I really enjoyed this game. Interesting story and characters. Good music. Challenging but rewarding turn-based combat. Camping is a balancing act of managing your characters' skills with the current conditions of your party and needs. Fun leveling up system. Good length at 61 hours playtime. Multiple endings. Native 21:9 support. I didn't encounter any major bugs and it ran pretty smooth. Choices that matter in the game. A realistic setting for the most part. So why not 5 stars? Very little voiced dialog. I know it's a small studio, but other small studios have managed to include full voice acting and it makes a big difference. Also, some of the gameplay mechanics need a little bit more description, particularly building your homestead. You really need to focus on either power or prosperity when upgrading your homestead,not both, but this isn't explained to you at all. It's possible to completely screw up a character by leveling up the wrong skills at the wrong time, making that character useless in combat and no way to undo that mistake. A high cooking skill won't help you much when someone's about to plant an axe into your forehead. Your characters all have an affinity system that affects how they perform in combat based on how much they like your main character based on the choices that you've made. However, there's no way to tell which characters have what personality types, so you can't really know how your decisions will effect anyone. And lastly, wolves are the most dangerous enemy in the game. On multiple occasions, a pact of wolves wiped out half my party in the first round of combat. Those random encounters with wolves were the most frustrating part of the game for me. All in all, it's a great but not prefect game. If you enjoy rpg's with turn-based combat, give this a try.
I really wanted to like this. I loved both Sniper Elite 3 and 4, and well, that's the problem. This game pales in comparison to those later titles in every way. Where this is especially evident is in the level design. Whereas 3 and 4 feature large, open levels with a series of objectives that you can complete in any order, V2 is much more linear with much smaller and less open levels. There's no planning or multiple paths to your next objective. Stealth also seems broken in this game. Where in 3 and 4, cover, concealment, and light-level all factored into your ability to remain undetected, those features seem to be missing in this game. Concealment doesn't exist and being in a dark room doesn't seem to make any difference in the enemy's ability to detect you. That leaves cover, which the enemy seems to be able to see through most of the time. And that cover mechanic is terrible, requiring you to map a key to your keyboard or controller to enter and exit cover instead of the more fluid experience in the later titles in this series. Well, it's a sniper game so the long distance rifle shots are spot on, right? Wrong. Fire your rifle one time and every enemy automatically knows exactly where you are and starts laying down fire on your position. Doesn't matter how far away or well hidden you were. This disincentives ever using your rifle and instead makes the silenced pistol the primary weapon and the Thompson the secondary weapon when your backed into a corner and spraying every enemy that walks through the door (because they all know exactly where you are, remember?). The graphics don't seem to be all that "remastered", except maybe a slight improvement in the lighting. You'd honestly have to put screenshots side by side to tell the difference. And "janky" is a good word to describe the animations. Overall, it's not worth the asking price of 35 dollars. I'd say pick it up if it's 10 dollars or less. Or better yet, buy Sniper Elite 3 and 4.
I didn't really care for either of the two Borderlands games that I've played. I didn't find the shooter aspects to be very compelling and the insane amounts of guns (kind of Borderlands' shtick) was just an annoying interruption of the flow to me; stopping every two minutes to see if the gun I just found has a higher dps than the one I equipped two minutes earlier. So I wouldn't have even considered this game if it wasn't for a pretty steep discount during a GOG sale. I'm glad that I did buy it, because it's everything that I found was lacking in the "real" Borderlands games. It's a fun story with interesting characters, good pacing, and genuine humor. And taking about 8 hours to complete divided into five chapters, it's not the kind of game that you have to devote a huge portion of your life to. Long enough that you get your money's worth, but short enough that it doesn't get in the way of your real life. Unlike other Telltale games, this story is much more light hearted and humor filled. It's not as drama heavy as The Wolf Among Us or as dark as The Walking Dead. The only problems that I have with this game are the same problems that seem to be inherent in all Telltale games. One, as far as gameplay is concerned, there's not much of it. Basically, it's just a series of dialog choices and quick time events. And two, your choices and actions don't really have any impact on the story itself, but rather details in the story. Things are going to play out, more or less, the same regardless of what you do. This is a game that you play to enjoy the story, the characters, and the humor. If you've enjoyed other Telltale games in the past, or you appreciate a funny action/adventure, then give this game a shot. If, on the other hand, you don't enjoy the Telltale experience, this game isn't going to change your mind.
I played this game back in 2004 when it was first released and it was a bug filled pile of crap. When I saw it on sale recently here on GOG, and after reading about the Restored Content Mod that is supposed to fix a lot of the issues with the original release, I decided to give this game another shot. Sadly, my experience isn't any better than the one that I had 13 years ago. Worse, actually. I ran into a few glitches here and there right from the start, but it wasn't anything major and didn't distract from the fun. All that changed when I landed on Nar Shaddaa. I played through Goto's Yacht, rescued the exile, disabled the ship's power, and made my way back to the Ebon Hawk. A cutscene plays showing the destruction of Goto's Yacht. All good. Now, at this point, the game is supposed to cut back to the interior of the Ebon Hawk where several scripted conversations happen, and then proceed back to the surface of Nar Shaddaa to meet up with the Jedi that you're looking for. Only that doesn't happen in my case. I show up on the Ebon Hawk alright, only no one else is on board. No scripted conversations. No way to leave the Ebon Hawk or pilot it anywhere. No way to progress the game at all. Just full stop. I tried everything I could to get it to work; even uninstalling the RCM and playing through Goto's Yacht again. Spent hours to no avail. Got pissed off and uninstalled the game. I know that many people have played through this game, with and without the RCM, without this sort of thing happening to them. I even managed to beat the game back in 2004, bugs included. I guess I'm just unlucky this time around, which is a real shame since there really is a great story and fun gameplay here. But I'm about 24 hours into the game and I just don't have the patience to uninstall/reinstall and start all over from the beginning in the hope that I don't run into this bug again. YMMV.
Story - Decent. It's pretty standard "bad guy wants to rule the galaxy because reasons and you have to stop him" stuff. It's not at all clever or unique but it is well told and fits within the Star Wars universe nicely. The "twist" in the story is pretty much shoved in your face from the start and isn't at all surprising when it's finally revealed. Still, it's light years better than anything George Lucas did with the prequel trilogy. Characters - Really good. This is where Bioware shines. They've always managed to write interesting characters in their games and KOTOR is no exception. Sure the characters are a little flat, but they're still more interesting than the characters in 95% of games these days. I would have liked to see more depth to those characters but there's only so much you can do with a 40 hour story without seriously slowing down the action. Voice Acting - Mostly excellent. All of the English language voice acting is spot on and you'll probably recognize a few of the voices (Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid). The alien language voice acting is just mindless gobbledygook repeated ad nauseam and gets real old, real quick. Fortunately, you can advance the dialog as you read it so you don't have to listen to some character saying "chumbawumbabumby" to you for the thousandth time. Sound and Music - The sound effects are straight from the movies and sound just like you remember. There are some of the licensed music from the movies, most notably the Star Wars Fanfare, and the rest of original music is stylistically similar and fits in nicely. Gameplay - Average. It's basically a pausable, real-time combat system running Dungeons & Dragons rules. The character classes are pretty basic and definitely encourage specialization. Therein lies the problem. Once you specialize your characters and figure out a strategy for defeating enemies, the challenge of the game mostly goes away, more so once the Jedi are involved. The game never encourages, let alone forces, you to explore different methods. What works on one enemy will work on all enemies. And the Jedi classes are so overpowered that you'll probably never use any other characters once you have a few of them in your party. Although easy, it's still pretty fun. There isn't a problem in this universe that can't be solved with a lightsaber; that's both a good thing and a bad thing in this case. Pacing - Bad. This is where the game falls short. Why do you have to play through a quarter of the game before meeting your first Jedi? Why do you have to play through a full third of the game before becoming a Jedi yourself? Those are the questions that I'm asking myself while playing this game. Fact - In a universe where laser swords are a thing, regular swords are boring. Once your character does become a Jedi, things do get a bit more fun and the game opens up a bit. The openness is mostly an illusion though, as you can freely travel to four different worlds and complete mostly linear objectives at each one. But it does keep the story moving along at least. Then it's back to the linear progression through the final two areas of the game and your showdown with the big bad guy. In total, more than half the game just feels like a slow slog through busy work as you're trying to get to the fun. Graphics - Good. It's an old game but it still looks pretty decent. I don't really play games for the graphics, so as long as I can tell what things are supposed to be, it's good enough for me. There were a few areas of the game that I thought could really benefit from a better lighting engine for ambiance purposes. Also, no widescreen support! The game is old, but it's not that old, and widescreen televisions have been around since the late 1990's. Thankfully, there's a mod that fixes the widescreen issue. Other than those things, I have no issues with the graphics. Final thoughts - It's probably the best Star Wars themed game ever made and I don't see that title going to any other game any time soon. Even without the Star Wars license behind it, it's still a pretty good game and well worth your time and money. I do have issues with the pacing, it taking far to long to get to the fun part, but it never felt like a grind. Just slow. And although it's far more linear than it pretends to be, it uses that linearity to tell an interesting, if predictable and cliche, story. The characters (particularly the party characters), although somewhat flat, are fun and well acted. I only encountered a few bugs and all but one of those were just minor annoyances most likely related to the fact that I was using a mod to run the game in 1080p widescreen. Later Bioware games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect do everything that KOTOR does, only better. But this is still worth playing, especially for any Star Wars fan. Total game time - Just over 38 hours.
This game isn't perfect. I'm not all of the way through it yet, but already I've come to several parts that were very frustrating. Most often, this was due to being too far from a save point during a difficult section and constantly having to retrace my steps every time I died. Also, there are times in the game that I've felt completely lost as to what I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to be going. So a little more direction would have been helpful. However...... Get beyond the few sticking points of this game and what you have is a great example of what has become known as a Metroidvania. I've never really understood where the Castlevania influences are in these games, but the Metroid influence is unmistakable. Game play is typical of these sort of games; you adventure around collecting new equipment that allows you to access areas previously unreachable, in turn granting you access to new equipment. TAG also has a charming story with a surprisingly deep back story that keeps your adventure connected with the history of the land that your exploring. Not since Cave Story or Knytt Stories have I had this much fun in a Metroidvania. The controls do feel a little mushy at times, like the character is wading through waist deep syrup and walking on ice; Super Meat Boy controls these are not. But that and the aforementioned save game locations not always being close enough to a difficult area are really my only grips with this game. To get something this good for free makes this the best deal on GOG right now.
An enjoyable game made somewhat frustrating by the design mechanics and limitations of the era in which it was made. But if you can overlook that, it offers a fairly unique RPG experience. Pros: +An interesting story filled with twists and turns. +Many and varied side quests. +Robust character creation. One of the best I've ever seen, in fact. +Multiple ways to complete most quests. +The technology verses magic mechanic is more than just story filler or world building. It affects your character build greatly. +Many different NPC's to recruit. Or go it alone. It's up to you. +Lots of exploration. You can always find a back door or a window to climb through or some hidden hatch that will offer an alternative route. +Doesn't pigeon-hole you into a fixed role. Want to play as an evil character? Go right ahead. +Lots of hidden locations on the world map to find. +Lots of replayability. Without using a guide, you can probably play this game through 3 or 4 times and still not experience everything. Cons: -It doesn't do a good job of explaining certain gameplay mechanics to you. Definitely RTFM. -Can be quite buggy. The unofficial patch helps somewhat, but it's still not perfect. It's mostly small stuff though, like combat music that won't stop. -It's quite possible to build a weak, ineffective character. The game expects you to specialize to some extent and will punish you if you spread your character points too thin. Don't make a jack-of-all-trades character. -Ore Golems. These are enemies that when attacked with a melee weapon, cause that weapon to take damage. The problem is that the NPC's in your party aren't smart enough to figure that out and will happily smash their weapons against the ore golems until the weapon breaks. It can get frustrating at times and definitely shows its age. But it's also one of the most unique RPG games that I've played in years. If you can tolerate its old-school design, I highly recommend giving this one a go.
