I gunned through KOTOR 1 over the past week-ish while waiting for Pentiment to come out

(originally posted November 14, 2022)

I'm a long-term fan of KOTOR 2, but had never actually played 1. Now I have. S'alright.

Notes

• Bioware sure did just remake Neverwinter Nights with incremental improvements over and over until they couldn't anymore, huh?
• The "here are 3-5 medium-sized hub zones with a big-choice main quest and 3-5 sidequests apiece" structure works well. It's like these guys made DnD games or something.
• The mandatory ship turret battles any time you travel between zones fucking suck. Swoop racing? Also sucks. Pazaak? Everyone knows that it sucks.
• The obligatory Bioware romance subplot is particularly rough here, even compared to its rightfully-maligned original template of Lady Aribeth in NWN (since they were at least able to expand that a bit in Hordes of the Underdark).
• Jolee Bindo seems like the best party member. I assume this is common knowledge.
• Everyone sure went and ignored the heavy implication that the Sand People are the original humans in the Star Wars universe after this game came out.
• Does literally any RPG have a fun final dungeon? No, seriously. I can't think of any.

#games