OK, first of all, though I watched and loved the original Star Wars trilogy, I wouldn't consider myself a Star Wars nerd, the expanded universe passed me by completely and I have no interest in getting into that, I found Episodes I to III to be 'meh' at best, and the only Star Wars games I played were the Mysteries of the Syth demo, some years back, and the two Rogue Squadron games on Gamecube, Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike.

I'm also not that much into CRPGs, the bulk of them weren't that big over here when they came out, and since I was never part of any secluded nerd or geek Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons club (there weren't that many, to begin with, back in the day), I missed most of them. I distinctly remember some of my nerdier friends not letting me play their Infinity Engine games because I was a "pleb who liked Nintendo consoles and games and played the travesti that are action games, action-adventures and point and clicks" (they were mostly upset by the fact I loved Diablo and Nox -- which I still refuse to think of as a mere Diablo clone).

Some time ago, I decided to get more into some of the best classic CRPGs I missed while growing up, and when googling it a bit, I found out that the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games are deemed two of the best CRPGs ever made. I don't use Steam and I didn't feel like tracking down a working physical copy, so as soon as GOG got them, I immediately wishlisted them both. The thing is, so far I have found all the classic RPGs that I missed to be a very hard and tiresome undertaking. I truly understand why so many people love them, but the amount of patience and dedication they require is baffling, and perhaps I'm not willing to delve all that much into a mere video game. Plus, GOG community aside, classic CRPG players tend to be super elitist and are part of secluded, closed groups that are not especially supportive and welcoming, and they usually hide behind a wall of heavy RPG lingo that most of us neophytes are immediately turned off by. Still, I have been trying really hard to get into some of those games, and I've been slowly succeeding at that, even though I'm far from a pro at them, I still get to play them my own way, with no understanding whatsoever of THAC0s or min/maxing or saving throws or whatever. I may not love them as hardcore fans do, but I agree they are some of the best games ever made, and I feel a bit sad for not having played them when they originally came out, because I would have had more time, then, to invest in video games and immerse myself in the world and lore of it all.

So, having given you all this extensive and, granted, pretty much useless background, onto KOTOR II. I understand I should have bought KOTOR and started with that one, but from my understanding KOTOR II is widely lauded as the best out of the two, and since I'm not that much into Star Wars lore and story, I thought I could bypass the first game, for now (I did the same thing with Baldur's Gate and don't regret it one bit). The thing is, on top of the game being absolutely alien and a bit on the complex side, to me, I don't even find it good to look at, and that's a big issue to me, especially since I tend to get bored of games very quickly if their artistic design is not that good. From screenshots and game play videos I watched, the game honestly seemed to look better than the one I've been playing on my computer, and it definitely was more fluid and with less stutter and low frame rates. This is particularly jarring, as the game quickly becomes unplayable to me.

Is there anything I can do to make the game look and play better, or at least make it lose the lag and increase the frame rates? Does it have anything to do with that amd .dll thing I had to rename in order to even launch the game? I mean, Jade Empire is made on the same engine, I think, it takes up double the size, has huge areas and it looks so much more beautiful and plays in a more fluid way, with no slowdowns and lag whatsoever on my computer, so I wouldn't think this problem is on my end.

I would really love to play this game, and I uninstalled it while keeping my saves (even though I advanced very little, as I found instructions to be hard to understand and missions not that interesting) because I plan on eventually revisiting it, but I would like to play it in a more... appropriate way, at least without all the low frame rate issue I experienced on my first attempt at a play through, and if I could make it look a bit better I guess it wouldn't hurt, as well.

Have you installed the TSLRCM?

And seriously, you should play KOTOR 1 first anyway.

Hm... TSLRCM doesn't seem to fix the frame rate issue, they're more focused on other kinds of bugs, I think. Still worth a shot, though, I'll check it out.

As for playing KOTOR first, well... I already have the second one, and I don't know when I'll have enough money or interest to buy the first game. If the second one is as ugly as it is, I'm not hoping the first one will look better... plus, why should I play it first? Like I said, I'm not all that interested in the backstory, I can live with playing a game and enjoying it for what it is, without the huge lore and world knowledge of a previous installment.

Yeah I'm broke too so I empathize there. :D
The reason I mentioned #1 first is that you said something about complexity. Well #2 is #1 with a lot of added stuff so basically by the time you finish #1 you know all the basics and the added #2 stuff isn't overwhelming.

As for frame rate, for some reason having grass on makes all the difference for me so you might want to try that. Also shadows can be a pain but that seems to vary depending on the computer.

Will try that, as well as the aforementioned mod.

Thanks a bunch, tinyE! :D

Will mark your post as solution as soon as I try this out (well, if it works or helps).

WAIT ON THAT! :D

I love this game but there are regs here who know the technical aspects of this game WAAAY better than me. Some of them should be around shortly. I'm just buying some time because I'd hate to see this title abandoned for what turns out to be an easily fixable problem.

I'm still redownloading the whole thing again, so, those other people will have more than enough time to come in here and tell me how wrong you were, and how this issue is fixed by copying the swkiiamd.dll into a created folder with share enabled so it won't mess with my saves, or whatever, or that I need to do some registry editing.

As long as they don't downvote you. :P

Plus, your solution is something I *actually* understand, no "edit this line on the shortcut properties", just "install a mod, check if you have grass or shadows enabled and try disabling them".

Update:

I installed TSLCRM, and it did nothing to improve the game running on my machine, the frame rate is still horrible, which is the main issue... turned off both shadows and grass, still no improvement whatsoever, and the same when using the (admittedly lackluster) settings tool, even when I use the Low texture pack...

Adding to all of this, now that I've installed TSLCRM there's a permanent white square on loading screens and the main menu (even though it doesn't affect gameplay).

I absolutely understand the love fans have for this game, but subpar optimization and graphics that didn't age all that well may put me off for good... ah, well, €9 out the window, I guess... O_o

Well, KotOR II is definitely an unique beast in many ways.
It's basically an unpolished gem and needs some care, TSLRCM being the biggest help. While this modification focuses on the restoration of content, obviously, it also fixes a ton of bugs, though you might won't notice that if you never played the game before.

Performance issues are nothing new and unexplored either, seriously, just check for solutions in the web, there are many tips and tricks in this forum alone.
tinyE already provided you with two common solutions, but there are a lot more.

By the way, if you don't want to spend some time on that and aren't that happy with the game so far anyway, you don't have to keep trying. Not everyone likes the stuff others like.

Anyway, while I visit this forum regularly and love this game, if there is someone who can help you, then it's Hassat_Hunter. He's some sort of magical guru who knows everything about this game, so you should wait for his reply here at least :D

I think you said "stuttering" up there somewhere? I think that other users have had success by turning their refresh rate down from some ungodly high modern setting. There are some threads that detail that remedy in this forum.

I'm not entirely sure how, but somehow the game seems to be running a lot better, instead of renaming the ati .dll file, I backed up the two of them I had and removed them from the folder altogether. Now I don't get an error every time I exit the game, and it has been running a lot smoother, even though I still get some bad frame rate every once in a while.

Turns out I needed to *upscale* the graphics, instead of downgrading them, as soon as I got some anti-aliasing going on, everything seemed to get better, and I've been making some progress ever since.

Thanks a lot for all your help, now, let's move on to play this gem. :D