This game, like Kreia, fills me with conflicting emotions and makes me gaslight myself at points.
Do not install the Restored Content M4-78 version on the workshop. If you get a game-breaking bug on Nar Shaddaa with the transponder, you'll love this review.
When it's good, it's so good it stands tall above the entire franchise, easily mogging even the Episode 3 PS2 game and the JEDI series by EA. When it's bad, woah buddy, it SUCKS. I get that Obsidian, yet again, ran out of time and had to rush yet another game like they did with NV, but around the midpoint this game falls apart and miraculously manages to piece itself back together before the end. Unlike New Vegas though, mods don't really elevate this game, and in the case of M4-78, detriments it.
The writing is excellent. Kreia is probably the most layered character in the entire franchise to date. Every choice is, like their later game New Vegas, so perfectly morally grey and nuanced that you don't feel trapped in the arbitrary video-gamey limits of "Good choice vs comically evil choice". Kreia wants you to use the dark side as a tool, but not succumb to how easy it makes it, and the game reflects that well. I loved the story, even with the ending being sequel-bait for 1) a game that never happened, and 2) something now rendered non-canon by Kathleen Kennedy. I did feel like my choices mattered though, which very few RPGs actually accomplish, but one thing stood out to me: you get teased about being able to redeem yourself toward the end if you did Dark Side path (which I did because Force Crush slaps), but once you hit the Dark Side cap, you can't gain Light Side points. Feels half-baked and unfinished, like a lot of other parts of the game.
The companions are mostly better than KotoR 1. Atton is pretty under-developed once you find out his origins, Mira doesn't really progress, and Bao-Dur seems unfinished. But Visas (my favourite), Kreia, Canderous/Mandalore, HK47 and T3 are all great. The Disciple is a bit of a mixed bag since he wants you to adhere to videogame-y moral goodness, but when you do appease that, he's solid. I didn't care for GO-TO at all, also seemed unfinished.
The villains are trash, though. Sion had a cool backstory but was a bipolar simp for the most part, and Nihilus doesn't even speak despite being this world-devouring Force demigod, and dies like a chump against you. Malak in KotoR 1 had presence, all through the game you would hear of his schemes and machinations and it built beautifully up to that final confrontation on the Star Forge. In its enriched writing of Kreia, all the other antagonists suffered.
The visuals have aged really well for 2004, and probably has my favourite art direction of the franchise.
Compatibility wise, this game has caused me some headaches. I played KOTOR 1 so I knew the play: get rivatuner, cap the game at 60fps with it. I thought that would be enough, since this is supposedly the version of KotoR that got the most love especially with its Steam revamp in the 2010s, but I've had so many weird oddities. I've crashed twice. Cutscenes sometimes caused my whole PC to lag and then Windows Explorer would die. Returning to Dantooine near the end of the game turned my entire monitor off for 20 seconds. I fell through the floor on Malachor V. After 1-2 hours of play, dialogue would rapidly skip during cutscenes and I would have to replay a whole section to get the context I missed. And now the worst one: I had a game breaking bug on Nar Shaddaa during the Transponder Card portion of the quest: I would select my two companions to go onto Goto's ship, and then the game would play the cutscene, but after it, I would still be on Nar Shaddaa with my previous party. Thankfully, someone had this same bug and I found the only solution was to go into the game's .ini config file and add a line to enable console commands, then use the command "warp 351nar" , lo-and-behold, I was teleported onto the ship and was able to beat the game normally thereafter. This bug was particularly frustrating because it happened after one of the worst sequences in gaming history, where Atton, Mira and T3 had to escape hordes of enemies and if like me, you hyper-focused on your Force-Sensitive party members like Visas and Kreia, your run of the mill blaster users absolutely sucked and this section was brutal. No Borderless Windowed option is an L, and given the game's revamp in the 2010s, they could have added that. HK-47 duplicated himself somehow and I played the whole game having two of him on my ship.
I also want to recommend you do not install the restored content mod on the Workshop that includes "M4-78". This part of the game, unbeknownst to me was added by the mod, which EVERYONE recommended I install for years. It is single-handedly one of the worst, most boring parts of any game I have ever played. So much walking. So much backtracking. Your own character can even tell the droids how tedious it is, so I can see why it was cut and if you don't want the most boring 3 hours of your life wasted, please do not install it.
The combat is my favourite part of this game. Yes, it's turn-based, but unlike KotoR 1 having a really up-and-down progression, KotoR 2 allows you to spec into your desired build early and the payoffs are huge. I love that Visas mirrors what you learn and she becomes your apprentice of sorts, copying you during combat. I love Force Storm and Force Crush-ing my way through dozens of enemies who barely leave a scratch on me even on the harder difficulty. Destroy Droid on hordes of HK units make you feel like more of a god than the mid Force Unleashed games went out of their way to instil in you with awful Starkiller. Playing a Dark Side user has never felt this good.
The problem, however, is structure. This game swaps POVs more than a George R.R. Martin novel. I thought it was going to be isolated to the prologue with T3, but nope, you will be swapping characters well over 10 times throughout the playthrough and not all characters were made equal. The above Nar Shaddaa part was bloody miserable and I'd rather hack my genitals off and become a Hollow Knight fan than ever play it again. You play as droids multiple times, you play as Mira, useless Atton, but you never get to be Visas outside of one part of the game, and you can never be Kreia. I would much rather the player character play the bulk of the sections: very few games pull off constant perspective switching, MGS2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are the only good examples off the top of my head.
Overall I would rate this game a 6/10. 60% of it is some of the best there ever was, but that 40% makes me want to deepthroat a Mossberg shotgun and paint my ceiling.
