is. Also, the "Battle Meditation" power or whatever that she has makes no sense - for an element so crucial to the plot, it's difficult to overlook how pointless this is as she is still the worst of the 3 Jedi characters you get.

While I think most of the game is well-balanced and doesn't really need any more specific comments, there are a number of issues that I think kind of drag the experience down a little bit. The levelling between your initial and Jedi classes is balanced poorly; playing and levelling thoroughly on Taris actually makes you weaker due to less Jedi levels, which is really lame. I had enough EXP for Level 9 on Taris which would have been a huge mistake had I not found out about the split. This actually creates a possibility where you can effectively ruin a character 7 hours into a playthrough - again, a terrible design decision. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the game pushes you very heavily towards sabers, which are far better than ranged or melee weapons; you are given an abundance of sabers and upgrade crystals which give massive damage and status bonuses, which is incredibly cool but also far more powerful than the upgrade items for any other weapon type. The added ability to use powers further makes it optimal to run a 3-jedi party for the extra utility instead of trying different companions for combat. Outside of combat, the skills are really only useful up to a certain point (exception: Persuade is always good) - everything has a workaround by mid-late game. You have enough spikes/parts to brute force hacking and repair, you can bash locked doors and boxes, mines don't do enough damage for you to care, and you'll never use medpacks if you just spam force heal instead; stealth and awareness pretty much don't come into play at all either. As a Guardian, the availability of force jump and force speed made my character so overpowered, that while I loved melting through everyone, part of me missed Taris by the end of the game; the feeling of danger, having to scrounge for money and items, and the sheer scale is simply missing for the rest of the game, even thouugh every area does have a distinct identity. Meanwhile, the Star Forge levels infinitely* spawning enemies made the final area of the game a slog more than an exciting conclusion, and really killed any interest in further playthroughs.

Really, even beyond all of the complaints I have about gameplay balance, the worst aspect here is simply the overall stability and QoL of this game. Fullscreen is forced unless you edit an INI, and all cutscenes are in 480p compared to ~1600x1200 otherwise, trying to resize fullscreen resolution and causing some major screen flashing and window focus issues. In general, handling the display settings is extremely finnicky, even worse than other games in the same era. Your mouse can very easily slip outside of the window (even when in fullscreen with multiple monitors!), which can cause a number of issues when you tab back in; skipping dialogue, running forever, losing control of your character, etc. Other issues like quests not completing, or character freezing and uncontrollable after combat or when interacting with objects are very common; generally, I had to relaunch the game at least a few times per session. The last glitch is probably the most prominent one for my playthrough (thankfully), which was the only beneficial one that I encountered. For some reason, the force speed power would sometimes never deactivate once used; I suspected this had something to do with saves/loads, area transitions, conversations, or cutscenes. I'm not quite sure how this is triggered but I got it to happen several times, and it only seems to fix itself in a few select areas - I had it pretty much 100% of the time up until the Star Forge system without needing to recast it, and I remember doing the entirety of Tatooine and Manaan without having to cast it again once (2 planets!). It makes gameplay consistently a blur due to a visual effect of the power, and it also breaks some cutscenes where Revan walks a little too quickly which is very funny, but the real utility is in the combat implication.

Since this power gives 2 extra attacks per round when mastered, this means that I was not only moving at twice the regular speed, but also instantly did 4 attacks to anything I started fighting (5 with flurry), as I was using a very powerful dual lightsaber build with extremely high STR. It's not hard to see how this would be extremely overpowered, especially when I have it permanently without needing to cast it multiple times - outside of very few exceptions I was able to reliably kill everything in the game within 1-2 rounds of combat. Only the Terentateks and the final Malak fight posed any real threat against the onslaught, but I was still able to take on 2 Teretateks simultaneously with ease. As some notes of the power I had using force speed (permanently): I instantly killed and health gated Malak on the Leviathan, I instantly killed Bastila in the temple, I 1-2 rounded every Bastila phase on the Star Forge (health gated), and I was able to do almost 200 damage on a decent attack round on Malak's final phase - I one-rounded his first phase in the final showdown. Nothing else really comes to mind as significant, because (I think) literally everything else in the game died almost instantly, including all the dark jedi near the end of the game. The closest thing to a threat would be that some droids have very high energy resist, but the 'Destroy Droid' force power took care of those instead. Given the sheer power of my build, I suppose it's no real surprise that I started to find the game a little dull towards the end, but I've already commented thoroughly enough on that.

For some closing thoughts, I really want to make it clear (to myself) that I loved my time with this game - I wouldn't have spent almost 50 hours if that wasn't the case. However, now that I've seen pretty much all there is to see in this game, I don't think I'll play it again. As I said, the DS playthrough isn't appealing because of how senseless it is (LS had enough issues as it was), and other weapon/class builds will simply feel inferior to my instant-melt build in this run so I don't think there's any way to avoid disappointment if I try again. I can see a number of systems in this game and a general feel that was translated later on into the Mass Effect series, which I still think is quite a bit more up my alley - but it's nice to see that the earlier Bioware works are just as competent. I'll probably give myself some time before starting KOTOR 2, which I hear is also a good game, but potentially incomplete and not quite as refined as this one was.