I had the same impressions about TSLRCM. While some additions are nice, others really killed the pacing and made it quite boring. The prime example in Nar Shaddaa where you have to fight way more than previously, and the fights are mostly really tedious.

But I also think that KOTOR 2 loses a lot of its appeal on repeated playthroughs. I loved it when I played it the first time, but enjoyed it significantly less each time I replayed it.

I never once blamed the game, at all. In fact I'm glad that was a thing Obsidian didn't finish it, if what was put in was the intended product. It was terribly balanced, especially until you get the super duper droid armour before the god awful 300 on 1 battle near the end.

That should have been optional.

Oh and I enjoy a good in game yakkity schmackity as much as any RPG player but it seemed entirely focused on Kreia. Nobody else had anything worth saying. It took long enough to get Mira to say more than two sentences.

Yeah, Nar Shadaa had way too many trash mob battles. Then of course you build a lightsaber and everything falls over way quicker.

I thank them for making the content, especially for picking it up after the Team Gizka incident (an adventure itself) but in future I'll just play vanilla.........eventually.

I just found this topic, and I have decided to share some of my thoughts. Disclaimer: I have not actually played either KOTOR game, and therefore will not make judgements about the game itself. To me, realism is not one of the defining aspects of an RPG. In fact, too much realism is not a good thing in any but the most hardcore simulationist of games. For example, Ultima 7 requires that you feed your characters manually, and that ends up being needless busywork that makes the game less fun (especially when combined with the horrible inventory system). I am of the opinion that, if the game isn't good in the first half hour or so, then the game is flawed.

I could point out that, for example, a semi-decent player could beat the original Super Mario Bros. within a half hour (with warps). If it takes more than that time to get to the meat of the game, then I would argue that the game is flawed because of it. Remember, a player's first impression of the game is important. Again, I don't see how the genre really matters here; there's no reason an RPG should necessarily be more realistic than an action game.

Also, assuming 2e AD&D rules, a character with 25 strength wielding a mace *should* be able to bash down a wall; it seems perfectly sensible that someone who is as strong, or stronger, than a giant should be able to destroy a wall this way.

Computer RPGs, from the very beginning (in particular, games like Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, and (classic) Final Fantasy), have been about tactical control. This is actually the sort of thing that got me into RPGs in the first place; the fact that you could give characters commands, and then they would be carried out, without the player's twitch reflexes coming into play.

To me, this sounds like "RPGs have long since moved away from being RPGs in the first place". To me, strategic combat is part of what makes an RPG an RPG. It actually even bothers me how some RPGs, by allowing characters to attack without being given an explicit command (but not applying it to other actions, like casting spells), have favored the use of boring physical attacks over interesting spells; Baldur's Gate and Wizardry 8 are both guilty of this (though the problem is worse in BG than W8).

(In the KOTOR games, can you set a character to automatically use the same offensive force power until told otherwise or unable to do so?)

This is actually the sort of gameplay that I enjoy in RPGs (though I could do without the "move 4 spaces toward enemy 3; I prefer positioning to be abstracted like in games like older Wizardries).

(Also, I noticed that you have an unterminated quotation; please remember to close your quotes.)

Perhaps there is a good reason why some of the content was cut in the first place? (If playtesters found part of the game to not be fun, then it's a perfectly reasonable decision to remove that content from the game.)

+1 for that

Well... I thought that RPG stands for Role-Playing Game (or Rocked-Propelled Grenade...) and thus it should be focused on playing a role, by making decisions, talking with characters etc, and not be a tactical battle simulator...

Still better than every new Star Wars film since the 90s
It actually gives a shit by going deeper than paperthin "evul!" with the whole sith ideology and its anchorage in lust and such.
And also that every pure jedi is basically a nun lol
Star Wars is not logical? No shit sherlock, it's a medieval children story with a scifi coat. If you want a realistic world and a coherent story watch Babylon 5 instead.

I just played this game for the first time myself and I have to agree somewhat. Maybe it's not my cup of tea but I just hate turn based combat.

I agree.
I was less impressed that the narrative required two teams to operate separately. After the beginning, it felt as if the PC —with a lightsaber— was only in the middle third of the game.
The droid factory is different to the TSLRCM-restored Droid Planet (which is optional in the restoration, too, probably because it was a fetch-quest grind).
The Droid Planet (as restored in TSLRCM) was only one of the chunks of content restored. It is entirely reasonable to conclude that the Droid Planet would have been cleaned up (a lot of blue-pencil redaction is in order), should it have been added to the official release.
As it was, it was pretty tedious, but upon completion the PC gained new Force Powers. That said, I couldn't face playing through it again (especially the joke with the T3 droid as main character—every conversation encoded as beeps, whistles & whines).

There was a huge quantity of text that had been left bugged and unfinished (although the raw scripts were included with the retail game).

This extra dialogue added pages of content to Kreia's (and others') conversations. This is important because the whole point of the game was to play through the end of the galactic republic (with the PC triaging through the game). Done well, it would have led the player into a boiling-frog scenario that demonstrated the republic could only be saved by a reset (and all of the pain and suffering that entailed). As it was released, there is little to entice most people from the Lawful Good playthrough (especially when the PC gains such power by maxing out either end of the single dimension Good–Bad mechanic).
No. The options are range attack, melee attack, defensive and twiddle thumbs.

True, but actually playing as a dark side character doesn't quite live up to that. In fact, many of the dark side "choices" are so absurdly "evul!" that they take you completely out of the game and it doesn't help that the worst thing that can happen is that your Jedi (!) companions give you a lecture. And soon you realize that you really can't influence the story in any way. The game even admits that you are nothing more than a puppet for the most part. It is only right before the end when it is finally possible to do some true dark side scheming with your companions, but once again it doesn't really matter.

I must say that after playing the game as a dark side character I have to agree with the title of this topic, if not with the actual starting post. At least not with every point. The story itself is ok, not great, but also not that bad, the characters are probably the best thing about the entire game, but as I said, everything falls apart with a dark side character, and once that had happened it became difficult for me to ignore other things like the awful inventory, the overall "consoly" controls and the boring combat that is but a shell of the tactical battles of Baldur's Gate and other Inifinity engine games. Much of the dialogue is pretty mediocre as well and so are most quests. Of course, this is true for many RPGs, but in this case I really couldn't see past these issues. Especially since it still has this reputation as one of the best RPGs of all time. I wonder how many of the people who claim that have actually played it in the last ten years or with a dark side character.

Games amazing it's the barebone shit ports on pc that suck. Jump through hoops on fire just to get widescreen cause billionaire Lucas greed mongers can't do an hours worth of work. To much dicking around with jedi kid and his robot sex toy.

*shrug*

Its one of my all time favorite games, but thats because of the wonderful storytelling, good quests, good companions.

The extremely simple yet surprisingly good rulesystem also helps. As does the beautiful graphics.

As a game, combat is mostly trivial until it isnt. Some fights in Taris can be tough at your level, no matter what. Trying to play Scoundrel(2)/Consolar is a reloadfest at that point.

But if you build your character right, its consistently trivial towards the end. Here I'm refering to my own favorite build specifically: https://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_knights_of_the_old_republic_series/kotor1_your_optimal_character

The whole darkside - lightside stuff is just really bad, fullstop. Basically darkside outright sucks because they cant use the really good wisdom boost items and because darkside forces frankly mostly suck. They just deal damage, they dont disable.

I could never get very far in dark side games because the dialog options make me feel like a stupid and whiny bitch. A lot of games go down this route for "evil" playthroughs. Just once l'd like to play a smart, non-pissy evil character like Irenicus or Palpatine.

The stupid choices you are given in BG3 Dark Urge plays make sense because you are playing pretty much a schizophrenic. And in return for the handicap of the bad relations, failed quests etc. you are given the benefits of <spoilers>.

IIRC I mostly just used a bug to farm darkside points when I tried darkside.

After all, bug useage = evil. Right ?