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My favorite memory of this game was playing a sith I named Oathbreaker specifically so the first npc you meet would say "How can you betray your oath Oathbreaker!?"
I named my jedi character light dove to show my devotion to the light side, than a neutral character cloudy seagul... my friends looking at my saved file was very confused
I remember wondering how Mission, Carth and Zaalbar would be convinced to go along with the Sith ending. I presumed Revan just wouldn't tell them. Boy oh boy was 10 year old me in for a surprise.
Especially if you did light side route most of the game, but then are presented with this choice. You naive fools, I've been biding my time, and you never suspected a thing. Let the culling commence.
You can do dark side run without the culling. If I remember correctly you can ignore the offer on the last planet and then switch to the dark side right before the final boss
You fight them in the ship, too, right? Like, the classic BioWare safe haven, the place you have jovial laughs with your party members, just gets turned into a battleground with these characters you’ve spent so much time leveling and equipping, and they try to put, you, down.
The game does allow you full choice. I strongly advise hardcore people to do 2-3 runs. Full light and save everyone, full dark murderhobo, and there is a legit neutral path to the game. Neutral is underdeveloped but it does exist. And you can also use the 3 runs to do saber, magic, and guns. Magic is obviously better dark. Guns is the hardest so save that for last. So the run should be light saber, dark magic, neutral guns. If you want to go that far. If you're commited to only one run, mix saber and magic, who cares.
One thing that Yahtz undersells is how far BACK your teammates could get stuck. Like, you’d look up after 15 minutes of exploring the Kyber crystal caves and Bastilla would be banging her head on the sliding door in the spaceport. To make up for this, the game would ramp up the character’s movement speed to get them caught up to the party. So, when I was a kid, I would purposefully get a party member stuck, get as far away from them as possible, and watch them unlock the Speed Force as they revved their janky walk cycles up to Mach 3. Got back at HK for all the “meatbag” comments by giving him repetitive stress injuries in a mandatory Robo-lympics.
i mostly disagree with him in this review. but I 100% got NAM flashbacks when he mentioned how far back the companions would be when u want to leave an area
To that last point, which is fair: I think it was mostly out of desperation. The Jedi were losing the war pretty bad and Gary Glitter's memories were their hail mary. Keeping him close to... hang on...Gerry Shepherd meant that when his memories of the glam rock lifestyle came back he would have someone to keep him away from the childrens.
They needed to find his secret studio, that only him and his producer knew about. They couldn't search all over randomly. They needed a guy who had been there before, even if he hadn't remembered it. And it works. If some random guys went to the places he had been, no one would have spoken to them. Or murdered them immediately.
@@vigorouslethargyLast I heard, him and his friends confirmed the video was staged and showed the full thing as a form of protest against them appealing net neutrality (yeah, remember that thing that TOTALLY was going to be the end of the internet?)
There was a meme going around a couple years back, showing a soon-to-be-dead Count Dooku with the caption "When I joined the Space Wizards Who Betray Everyone," etc etc.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Too many fans take the line "From my point of view the jedi are evil" at face value- said quote coming from the guy with demon eyes who just killed hundreds of children
I suspect Yahtzee fell prey to journalist-itis (AKA time constraints) at the end there because they explicitly tell you why they made the (absolutely naff) decision to try and make you lighter and softer Gary Glitter--they want the bassist to guide him along and thread the needle in such a way that he can help them with the finding the secret to his mind melting music by remembering bits of what they erased without him remembering everything and falling to the Prog Rock Side again.
Speaking as someone who played the original in high school, that twist was a big deal. I was the only guy in class with an XBOX, everyone else had PS2's, and I only had dial up internet. It was pretty much reserved for school work since mom hated having the phone out of service. I'm kind of nostalgic for the days when pop culture could still have actual surprises.
I moved the direction of avoiding ALL trailers/reviews/forums/etc if I want to play something until after I'm done playing. I occasionally get randomly spoiled in an unrelated youtube comment section, which is really annoying, but it works for the most part
God, I remember the days of "phone or online gaming". I used to phone my best pal to let him know which Runescape server I would be on and when before setting the modem up
Yahtzee obviously didn't pay any attention as he played (or just quit super early in the story). The council straight up tells you this. What an embarassing way to advertise the Pateron "hey if you give us money you can pick the game that Yahtzee reviews without actually playing!". Pathetic stuff.
Yeah honestly it's a bit disappointing that Yahtzee, who claims to care so much about writing in games, looked at an RPG considered to be one of the best in it's genre PURELY due to the strength and high quality of it's writing... and say 'it's only Star Wars, who cares?' Great job Yahtz, you successfully reviewed an old game just to say 'it's old and I didn't pay attention to the writing'. Gold star.
To be fair, it is massive contrivance when you can achieve the same results through the use of spies. I also, highly doubt that he is the only person who knows the location of a gigantic super weapon unless he singlehandedly built it himself without the need for construction workers, managers, security, caterers and all the other stuff necessary to build a supermassive military fortification -- almost all of whom would be far more likely to give up the necessary information without the need for subterfuge or torture. And speaking of torture, just like real life "good guys", I'm certain the Jedi would rationalise the use of torture (Or more likely hire criminals to use torture on their behalf) to gain the information via the rhetoric of being for "the greater good". The truth is, the reason things were done the way they were was so that the game could throw that twist at players.
i hate to be That Guy™, but i JUST replayed the game and you are given a direct and clear answer on why the jedi council let the memory-wiped person be a soldier for the republic. it's because the jedi knew that memory-wiped person would have flashbacks (especially in bastila's presence) and those flashbacks are meant to lead them to the big evil dark side thing you're supposed to blow up/take control of at the end. this is directly stated by bastila right after the reveal takes place. i genuinely have no idea how yahtzee missed that.
I think one of my favorite things about this game is how they let me into the Expanded Universe's take on the Dark Side. It's not evil, just selfish and ruthless. The Mando's whole philosophy of "If you can't protect you and yours it isn't our problem, but kicking puppies is nothing worth bragging about ." is considered Dark Side.
And this whole philosophy is something I love way more than George's original idea that the Dark Side is pure evil, and the Force is naturally good. This philosophy is why I'd want to be a Sith rather than a Jedi. Not because I'd want to be evil, but because the Jedi are detached from everything, while the Sith embrace emotions and possessions. Including positive things, like love and happiness, as cheesy as it sounds. It's why Anakin turned to the dark side in the first place, to save his wife.
The problem is that the dark side is ultimately self serving. You see that in the sith academy. A lady who became a sith because the Jedi weren't doing enough to fight slavery, ended up completely forgetting about her goal as she was caught in endless power struggles.
@@leadpaintchips9461 Being too self serving leads to evil. Stepping on others in order to climb. The sith I mentioned wants you to help her kill her monster in order to take his place. Afterwards, unless you helped her see the error of her ways, she tries to kill you too, in order to have no loose ends.
@@lefteron6804 But it isn't more inherently evil itself, it's as evil as the detachment that the Jedi practice. The point that it hammers home is that extremism leads to evil. Jedi being evil because of their detachment ignoring the suffering of others, while the Sith being evil to fulfill their emotional impulses. There is no good or evil in the opposing viewpoints inherently, just in how the individual executes them.
@@Kevin-cf9nl are you thinking of KOTOR 2? I’m wondering because blasters are notoriously weak in 1, but 2 lets you buff them with force speed to disintegrate enemies. Mira in particular is good for this.
not OP, but i remember playing kotor 1 with dual wield blasters. i even remember some of the details, like the fact that the dueling ring blaster from taris remains one of the best choices for the whole game and that the game was actually quite easy up until the final boss, where i had to resort to spamming nades.
@@neon1321 Both games have force speed, it's that the upgrade system lets you buff the crap out of guns in 2, while in the first game, you can only give good upgrades to lightsabers.
@@R3GARnator 2 also let you get a power that would reflect blaster bolts even when not using a lightsaber. It also had lightsaber finesse which allowed you to use your Dex mod with lightsabers instead of Str
I think Yahtzee would probably like the story of KOTOR 2 more than that of KOTOR 1. 2 definitely takes a more darker approach to the Star Wars universe than most games.
Kotor 2s story needs a fair amount of unravelling to make sense. Takes most people 2 playthroughs in my experience. Judging by his misunderstanding of even this basic plot, I'm not sure kotor 2 would actually be a good fit tbh.
@@arnox4554 *slaps wet blanket* OUHHHCH KOTOR 2 sounds like exactly the game Yahtzee would pan and overlook since something something blah blah Aussie wit
@@TheBfutgreg He pans games because it is his job. He isn't a reviewer, he is a critic. It is actually his job to nitpick and point out the glaringly bad the fans of a game overlook (I am a fan of these games, but I do agree with him, and having the big twist reveal spoiled didn't help the game's case.) Thing is, I think Yahtzee might enjoy Kotor 2 MORE because it is a proper deconstruction of the Jedi and their influence. And when I say proper, I mean it highlights the issues but does acknowledge their merits, just not as glowingly.
As long as he played the expanded (modded) edition that adds back in a non-terrible ending, it'd be a much better game. Can't say the additional planets added anything though
Re: the movement locking up after fights - If anyone else has encountered this, change your framerate cap in the settings to 60 or less; that looks to consistently fix it. The same applies to the sequel.
Also happens when the game's been running for a long time I've found; there's a memory leak issue that causes this & also the auto-skipping dialogue for KotOR 1 & 2
Wonder if Yahtzee got to spend any amount of time with the meatbag-hating droid. Something tells meno, otherwise, its decidedly kindred brand of humor would've likely gotten at least a mention.
5:30 it's not the BEST plan but they were hoping they would subconsciously lead to the markers and eventually lead the Jedi to the Star Forge that's pumping out all the droids and ships for the Sith. They were already forcefully bonded with their Jedi secret weapon Bastilla so they figured that would be enough of a 'leash' to rein them in if they needed to.
the reason the jedi council want you to be retrained is because they need you to figure out how the sith got so powerful, with such a big fleet (the starforge). The plan is to lie to you, convince you that bastila and you are 'linked', so that they can have a jedi watching over you as you retrace your steps and give the jedi what they need to beat the sith. They know it's dangerous, but they need info you have or the war is lost.
Let's be perfectly honest, Yahtzee obviously phoned this one in. You're right, the reasons for the Council's actions are completely explained by the game. Based on the video abruptly cutting off at that point with no dive into the deeper part of the story, it's obvious Yahtzee quit very early or never bothered listening to the game's dialogue. What a terrible way to advertise the Patreon. "If you donate, I'll quarter ass a review for a game you love!" It's fine if he doesn't like it, but come on, at least play it for real before dropping a review.
@@coltondotdev yh I feel like he only played through the first two planets and then gave up, banking on knowing the reveal beforehand to be enough to finish the review
@@coltondotdevespecially because he could be honest about it. "the game was so off putting I couldn't bring myself to the finish it" is a valid review
@@coltondotdev In fairness, it is a bit confusing, because everything we see is that both of the forces are actually more-or-less equal: the Sith are usually too busy killing each-other to fight the Republic, neutral parties treat both sides as about equal, the Jedi are dealing with farmer disputes instead of the war, and the Sith are basically running the entire conflict from one ship, the destruction of which would probably leave the Sith with no higher officers left to command the ordinary soldiers effectively. Thus, everything we actually see indicates a stalemate that will probably end in the Sith imploding, not the destruction of the Republic, which makes it weird that the Jedi are taking such a big risk.
@@zigslotheon Dark Forces 2 was a game from the mid 90s usually referred to as "Jedi Knight" as Dark Forces 2 was a subtitle in the game title - i.e. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. This made sense from a marketing perspective because it shares little in common with the original Dark Forces which was just a semi-decent Doom clone. The light/dark force mechanics are very primitive as whether or not you follow the dark/light side is based on the powers you choose and how many NPCs you kill but to the poster's point by the standards of the era it was pretty innovative to have two separate story paths/outcomes based on your actions in the game especially in an FPS. The game story itself is massively cheesy 90s FMV schlock but for anyone that's a fan of cringe inducing campiness & modern "boomer shooters" it holds up pretty well. However probably wouldn't recommend to anyone playing without nostalgia goggles unless they're into digital entertainment archeology...
The first game I started modding, I was about 13 and I made a personal mod that expanded the assassin guild so they'd sell you weapons and armour. That's when I learned the trick the Devs clearly used: If you don't want to voice more audio lines, make them speak an alien language and just recycle audio tracks
And it actually is one of the best builds in the game if done right. You can get off a frankly insane number of attacks with pretty much perfect ability to hit.
Game 1 literally scales like cock if you choose blaster skills as a jedi. You could do it but it's fucking garbo. Only if it's your 10000th time playing it is it fun. Kotor 2 makes it much more viable but still kinda ass.
"Hah! You are a Jedi, you can't hit me from that far away!" "You're forgetting one thing Sith-" *pulls out blaster* "I WAS A BOUNTY HUNTER BEFORE JOINING THE JEDI!"
If there's one mission/world I appreciate in KOTOR is the Sith Training world. Where it gives you a different perspective on what the Sith code is like and how it should go but how no one wants to live by it since its become bastardized to 'be the biggest bastard in the galaxy'.
@@Rystefnit's a good look at how actual cults work. They make a real pretty layer of good ideas and nice emotions on top, so people that are just starting out can feel good before they find out about the the ritual sacrifice daggers and blood circles.
As someone else who'd had the twist spoiled by cultural osmosis and played the game in my adult years with no nostalgia to blind me, I can see where Yahtzee is coming from, even if I don't agree. That being said, I found the background-dice based combat to be a neat change of pace and enjoyed the challenge. Granted, I do seem to have missed several of the issues that he came up with, being that I don't recall any bugs and only ever used Stealth in the designated Stealth areas because it is simply not a gameplay loop I tend to enjoy, so I'm sure that those would have dampened my enthusiasm a fair bit. Either way, I'm happy to see that Yahtzee gave this game a try. Even when I disagree with some things, he's always entertaining about it. I WILL admit that it is one of those games that holds up a LOT better when you mod it to Korriban and back. I'll also admit that I seem to be one of the few people that enjoyed Swoop Racing...
"I can see where (name of game reviewer) is coming from, even if I don't agree", is a sign of good reviewer who has cultivated a good audience. I'm not much of a gamer, but from what I've seen I think there is a decent chance I would like at least some of the games Yahtzee doesn't. And yet, him giving them bad reviews mostly makes me think "that's something to think about" or "That is a valid criticism, but in the end let's agree to disagree, thanks for all the awesome videos, Yahtz".
3:10 There's literally a menu tab for New Items. Yeah, nostalgia keeps me playing it twenty years later but at least be accurate in your disembowelment and not cutting up nearby furniture.
Yeah but you have to periodically click on every item you pick up so that it's not flagged as "new" anymore (even if it's just basic medpac #297) so that you can easily sort out the *actually* new stuff that's important, like the datapads that have puzzle-critical information on them. That is a good tip to give to anyone going back to the game, but it's also a workaround for an interface that could certainly be less clumsy. On the other hand, there is something cozy about an inventory with no space or weight restrictions whatsoever. Carry everything you've ever picked up all the way to the end of the game if you want, KOTOR don't care.
The way Yahtzee snarks on the faces in KOTOR reminded me of Deus Ex. Which was decidedly more primitive than this. Which made me look up Yahtzee's review of the same. He snarks on the bad graphics there, too, but points out that Deus Ex is a truly amazing game regardless. The contrast between that review and this is sharp. Oh, and for the guy who is now forced to reinstall Deus Ex and play it again, since that's the rule whenever anyone mentions it, I apologize.
Oh, Yahtz. The thing people are nostalgic for isn't just the story. It's the party interactions and the differences that happen along the way/towards the end. Like if you're a bad guy, you inevitably kill half your party. Party members have dialogue interactions out on the field. Quite a few of the characters had pretty good voice over that still holds up. HK-47 is a comedy gold mine. If you didn't play the first one, then I assume you didn't play the second one. You're missing out on possibly the best written Sith Lord of all time. Hopefully your patrons browbeat you into doing that one, too. *fondly remembers your first Demon's Souls review, which went over how much ya hated it* Yeah, yeah, he'll come around, some day.
Ok I’m dusting off the Cheeto dust for this one. The MC, who turned out to be the ex big bad of the story, (not using names to avoid spoilers of a 20+ year old game) was sent in as a random soldier under Bastilla’s command intentionally. The reason was they had a force bond from when Bastilla saved the MC before when their mind was damaged and he was captured. The lore of the game is that the MC and the other bad guys , were originally good, but went to the unknown regions to finish a war. They took with them a big fleet but when they returned evil the ships they possessed were multiple times larger (both in size and sheer numbers) than anything they left with. The Jedi and Republic wanted to know A. What happened to them to make them turn. B. How they managed to get so many ships and the crew for them in such a short number of years. One thing to note that the Republic routinely decimated sith fleets but the sheer number of ships meant that any republic reprieve was short lived and it seemed that the sith fleet was growing larger and not shrinking despite the losses. Naturally only the top leaders of the big bads knew this, so they hatched a plan to capture the MC and succeeded but his mind was damaged. So they implanted false memories into his mind and put him under the command of Bastilla who could share any memories he remembered of both events (his memories appeared in the form of visions). Once it was figured out the Republic could launch an attack on the site supplying the Sith the weapons and hopefully end the war since all the sith logistics would basically be destroyed overnight since they were in complete reliance on it and hopefully find out what happened to start this war to begin with. The reason why both Bastilla and the MC were in space and not in permanent Jedi Daycare was A. The council hoped traveling would help spark the MC’s inert memories and B. Bastilla was incredibly important to the war effort and she simply couldn’t be spared unless the council has ironclad proof of where to go. After the attack and the MC’s memories started returning and pointed to specific locations, only then could she be spared to help follow the trail. Big bad, MC…..so painful to type this.
Exactly. This is explained point blank to you in dialog. It's the kind of thing you can only miss if you're skipping every cutscene or didn't play past the first half of the game.
5:20 They do actually explain that, Yahtzee, if you had been paying attention. I'm surprised someone as interested in narrative design as you wasn't paying closer attention to the narrative.
my first playtrough was with a Han Solo type of character, just because i didn't like the way melee combat worked (i was just coming from Jedi Academy and expected this to have a similar gameplay back then)
I like Yahtzee but he's one of those "Too cool for this nerdshit" nerds that believe they are above the cheeto dust and think making midwit comments about realism in fiction and video games is genius. Which is fine, that isn't even the worst part, it's the actually drooling mongs that blindly agree with all of those takes and think that by parroting it makes them look intelligent that is the annoying part. Did you know you can't hear sound in space? What were they thiiiiiiiiinnnnkkkkkiiiiiinnnnnggggg?!
I would love to hear Yahtzee’s thoughts on KOTOR 2. Having played both for the first time this year, I will say the first is rather basic as stories go. The second, however, has quickly become my favorite Star Wars story ever told. The jank is still there, but the voice acting and the dialogue make up for it in my opinion. Would love to see the game on Fully Ramblomatic.
I find it funny how he complains about the awkardly delivered dialogue and yet when a jedi looks your character in the eyes and tells you point blank exactly the reasons as to why the Jedi Council did what they did with no subtleness or double meanings whatsoever Yahtzee still spent 30 seconds of the video admitting he either wasn't paying attention or he couldn't understand a game rated for teens.
The thing is: it's hard to pay attention when you don't enjoy the game. I'm not sure why ppl voted for it since they should know Yahtz does this quite often.
Videos like this are always real firm reminders that Yahtzee is an entertainer first and foremost, and an actual critic a distant second. First, the game DOES have the ability to sort items by type, it's very very easy to sort the inventory by specific item types to get to just notes, or just armor, or just consumables. Second (spoiler alert), the game *blatantly* explains why Revan is mind-wiped, retrained as a Jedi, and made to act as a Republic agent: because the Jedi do not kill unless they must, he is retrained because he was reconnecting to the Force anyway (and the Council was so desperate in the fight against Malak they were hoping Revan would turn to the Light, otherwise they'd lose anyway), and he's assigned to Bastila's personal guard for the express purpose of her keeping an eye on him. If you wanna claim that's lazy or stupid writing, go hog wild, but the only possible way Yahtzee could have missed this is if he didn't actually play the game.
Image if it wasn’t on Steam. Yahtzee would have been forced to play the Xbox backwards compatibility version where he didn’t need to worry about getting it setup lol
Kinda funny ramble, but some of those story critiques are so inane. *SPOILERS FOR OLD GAME* I mean... we're talking about a universe centered around The Force, so the wisest Jedi members seeing Revan, Bastila, & co. survive the Taris bombardment would incline them to believe this was no accident. Revan having visions of his past self with Malik guiding him to every Star Map coordinate reinforces how The Force is practically compelling him to retread his past steps towards redemption. On top of the mystical evidence, it's simply a case of pragmaticism: the Jedi are stretched too thin across the galaxy and there's no shot sitting Council members could reach Korriban's Star Map. So, it's a potent mix of desperate times and The Force compelling a diverse band of misfits to go on a dangerous mission to find and destroy that story's super-weapon. The Council literally walks you through most of this on Dantooine.
I find it rich that Yahtz keep going about how good graphics aren't required for a game to be good, but then spends half a video dumping on the graphics of a 20 year old game.
My favorite part of the dialogue sequences is that the character will keep animating on loop until you choose your response. Watching Carth gesticulate wildly during his speaking and then continually gesticulate in the same pattern over and over kept me from responding right away as I tried to pick the right timing to have the animation jerk into the next sequence in the most awkward way possible.
I remember playing a fair bit of the MMORPG SWTOR, and while it did loose me after a while when the faffing about between story missions got too tedious, I did love the spectrum of morality you could pull with that game. I played an Imperial spy, who's choices were based on what was the best for the Sith Empire, within the laws of the Sith Empire. A mission where a civilian was forced to lure me into a trap because some mobsters had his family hostage; I rescued his family, but sentenced him to a short stay in the local jail. A Sith lord from a prestigious family is interfering with the war effort on this world for his personal gain; Put to death for sabotaging the Empire, regardless of the backlash. A people of an outer rim world are getting genocided; Help them if they agree to join the Empire in it's war against the Old Republic. It also meant my guy was usually the most smug and sarcastic bastard imaginable, and with the voice I chose, made you want to punch him in the face. I loved that P.O.S.
@@AkiRa22084haha! Don't underestimate the ingenuity of a kid with too much determination for his own good. One is chucking grenades and running until he dies. The other is that he can get stuck on the geometry of his cell and you can just stand in a corner blasting off pot shots until he finally crumbles. I do not recommend either one.
⚠️Spoiler warning⚠️ The reason they kept Revan around was because only he and Malak knew of the location of the starforge and its deciphered secrets. Starforge was a space factory that had practically limitless resources to create an army for centuries, millenia even. It was effectively a hail mary and prior to the events of KOTOR, Revan and Malak lead the Jedis who fought in the Mandalorian Wars, as they were punished by the Jedi Council for using a space nuke of the Mandolorian homeworld and were viewed as fallen to the dark side.
The Star Forge is basically a copy of the Death Star. While the Star Forge loses that "not so subtle commentary on nuclear weapons" quality that the Death Star had, I think the Star Forge is way scarier than the death star because a giant superfactory will win you a war.
PSA if you're a new player trying to buy the game on PC: the GoG version is the simplest to get running on a modern Windows operating system. It's also the simplest to mod if you're trying to get it to work in widescreen or something like that.
The version for original Xbox is backwards compatible on Series X/S and Xbox One if you want the absolute easiest setup but I do think the game is better with mouse and keyboard than controller.
This is legit one of the best games ever made. Really surprised by this review. The game deserves a lot more credit. I beat it again recently and it totally holds up.
'Games are art unless I personally don't like the movie they're based on in which case they're trash nobody should pay attention to, and anyone who claims they like it is just nostalgia-blind even if they only played it for the first a week ago.'
KotOR is amazing. The best part is that it was followed by KotOR 2. Not just an incredible star wars game, but an incredible star wars story in itself. Just keep Vsync on and half the bugs go away.
IIRC the reason the character in question was on the ship thinking they were just some random soldier was because the Jedi Council had gone back to the home base but the Jedi in charge of keeping an eye on them got diverted to Taris where shenanigans proceeded to happen and thus the game begins. Carth just assumed they're a soldier because "Well who TF else would be on the ship‽ It's a military transport!"
I love Yahtzee but I was hoping for a little more from this than "Man this is old" for one half and "I don't understand the twist" for the other half. I didn't expect him to like it but it sounds like he barely even played it.
I have a very bad visceral first memory of this game. We're renting it as soon as it came out. Put it in my Xbox and I was in the first area. They let me have my lightsaber and I was super excited to play engaged with the first enemy and I chose this attack that apparently rolled a thing where I got to do this. Impressive, insane saber move and I saw my lightsaber go directly through that character in the character even though it wasn't slicing in half still reacting like he got put in the face with a sack of brick... And the words MISSED shot out of that enemy with zero damage. I literally did that UA-cam reviewer joke of immediately ejecting that DVD of the game and throwing it straight into the trash bin or more realistically instantly returned back to Blockbuster. I hate that shit. If you're going to do amazing graphic animation actually match the data to your actual visuals and I have never bought a BioWare game since then.
Love ya Yahtz, been here for years, but your insistence that it's physically impossible for old games to hold up has always rubbed me up the wrong way. At least you're being blatantly honest about it now
I will say to a degree he does have a point. Although he does seem a bit TOO dismissive with older games. I can never motivate myself to play Elder Scrolls Obllivion or earlier because the graphics and gameplay just feel so dated and bad. I understand fans say they're better than Skyrim because Skyrim over simplified a lot of stuff ... but the aged parts of the game are just too much for me. Your ability to enjoy older games is largely dependant on how much you can overlook the dated portions. Exceptions to this are games simple enough that no amount of modernization can change it without missing the appeal. Like Tetris ... it's Tetris and any significant change just makes it an entirely new game.
@@metazoxan2 Morrowind I get, but Oblivion... Ouch. What makes it feel so dated to you out of curiosity? It's no pinacle of graphics, but it's decent enough in my eyes. Few 360 era games I'd consider that bad there honestly. Mechanically it's a mixed bag, but I can't think of anything actively dated about it, just some questionable decisions, such as the way leveling or enemy scaling worked. I wouldn't put those on the age though. Some of the way the combat functions feels like it could be, but my issues Oblivion has there I also have with Skyrim so must be more to it I'm overlooking. I guess maybe it could be magic related, never did play a mage in Elder Scrolls.
@@DWFTW it's mostly the character models in oblivion just look absolutely hideous to me. I tried fixing it with a mod ... but the mod wasn't working and I kind of gave up. Now I'm just waiting for Skyblivion to finish and plan to just play that instead.
I do admit that there’s a lot about KOTOR that hasn’t aged as well as I’d like, and the fact that it’s a BioWare game means I have to deal with the stuff I don’t like about their approach to storytelling. That being said, I think one of the things that helps the story and characters for many people is not simply nostalgia blindness but rather something tangential. It was one of the few Star Wars properties that actually tried to explore the ideas and philosophies with more depth than most (though not all) of the other properties in the expanded universe. Not so much our childhoods talking as much as our desire to see a property we like have better writing (rather than just move on to other franchises that already have it). After watching your review of the game…I kinda want to rewatch SFDebris’ review. Not nearly as bitesized, but man is it a good watch.
Exactly. I'm one of the people who didn't play the game new, and went in with the twist spoiled. With that in mind, it was still effective considering how much impact it actually had on the game and the characters once you'd gotten familiar with them all.
"I know you can't tell that from my blank, dead eyes but rest assured pints of hot ladyfoam are currently irrigating the seven polygons of my inner thighs." I couldn't help but just laugh out loud with this.
I believe how much you enjoy these games depends on how much you can enjoy older games in general. If you're used to modern games and can't go back then you won't find much enjoyment in these games imo.
I loved that this series introduced the idea of gray Jedi who basically left the Order and decided they didn't want to be part of the ancient good versus evil BS.
The thing that always bugged me about KotOR was that it forced your main character to multiclass which meant you were in this weird place where you had to try not to level up too much as if you wanted to play guardian you'd end up hobbling yourself too much. Least they fixed that in the sequal.
The backstory on the Rakatan empire was such a cool addition - it presents a totally different possibility that the Jedi/Sith dynamic never does. What if an entire society was all force users and instead of fighting each other they worked together, and merged technology and the force to create a galaxy spanning empire? And if you play your cards right with the sand people you get their full origin story which goes all the way back to the fall of the Rakatan empire. So good.
Eh, idk. I think that arguments are valid, but it's also different when you have to play it, vs when you want to play it. I've replayed this game a number of times, and recently, and I always felt like it held up. But I fell in love with the game 21 years ago, so I understand I'm biased. Also, there's a "fixed" version released on Android which runs very well. Which I'm going to go reinstall now.
1:15 the BEST thing about Knights of the Old Republic 2, while YES still had the pretty black and white morality choices that were decidedly extreme was that, in the story context it questioned the very nature of the Force, brought up the possibility that it's 'will' could be viewed as tantamount to enslavement and questioned if it wouldn't be better just to be rid of the thing as a whole. It's a shame that game was basically released unfinished. Really the Metal Gear Solid Phantom Pain of it's time.
I kind of wish they would make a Star Wars game where falling to the dark side is believable and character motivated and not just you choosing to be evil because you feel like kicking puppies. That's probably asking for too much since even the movies and TV shows can't accomplish that.
I'm honestly sick of subversive shit in fiction these days, it's everywhere now. You can't write a fictional story without someone dying of dysentery or it isn't realistic enough for people.
You can do that in this game. There's pretty much always a "selfish, mercenary" conversation option between the Light/Dark one. It moves you to the dark side much slower, so you can alternate between that and the good option based on the situation, then it's up to you if you choose to be a good person and redeem yourself later, or succumb to the dark side.
My first ever RPG, my appalling character setup where I played as a scout meant I won the final battle by running away in circles and planting mines for the Sith to walk over.
Worth noting that this game has a sequel that actually DOES manage really complex storytelling by flipping the Star Wars light/dark conflict into more of a lawful/chaotic one.
I've never played KOTOR, finished KOTOR 2 and I found it to be absolutely fantastic, minus the combat (heard that KOTOR 1 combat was even weaker), the writing in the second one blew me away, and I never was that much of a Star Wars fan to begin with.
I rarely admit it, but I was eating while watching this and I nearly choked to death laughing over Gary Glitter with flashbacks to rock and roll part II. Well done! Now how do I clean Chicken Alfredo out of a keyboard?
I think they wanted to figure out how Gary Glitter and his former band mates recorded/keep recording their massively popular project: "Blow up the oppo then fight the Republic", which led to a galaxy wide tour. Only thing they had was Gary's various café and bar stop recollection to go off from.
You hate mixing turn based and real time, yet I recall you enjoying the slamming of spacebar to pause FTL somewhere between a breach missile and a bell-end piercing.
This was Star Wars during the prequel era, I wouldn't exactly call the jedi order space monks dedicated to peace and justice, more like enlightened centrists, that must defend the status quo at all cost, especially by waging war, but telling some weirdos to not do slavery is a bit much for their balanced morals.
This video, if nothing else, made me realise that I haven't played the original KOTOR in 13 years... need to remedy that. HK-47 alone makes this a stone cold classic no matter its other flaws!
Seeing Yahtzee wax on about how "of course" the game doesn't hold up because of the 20 years worth of quality of life improvements that it's missing makes me want to hear his thoughts on something like the Super Mario RPG remake (where they added said improvements to a game whose admitted shortcomings in the gameplay department were more than balanced out by the story and characters and charm that it had, while improving all that good stuff about it too).
There was a ranged combat build. You cross classed into Scoundrel and Jedi Counselor (or the Sith Equivalent) and then did stun force powers while dual pistol wielding for way too much sneak attack. Make me use a lightsaber? Yeah, as a lockpick. As a belt accessory. For when the blast door takes too long. To light my deathstick. Can't say I lost a fight after the first world, but I was also not leveling until after getting to the Jedi temple because then you get to pick all of your levels, so I was doing things the power gaming way...and abusing Force Persuade so much in KotOR 2 since the same build works in that game too, but I did Sith for that one, that I just couldn't play a paragon of good character in anything for a while afterwards.
This video is not great. At least KOTOR has an excuse for being outdated: it was made 20 years ago. You've been making videos for decades and made this one today and the critiques are very tired. "Old games don't have the quality of life stuff of new games." Yeah, that's obvious. The critique on the narrative is also embarrassing. "Why not a toilet cleaner?" Because that's not the point of the story? It's all about revenge and redemption, not Star Wars war strategies. I remember watching these videos when I was in High School. For some reason I thought they would grow up as I did.
So, what I got out of this was: that after 15 years, I can finally use Patreon to fulfil my goal of getting you to review Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64
First Yahtzee video that feels phoned in and half assed. Most complaints boil down to "i didnt connect or understand the plot i went out of my way to not engage in or put effort into understanding.
I played KOTOR years after I played the Mass Effects and my conclusions were roughly the same as Yahtzee's - the combat and graphics don't hold up, the story is the strength, but it also does stretch credulity somewhat. It's also why I have the controversial take that KOTOR 2 is actually the better game. Combat and graphics were equally bad. But the story was all the moral gray area added back in. KOTOR 2 was the first piece of Star Wars media that genuinely questions and unpacks the Light-Dark Side morality of Star Wars, in an intelligent thoughtful way (and not the "IMO da Jedi r evul" edgelord way).
KOTOR 2 being better is not controversial. KOTOR 2 is known for being better over all if you can get past the fact that it was released fundamentally unfinished and also use the restored content mod to put the ending back in
Its frankly sad that this is considered a hot take. I played them out of order and its why I only finished 1 once, its so much better that theres no reason to ever play 1 again
KOTOR 2 would universally be recognized as the better game if it was allowed to be completed. Because it was rushed out the door, it was too unstable and unfinished.
for future retro games, the version of retro games on GOG often has a lot of fixes/tweaks pre-applied, so you spend less time tinkering. yes, even if Steam & GOG re-release a retro game on the same day, the GOG version often has more care.
The effectiveness of the twist is that the Good Guys were both wrong (should have helped Gary Glitter in the beginning) and hypocritical (what they did to Gary Glitter). Playing as Team Good Guy at the end was really unnerving because even if I the player agreed with the ending, I couldn't help but think to why I might have felt that way. It made me feel really, really similar to the ending of Spec Ops: The Line. This game is the 20-something's Sixth Sense. It is impossible to get the same impact a decade after the fact.
I think I first played this game in 2013. I was 17. Even then it was still considered way outdated, but I still fell in love with it and it became one of my favorite games ever. I was still really big on Star Wars around that time, so then you give me this game in which you could explore the Star Wars universe more in-depth than any other Star Wars game? Hell yeah, I was in for that ride. I ended up loving its story and characters even more than the movies. On top of that, I haven't even played any other similar RPG's to it before, so it was also basically my introduction to CRPG's.
This review was voted on by the Second Wind community on Patreon! If you enjoy our work consider joining up to support! www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
Marvel movies are damn good.
It's only a matter of time, until the fans force Yantzee back into Pathologic 2 then!
@SecondWindGroup hey guys, i would love to know why background play isnt working for your videos. Sucks kinda a lot.
My favorite memory of this game was playing a sith I named Oathbreaker specifically so the first npc you meet would say "How can you betray your oath Oathbreaker!?"
Mr and Mrs Breaker really not setting up poor little Oath for a life filled with mutual trust and respect from their peers.
Now that’s what I call some nominative determinism!
I named my jedi character light dove to show my devotion to the light side, than a neutral character cloudy seagul... my friends looking at my saved file was very confused
"fill the hole, hole filler"
So many vows... they make you swear and swear.
The party culling in the dark side run is still one of the most “I can’t believe they actually let you do this” moments in video games.
I remember wondering how Mission, Carth and Zaalbar would be convinced to go along with the Sith ending. I presumed Revan just wouldn't tell them.
Boy oh boy was 10 year old me in for a surprise.
Especially if you did light side route most of the game, but then are presented with this choice. You naive fools, I've been biding my time, and you never suspected a thing. Let the culling commence.
You can do dark side run without the culling. If I remember correctly you can ignore the offer on the last planet and then switch to the dark side right before the final boss
You fight them in the ship, too, right? Like, the classic BioWare safe haven, the place you have jovial laughs with your party members, just gets turned into a battleground with these characters you’ve spent so much time leveling and equipping, and they try to put, you, down.
The game does allow you full choice. I strongly advise hardcore people to do 2-3 runs. Full light and save everyone, full dark murderhobo, and there is a legit neutral path to the game. Neutral is underdeveloped but it does exist. And you can also use the 3 runs to do saber, magic, and guns. Magic is obviously better dark. Guns is the hardest so save that for last. So the run should be light saber, dark magic, neutral guns. If you want to go that far. If you're commited to only one run, mix saber and magic, who cares.
One thing that Yahtz undersells is how far BACK your teammates could get stuck. Like, you’d look up after 15 minutes of exploring the Kyber crystal caves and Bastilla would be banging her head on the sliding door in the spaceport. To make up for this, the game would ramp up the character’s movement speed to get them caught up to the party. So, when I was a kid, I would purposefully get a party member stuck, get as far away from them as possible, and watch them unlock the Speed Force as they revved their janky walk cycles up to Mach 3. Got back at HK for all the “meatbag” comments by giving him repetitive stress injuries in a mandatory Robo-lympics.
It's even worse when you're about to fight something and you realize your team got stuck way back, so now you got to deal with the enemy by yourself.
@@fictionarch 1) Cast Force Speed. 2) Run towards team. 3) Get lost. 4) More enemies. 5) Thermite grenade. 5) Die.
Typical meatbag behaviour /j
i mostly disagree with him in this review. but I 100% got NAM flashbacks when he mentioned how far back the companions would be when u want to leave an area
Was the iPhone version sanitized somehow or did I just keep no track of my companions
To that last point, which is fair: I think it was mostly out of desperation. The Jedi were losing the war pretty bad and Gary Glitter's memories were their hail mary. Keeping him close to... hang on...Gerry Shepherd meant that when his memories of the glam rock lifestyle came back he would have someone to keep him away from the childrens.
It is unfortunate indeed in this context that one of the companions on Gary Glitter’s ship is a 14 year old Twilek Scoundrel...
@@GeriatricFan1963 that is an unfortunate consequence of the metaphor, yes, lol.
@@christianfaux736 Well, if you think that's bad, just wait until you see what he gets up to with T3-M4... 😑
They needed to find his secret studio, that only him and his producer knew about. They couldn't search all over randomly. They needed a guy who had been there before, even if he hadn't remembered it. And it works. If some random guys went to the places he had been, no one would have spoken to them. Or murdered them immediately.
@@GeriatricFan1963
Plus it vibrates....
A Leeroy Jenkins reference in 2024?? This really is a time capsule, isn't it
Made more so by the references to a "steaming pile of Sith" which made me wonder if Yahtzee used to enjoy The Best Page in the Universe.
Wonder what Mr. Jenkins is doing nowadays.
@@vigorouslethargy probably having a nice bucket of chicken
@@vigorouslethargyLast I heard, him and his friends confirmed the video was staged and showed the full thing as a form of protest against them appealing net neutrality (yeah, remember that thing that TOTALLY was going to be the end of the internet?)
It’s still more recent than this game
The Sith fully embody the "I never thought leopards would eat MY face" people.
More like "I never thought the leopards would eat MY face, as I nibbled on theirs."
"but the sith are totally nuanced and the Jedi can be bad too".
There was a meme going around a couple years back, showing a soon-to-be-dead Count Dooku with the caption "When I joined the Space Wizards Who Betray Everyone," etc etc.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 Too many fans take the line "From my point of view the jedi are evil" at face value- said quote coming from the guy with demon eyes who just killed hundreds of children
@@kingsleycy3450 Too many fans idolize the trash prequels nowadays and think that Anakin was ever a good person who got hard done by the Jedi Council.
HK-47 is still an all-time party member
Absolutely, one of my favorite Star Wars EU characters.
I suspect Yahtzee fell prey to journalist-itis (AKA time constraints) at the end there because they explicitly tell you why they made the (absolutely naff) decision to try and make you lighter and softer Gary Glitter--they want the bassist to guide him along and thread the needle in such a way that he can help them with the finding the secret to his mind melting music by remembering bits of what they erased without him remembering everything and falling to the Prog Rock Side again.
And one of them even expresses concerns - directly in front of you - that the bassist's influence won't be strong enough.
Speaking as someone who played the original in high school, that twist was a big deal. I was the only guy in class with an XBOX, everyone else had PS2's, and I only had dial up internet. It was pretty much reserved for school work since mom hated having the phone out of service.
I'm kind of nostalgic for the days when pop culture could still have actual surprises.
I moved the direction of avoiding ALL trailers/reviews/forums/etc if I want to play something until after I'm done playing. I occasionally get randomly spoiled in an unrelated youtube comment section, which is really annoying, but it works for the most part
God, I remember the days of "phone or online gaming". I used to phone my best pal to let him know which Runescape server I would be on and when before setting the modem up
To be fair, they kind of need him to remember a bit of his past because it’s the only way they can find the super weapon and destroy it.
And they sent Bastila along to kill him in case he reverted to his old self.
@@jamietodd2560
Yep.
Yahtzee obviously didn't pay any attention as he played (or just quit super early in the story). The council straight up tells you this. What an embarassing way to advertise the Pateron "hey if you give us money you can pick the game that Yahtzee reviews without actually playing!". Pathetic stuff.
Yeah honestly it's a bit disappointing that Yahtzee, who claims to care so much about writing in games, looked at an RPG considered to be one of the best in it's genre PURELY due to the strength and high quality of it's writing... and say 'it's only Star Wars, who cares?'
Great job Yahtz, you successfully reviewed an old game just to say 'it's old and I didn't pay attention to the writing'. Gold star.
To be fair, it is massive contrivance when you can achieve the same results through the use of spies.
I also, highly doubt that he is the only person who knows the location of a gigantic super weapon unless he singlehandedly built it himself without the need for construction workers, managers, security, caterers and all the other stuff necessary to build a supermassive military fortification -- almost all of whom would be far more likely to give up the necessary information without the need for subterfuge or torture.
And speaking of torture, just like real life "good guys", I'm certain the Jedi would rationalise the use of torture (Or more likely hire criminals to use torture on their behalf) to gain the information via the rhetoric of being for "the greater good".
The truth is, the reason things were done the way they were was so that the game could throw that twist at players.
i hate to be That Guy™, but i JUST replayed the game and you are given a direct and clear answer on why the jedi council let the memory-wiped person be a soldier for the republic.
it's because the jedi knew that memory-wiped person would have flashbacks (especially in bastila's presence) and those flashbacks are meant to lead them to the big evil dark side thing you're supposed to blow up/take control of at the end. this is directly stated by bastila right after the reveal takes place. i genuinely have no idea how yahtzee missed that.
It's likely that he hasn't missed it. His thesis is that the game is bad and outdated, and he will stick to that for clicks.
He probably rushed through the game, fast clicking through the dialogue, just so he could say he had finished the game.
Because Yahtzee gonna Yahtzee.
He'll hide behind the shield of:
"It's a joke, bro! You mad, Bro?"
It's very rare to find a thread of replies under one of Yahtzee's videos devoted to criticising him.
@@SPM0717 That's likely because 99% of the people watching at this point are die-hard fans. Doubt it's really bringing in many new eyes.
I think one of my favorite things about this game is how they let me into the Expanded Universe's take on the Dark Side. It's not evil, just selfish and ruthless. The Mando's whole philosophy of "If you can't protect you and yours it isn't our problem, but kicking puppies is nothing worth bragging about ." is considered Dark Side.
And this whole philosophy is something I love way more than George's original idea that the Dark Side is pure evil, and the Force is naturally good.
This philosophy is why I'd want to be a Sith rather than a Jedi. Not because I'd want to be evil, but because the Jedi are detached from everything, while the Sith embrace emotions and possessions. Including positive things, like love and happiness, as cheesy as it sounds. It's why Anakin turned to the dark side in the first place, to save his wife.
The problem is that the dark side is ultimately self serving. You see that in the sith academy. A lady who became a sith because the Jedi weren't doing enough to fight slavery, ended up completely forgetting about her goal as she was caught in endless power struggles.
@@lefteron6804 It's self serving, but not evil.
@@leadpaintchips9461 Being too self serving leads to evil. Stepping on others in order to climb. The sith I mentioned wants you to help her kill her monster in order to take his place. Afterwards, unless you helped her see the error of her ways, she tries to kill you too, in order to have no loose ends.
@@lefteron6804 But it isn't more inherently evil itself, it's as evil as the detachment that the Jedi practice.
The point that it hammers home is that extremism leads to evil. Jedi being evil because of their detachment ignoring the suffering of others, while the Sith being evil to fulfill their emotional impulses.
There is no good or evil in the opposing viewpoints inherently, just in how the individual executes them.
I remember speccing for ranged combat and being an extremely overpowered gun-jedi. Never did use a lightsaber.
@@Kevin-cf9nl are you thinking of KOTOR 2?
I’m wondering because blasters are notoriously weak in 1, but 2 lets you buff them with force speed to disintegrate enemies. Mira in particular is good for this.
@@neon1321 if you have thr version with access to Yavin, the merchant has some cracked weapons for sale
not OP, but i remember playing kotor 1 with dual wield blasters. i even remember some of the details, like the fact that the dueling ring blaster from taris remains one of the best choices for the whole game and that the game was actually quite easy up until the final boss, where i had to resort to spamming nades.
@@neon1321 Both games have force speed, it's that the upgrade system lets you buff the crap out of guns in 2, while in the first game, you can only give good upgrades to lightsabers.
@@R3GARnator 2 also let you get a power that would reflect blaster bolts even when not using a lightsaber. It also had lightsaber finesse which allowed you to use your Dex mod with lightsabers instead of Str
I think Yahtzee would probably like the story of KOTOR 2 more than that of KOTOR 1. 2 definitely takes a more darker approach to the Star Wars universe than most games.
Agreed, but KOTOR 2 very much needed the ground work KOTOR 1 put down.
Kotor 2s story needs a fair amount of unravelling to make sense. Takes most people 2 playthroughs in my experience. Judging by his misunderstanding of even this basic plot, I'm not sure kotor 2 would actually be a good fit tbh.
@@arnox4554 *slaps wet blanket* OUHHHCH
KOTOR 2 sounds like exactly the game Yahtzee would pan and overlook since something something blah blah Aussie wit
@@TheBfutgreg He pans games because it is his job. He isn't a reviewer, he is a critic. It is actually his job to nitpick and point out the glaringly bad the fans of a game overlook (I am a fan of these games, but I do agree with him, and having the big twist reveal spoiled didn't help the game's case.)
Thing is, I think Yahtzee might enjoy Kotor 2 MORE because it is a proper deconstruction of the Jedi and their influence. And when I say proper, I mean it highlights the issues but does acknowledge their merits, just not as glowingly.
As long as he played the expanded (modded) edition that adds back in a non-terrible ending, it'd be a much better game. Can't say the additional planets added anything though
Re: the movement locking up after fights - If anyone else has encountered this, change your framerate cap in the settings to 60 or less; that looks to consistently fix it. The same applies to the sequel.
Also happens when the game's been running for a long time I've found; there's a memory leak issue that causes this & also the auto-skipping dialogue for KotOR 1 & 2
@@spec-fict Yeah, you need to reboot the game about once per hour
No matter what anyone says of this game, it still has the greatest robot character in all of fiction.
God bless you HK47.
Wonder if Yahtzee got to spend any amount of time with the meatbag-hating droid. Something tells meno, otherwise, its decidedly kindred brand of humor would've likely gotten at least a mention.
5:30 it's not the BEST plan but they were hoping they would subconsciously lead to the markers and eventually lead the Jedi to the Star Forge that's pumping out all the droids and ships for the Sith. They were already forcefully bonded with their Jedi secret weapon Bastilla so they figured that would be enough of a 'leash' to rein them in if they needed to.
the reason the jedi council want you to be retrained is because they need you to figure out how the sith got so powerful, with such a big fleet (the starforge).
The plan is to lie to you, convince you that bastila and you are 'linked', so that they can have a jedi watching over you as you retrace your steps and give the jedi what they need to beat the sith. They know it's dangerous, but they need info you have or the war is lost.
Let's be perfectly honest, Yahtzee obviously phoned this one in. You're right, the reasons for the Council's actions are completely explained by the game. Based on the video abruptly cutting off at that point with no dive into the deeper part of the story, it's obvious Yahtzee quit very early or never bothered listening to the game's dialogue. What a terrible way to advertise the Patreon. "If you donate, I'll quarter ass a review for a game you love!" It's fine if he doesn't like it, but come on, at least play it for real before dropping a review.
@@coltondotdev yh I feel like he only played through the first two planets and then gave up, banking on knowing the reveal beforehand to be enough to finish the review
@@coltondotdevespecially because he could be honest about it. "the game was so off putting I couldn't bring myself to the finish it" is a valid review
@@Rsduderful yes. I was agreeing that it's a bad look how he did it, especially because just saying he couldn't finish it is also a valid review
@@coltondotdev In fairness, it is a bit confusing, because everything we see is that both of the forces are actually more-or-less equal: the Sith are usually too busy killing each-other to fight the Republic, neutral parties treat both sides as about equal, the Jedi are dealing with farmer disputes instead of the war, and the Sith are basically running the entire conflict from one ship, the destruction of which would probably leave the Sith with no higher officers left to command the ordinary soldiers effectively.
Thus, everything we actually see indicates a stalemate that will probably end in the Sith imploding, not the destruction of the Republic, which makes it weird that the Jedi are taking such a big risk.
Also this is literally one of the very few games where you can legit play as Sith.
Dark Forces 2 was pretty good for that, imo.
@@xizar0rg isn’t that the one where you play as a Boba Fett knockoff though?
@@zigslotheon Dark Forces 2 was a game from the mid 90s usually referred to as "Jedi Knight" as Dark Forces 2 was a subtitle in the game title - i.e. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. This made sense from a marketing perspective because it shares little in common with the original Dark Forces which was just a semi-decent Doom clone. The light/dark force mechanics are very primitive as whether or not you follow the dark/light side is based on the powers you choose and how many NPCs you kill but to the poster's point by the standards of the era it was pretty innovative to have two separate story paths/outcomes based on your actions in the game especially in an FPS. The game story itself is massively cheesy 90s FMV schlock but for anyone that's a fan of cringe inducing campiness & modern "boomer shooters" it holds up pretty well. However probably wouldn't recommend to anyone playing without nostalgia goggles unless they're into digital entertainment archeology...
@@zigslotheon I believe you might be thinking of Bounty Hunter, which is the game where you play the guy that Boba Fett is a knockoff of.
@@xizar0rg wait Boba Fett’s the knockoff? Not the other way around?
The first game I started modding, I was about 13 and I made a personal mod that expanded the assassin guild so they'd sell you weapons and armour.
That's when I learned the trick the Devs clearly used:
If you don't want to voice more audio lines, make them speak an alien language and just recycle audio tracks
I'm pretty sure everyone realized that quickly on.
Yahtzee, the best thing about bioware games is the character interactions AND IT'S THE ONE THING IN THE GAME YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT! COME ON!
You could totally be a ranged jedi. It's an option and force powers, including speed, work with it
And it actually is one of the best builds in the game if done right. You can get off a frankly insane number of attacks with pretty much perfect ability to hit.
add to that you can get the best blaster (2 if you jump through a few hoops) in the game before even leaving Taris :)
Game 1 literally scales like cock if you choose blaster skills as a jedi. You could do it but it's fucking garbo. Only if it's your 10000th time playing it is it fun. Kotor 2 makes it much more viable but still kinda ass.
@@ConeJellos No man. Blaster Jedi rocks. You've just got to be smart with your skills and weapons.
"Hah! You are a Jedi, you can't hit me from that far away!"
"You're forgetting one thing Sith-" *pulls out blaster* "I WAS A BOUNTY HUNTER BEFORE JOINING THE JEDI!"
If there's one mission/world I appreciate in KOTOR is the Sith Training world. Where it gives you a different perspective on what the Sith code is like and how it should go but how no one wants to live by it since its become bastardized to 'be the biggest bastard in the galaxy'.
For real. In a different context, with almost no changes, the Sith Code would be the motto of a straight up hero.
Yeah, the Sith in the KOTOR games really come off as not THAT bad, especially when the Jedi are a bunch of stupid hypocritical bastards.
@@Rystefnit's a good look at how actual cults work. They make a real pretty layer of good ideas and nice emotions on top, so people that are just starting out can feel good before they find out about the the ritual sacrifice daggers and blood circles.
The sith code was made for this game. And it was so neat seeing it referenced in the Acolyte show, even if just a bit.
Also very fun to leave it for the last planet after the reveal. Some really fun dialogue options open up.
As someone else who'd had the twist spoiled by cultural osmosis and played the game in my adult years with no nostalgia to blind me, I can see where Yahtzee is coming from, even if I don't agree. That being said, I found the background-dice based combat to be a neat change of pace and enjoyed the challenge. Granted, I do seem to have missed several of the issues that he came up with, being that I don't recall any bugs and only ever used Stealth in the designated Stealth areas because it is simply not a gameplay loop I tend to enjoy, so I'm sure that those would have dampened my enthusiasm a fair bit. Either way, I'm happy to see that Yahtzee gave this game a try. Even when I disagree with some things, he's always entertaining about it.
I WILL admit that it is one of those games that holds up a LOT better when you mod it to Korriban and back.
I'll also admit that I seem to be one of the few people that enjoyed Swoop Racing...
"I can see where (name of game reviewer) is coming from, even if I don't agree", is a sign of good reviewer who has cultivated a good audience. I'm not much of a gamer, but from what I've seen I think there is a decent chance I would like at least some of the games Yahtzee doesn't. And yet, him giving them bad reviews mostly makes me think "that's something to think about" or "That is a valid criticism, but in the end let's agree to disagree, thanks for all the awesome videos, Yahtz".
3:10 There's literally a menu tab for New Items. Yeah, nostalgia keeps me playing it twenty years later but at least be accurate in your disembowelment and not cutting up nearby furniture.
hE dOeS NoT CAre
Yeah but you have to periodically click on every item you pick up so that it's not flagged as "new" anymore (even if it's just basic medpac #297) so that you can easily sort out the *actually* new stuff that's important, like the datapads that have puzzle-critical information on them. That is a good tip to give to anyone going back to the game, but it's also a workaround for an interface that could certainly be less clumsy.
On the other hand, there is something cozy about an inventory with no space or weight restrictions whatsoever. Carry everything you've ever picked up all the way to the end of the game if you want, KOTOR don't care.
Yhatzee, did you finish the game? It does answer most of the questions you had later on pretty clearly
He barely played it, let alone finished it.
The medkits are always useful, cause you can open your inventory during combat and chug health kits without using up any of your combat turns.
I remember needing to jam them into my hip one by one tho.
....I can't believe i've never realised this in fucking years of playing this game every now and then. Fuck.
The way Yahtzee snarks on the faces in KOTOR reminded me of Deus Ex. Which was decidedly more primitive than this. Which made me look up Yahtzee's review of the same. He snarks on the bad graphics there, too, but points out that Deus Ex is a truly amazing game regardless. The contrast between that review and this is sharp.
Oh, and for the guy who is now forced to reinstall Deus Ex and play it again, since that's the rule whenever anyone mentions it, I apologize.
Does finally getting to play it for first time count?
Don't worry, I'm already replaying it. :D
It's funny because I'm only here because I only really know Yahtzee because of the Deus Ex song.
Oh, Yahtz. The thing people are nostalgic for isn't just the story. It's the party interactions and the differences that happen along the way/towards the end. Like if you're a bad guy, you inevitably kill half your party.
Party members have dialogue interactions out on the field.
Quite a few of the characters had pretty good voice over that still holds up. HK-47 is a comedy gold mine.
If you didn't play the first one, then I assume you didn't play the second one. You're missing out on possibly the best written Sith Lord of all time. Hopefully your patrons browbeat you into doing that one, too.
*fondly remembers your first Demon's Souls review, which went over how much ya hated it* Yeah, yeah, he'll come around, some day.
Ok I’m dusting off the Cheeto dust for this one.
The MC, who turned out to be the ex big bad of the story, (not using names to avoid spoilers of a 20+ year old game) was sent in as a random soldier under Bastilla’s command intentionally. The reason was they had a force bond from when Bastilla saved the MC before when their mind was damaged and he was captured.
The lore of the game is that the MC and the other bad guys , were originally good, but went to the unknown regions to finish a war. They took with them a big fleet but when they returned evil the ships they possessed were multiple times larger (both in size and sheer numbers) than anything they left with. The Jedi and Republic wanted to know A. What happened to them to make them turn. B. How they managed to get so many ships and the crew for them in such a short number of years.
One thing to note that the Republic routinely decimated sith fleets but the sheer number of ships meant that any republic reprieve was short lived and it seemed that the sith fleet was growing larger and not shrinking despite the losses.
Naturally only the top leaders of the big bads knew this, so they hatched a plan to capture the MC and succeeded but his mind was damaged. So they implanted false memories into his mind and put him under the command of Bastilla who could share any memories he remembered of both events (his memories appeared in the form of visions). Once it was figured out the Republic could launch an attack on the site supplying the Sith the weapons and hopefully end the war since all the sith logistics would basically be destroyed overnight since they were in complete reliance on it and hopefully find out what happened to start this war to begin with.
The reason why both Bastilla and the MC were in space and not in permanent Jedi Daycare was A. The council hoped traveling would help spark the MC’s inert memories and B. Bastilla was incredibly important to the war effort and she simply couldn’t be spared unless the council has ironclad proof of where to go.
After the attack and the MC’s memories started returning and pointed to specific locations, only then could she be spared to help follow the trail.
Big bad, MC…..so painful to type this.
Exactly. This is explained point blank to you in dialog. It's the kind of thing you can only miss if you're skipping every cutscene or didn't play past the first half of the game.
I think i hate Yahtzee now.
I can forgive being jaded, but not the laziness.
5:08 because he’s incredibly powerful and they specifically wanted him to become a Jedi so he can defeat Darth Malik it was a risk but it payed off.
Only pays off if you're LS. On a DS run, it backfires horribly (cos you end up worse).
They needed him to tell them where the enemy superweapon is, otherwise they are hosed.
They were specifically doing the mind wipe as a Hail Mary to find the Star Forge. If they killed him, Malak would continue to have an infinite army
@@gothicbatcloudwhile true in your gameplay, canonically the LS path is the established path
Kinda weird he barely talked about the actual plot but instead complained about things that are present in games to this day.
It's Yahtzee. I love this game so much and it would probably be in my top 10, but I don't go into a Yahtzee video expecting positivity
Because you gotta acknowledge the flaws of something considered a masterpiece
5:20 They do actually explain that, Yahtzee, if you had been paying attention. I'm surprised someone as interested in narrative design as you wasn't paying closer attention to the narrative.
I remember having fun with a ranged build. Jedi can't deflect blasters if they are paralyzed.
my first playtrough was with a Han Solo type of character, just because i didn't like the way melee combat worked (i was just coming from Jedi Academy and expected this to have a similar gameplay back then)
This clinched that I watch these for entertainment, not recommendations. Because they explain why the Jedi did what they did in game.
With Yahtzees analogy, the problem with Gary Glitter was not that he was a musician. Nor did the music really facilitate his, erm...problems.
I like Yahtzee but he's one of those "Too cool for this nerdshit" nerds that believe they are above the cheeto dust and think making midwit comments about realism in fiction and video games is genius. Which is fine, that isn't even the worst part, it's the actually drooling mongs that blindly agree with all of those takes and think that by parroting it makes them look intelligent that is the annoying part.
Did you know you can't hear sound in space? What were they thiiiiiiiiinnnnkkkkkiiiiiinnnnnggggg?!
They needed the guy to tell them where the enemy superweapon was or else they're hosed.
2:09 I can't leave without my buddy Superfly
Glad someone's still repping the classics.
and his brother Nathaniel
I would love to hear Yahtzee’s thoughts on KOTOR 2. Having played both for the first time this year, I will say the first is rather basic as stories go. The second, however, has quickly become my favorite Star Wars story ever told.
The jank is still there, but the voice acting and the dialogue make up for it in my opinion. Would love to see the game on Fully Ramblomatic.
I feel like he'd enjoy the moral nuances but would have zero patience for Kreia's cryptic teachings.
Fingers crossed now that he's played the first one!
@@perrycarters3113 There would definitely be a(deserved) rant about Paragus
After this lazy take of a review, I would rather he stay away from classic games.
@@ennuiespada Peragus to me has always felt less offensive than the Telos section.
Telos just dragged on so, SO much.
I find it funny how he complains about the awkardly delivered dialogue and yet when a jedi looks your character in the eyes and tells you point blank exactly the reasons as to why the Jedi Council did what they did with no subtleness or double meanings whatsoever Yahtzee still spent 30 seconds of the video admitting he either wasn't paying attention or he couldn't understand a game rated for teens.
Didn't know teenagers produced the game
If you've watched any of his live streams, you'll know not paying attention during gaming is kind of his thing.
The thing is: it's hard to pay attention when you don't enjoy the game.
I'm not sure why ppl voted for it since they should know Yahtz does this quite often.
Videos like this are always real firm reminders that Yahtzee is an entertainer first and foremost, and an actual critic a distant second.
First, the game DOES have the ability to sort items by type, it's very very easy to sort the inventory by specific item types to get to just notes, or just armor, or just consumables.
Second (spoiler alert), the game *blatantly* explains why Revan is mind-wiped, retrained as a Jedi, and made to act as a Republic agent: because the Jedi do not kill unless they must, he is retrained because he was reconnecting to the Force anyway (and the Council was so desperate in the fight against Malak they were hoping Revan would turn to the Light, otherwise they'd lose anyway), and he's assigned to Bastila's personal guard for the express purpose of her keeping an eye on him.
If you wanna claim that's lazy or stupid writing, go hog wild, but the only possible way Yahtzee could have missed this is if he didn't actually play the game.
In his defense, you cant expect him to know any of that since it requires paying attention to what you're playing.
Image if it wasn’t on Steam. Yahtzee would have been forced to play the Xbox backwards compatibility version where he didn’t need to worry about getting it setup lol
Or spent 5 whole dollars on the one in the Xbox Store
There's also the Switch and IPhone versions that would have also worked fine
Not that much of an issue, If GoG is also keeping it up to code. Which is also a thing with 2.
The switch port is perfectly fine, too.
I believe KOTOR 2 on switch still has a game ruining bug that never got patched though 👀
He would play on GOG, it is the best platform for old games.
Kinda funny ramble, but some of those story critiques are so inane.
*SPOILERS FOR OLD GAME*
I mean... we're talking about a universe centered around The Force, so the wisest Jedi members seeing Revan, Bastila, & co. survive the Taris bombardment would incline them to believe this was no accident. Revan having visions of his past self with Malik guiding him to every Star Map coordinate reinforces how The Force is practically compelling him to retread his past steps towards redemption. On top of the mystical evidence, it's simply a case of pragmaticism: the Jedi are stretched too thin across the galaxy and there's no shot sitting Council members could reach Korriban's Star Map. So, it's a potent mix of desperate times and The Force compelling a diverse band of misfits to go on a dangerous mission to find and destroy that story's super-weapon.
The Council literally walks you through most of this on Dantooine.
I find it rich that Yahtz keep going about how good graphics aren't required for a game to be good, but then spends half a video dumping on the graphics of a 20 year old game.
My favorite part of the dialogue sequences is that the character will keep animating on loop until you choose your response. Watching Carth gesticulate wildly during his speaking and then continually gesticulate in the same pattern over and over kept me from responding right away as I tried to pick the right timing to have the animation jerk into the next sequence in the most awkward way possible.
I’m so happy I can revisit this era of games, even one I’ve never played before, with wide-eyed optimism.
Old man yells at clouds.
I remember playing a fair bit of the MMORPG SWTOR, and while it did loose me after a while when the faffing about between story missions got too tedious, I did love the spectrum of morality you could pull with that game.
I played an Imperial spy, who's choices were based on what was the best for the Sith Empire, within the laws of the Sith Empire.
A mission where a civilian was forced to lure me into a trap because some mobsters had his family hostage; I rescued his family, but sentenced him to a short stay in the local jail.
A Sith lord from a prestigious family is interfering with the war effort on this world for his personal gain; Put to death for sabotaging the Empire, regardless of the backlash.
A people of an outer rim world are getting genocided; Help them if they agree to join the Empire in it's war against the Old Republic.
It also meant my guy was usually the most smug and sarcastic bastard imaginable, and with the voice I chose, made you want to punch him in the face.
I loved that P.O.S.
The Imperial Agent is a masterfully made Grade A Dick. It's amazing.
I love that Kotor 2s answer to why did the council let gary out is, canonically, because they are all a bunch of self important idiots.
Well, it used to be canon. Now KOTOR 1 & 2 are relegated to the 'Legends' continuity compared to the 'real' canon.
This Kotor slander will not stand
And then Obsidian got their hands on making the sequel and made Kreia.
Ah, obsidian. good until they were pants.
@@RAFMnBgaming "...good until they were pants." with pints of ladyfoam in them?
@@SageVallant which in my opinion was such a tragedy. As I find her a terrible character.
@@nekrosprime8415 how so?
@@3lancerofficialmaybe871 everyone either hates or loves Kreia for the same reason: Kreia is a Star Wars character who hates Star Wars.
I was so angry when the game wanted me to unloot the rancor's food crate, without ever teaching me that unlooting is even possible.
I'm pretty sure that was only used once as well... Even now knowing it was intended, I still prefer cheesing the Rancor
@@Alter292 That makes me even more angry.
Cheesing? He would just one-shot me. Not sure there was any knowledge of a cheese exploit back then.
@@AkiRa22084haha! Don't underestimate the ingenuity of a kid with too much determination for his own good. One is chucking grenades and running until he dies. The other is that he can get stuck on the geometry of his cell and you can just stand in a corner blasting off pot shots until he finally crumbles. I do not recommend either one.
@@Alter292 lol! Yeah, I would never stoop to exploits.
⚠️Spoiler warning⚠️
The reason they kept Revan around was because only he and Malak knew of the location of the starforge and its deciphered secrets.
Starforge was a space factory that had practically limitless resources to create an army for centuries, millenia even.
It was effectively a hail mary and prior to the events of KOTOR, Revan and Malak lead the Jedis who fought in the Mandalorian Wars, as they were punished by the Jedi Council for using a space nuke of the Mandolorian homeworld and were viewed as fallen to the dark side.
The Star Forge is basically a copy of the Death Star.
While the Star Forge loses that "not so subtle commentary on nuclear weapons" quality that the Death Star had, I think the Star Forge is way scarier than the death star because a giant superfactory will win you a war.
I can't believe Yahtzee is talking about the first open-world Star Wars video game, before Ubisoft's first open world Star Wars video game!
It's not open world, you just choose what order to do stuff. Like in Dragon Age: Origins.
First open world Star Wars game would probably be Star Wars Galaxies.
PSA if you're a new player trying to buy the game on PC: the GoG version is the simplest to get running on a modern Windows operating system. It's also the simplest to mod if you're trying to get it to work in widescreen or something like that.
The version for original Xbox is backwards compatible on Series X/S and Xbox One if you want the absolute easiest setup but I do think the game is better with mouse and keyboard than controller.
This is legit one of the best games ever made. Really surprised by this review. The game deserves a lot more credit. I beat it again recently and it totally holds up.
The way yahtzee talks about games really betrays his views of "games as art," tbh.
This comment has been living rent free in my head for a few weeks now.
'Games are art unless I personally don't like the movie they're based on in which case they're trash nobody should pay attention to, and anyone who claims they like it is just nostalgia-blind even if they only played it for the first a week ago.'
KotOR is amazing. The best part is that it was followed by KotOR 2. Not just an incredible star wars game, but an incredible star wars story in itself.
Just keep Vsync on and half the bugs go away.
IIRC the reason the character in question was on the ship thinking they were just some random soldier was because the Jedi Council had gone back to the home base but the Jedi in charge of keeping an eye on them got diverted to Taris where shenanigans proceeded to happen and thus the game begins.
Carth just assumed they're a soldier because "Well who TF else would be on the ship‽ It's a military transport!"
I love Yahtzee but I was hoping for a little more from this than "Man this is old" for one half and "I don't understand the twist" for the other half. I didn't expect him to like it but it sounds like he barely even played it.
I have a very bad visceral first memory of this game. We're renting it as soon as it came out. Put it in my Xbox and I was in the first area. They let me have my lightsaber and I was super excited to play engaged with the first enemy and I chose this attack that apparently rolled a thing where I got to do this. Impressive, insane saber move and I saw my lightsaber go directly through that character in the character even though it wasn't slicing in half still reacting like he got put in the face with a sack of brick... And the words MISSED shot out of that enemy with zero damage.
I literally did that UA-cam reviewer joke of immediately ejecting that DVD of the game and throwing it straight into the trash bin or more realistically instantly returned back to Blockbuster.
I hate that shit. If you're going to do amazing graphic animation actually match the data to your actual visuals and I have never bought a BioWare game since then.
Love ya Yahtz, been here for years, but your insistence that it's physically impossible for old games to hold up has always rubbed me up the wrong way. At least you're being blatantly honest about it now
I will say to a degree he does have a point. Although he does seem a bit TOO dismissive with older games.
I can never motivate myself to play Elder Scrolls Obllivion or earlier because the graphics and gameplay just feel so dated and bad.
I understand fans say they're better than Skyrim because Skyrim over simplified a lot of stuff ... but the aged parts of the game are just too much for me.
Your ability to enjoy older games is largely dependant on how much you can overlook the dated portions.
Exceptions to this are games simple enough that no amount of modernization can change it without missing the appeal. Like Tetris ... it's Tetris and any significant change just makes it an entirely new game.
@@metazoxan2 Morrowind I get, but Oblivion... Ouch. What makes it feel so dated to you out of curiosity?
It's no pinacle of graphics, but it's decent enough in my eyes. Few 360 era games I'd consider that bad there honestly. Mechanically it's a mixed bag, but I can't think of anything actively dated about it, just some questionable decisions, such as the way leveling or enemy scaling worked. I wouldn't put those on the age though. Some of the way the combat functions feels like it could be, but my issues Oblivion has there I also have with Skyrim so must be more to it I'm overlooking. I guess maybe it could be magic related, never did play a mage in Elder Scrolls.
@@DWFTW it's mostly the character models in oblivion just look absolutely hideous to me. I tried fixing it with a mod ... but the mod wasn't working and I kind of gave up.
Now I'm just waiting for Skyblivion to finish and plan to just play that instead.
Oh look, we have our first "Smash Bros. Brawl" review of the series. Neat.
I do admit that there’s a lot about KOTOR that hasn’t aged as well as I’d like, and the fact that it’s a BioWare game means I have to deal with the stuff I don’t like about their approach to storytelling.
That being said, I think one of the things that helps the story and characters for many people is not simply nostalgia blindness but rather something tangential. It was one of the few Star Wars properties that actually tried to explore the ideas and philosophies with more depth than most (though not all) of the other properties in the expanded universe. Not so much our childhoods talking as much as our desire to see a property we like have better writing (rather than just move on to other franchises that already have it).
After watching your review of the game…I kinda want to rewatch SFDebris’ review. Not nearly as bitesized, but man is it a good watch.
Thanks for the SF Debris recommendation.
The "twist" was literally foreshadowed in the first 5 minutes. It wasn't hard to figure out. Still a fun story.
Exactly. I'm one of the people who didn't play the game new, and went in with the twist spoiled.
With that in mind, it was still effective considering how much impact it actually had on the game and the characters once you'd gotten familiar with them all.
"I know you can't tell that from my blank, dead eyes but rest assured pints of hot ladyfoam are currently irrigating the seven polygons of my inner thighs."
I couldn't help but just laugh out loud with this.
I believe how much you enjoy these games depends on how much you can enjoy older games in general. If you're used to modern games and can't go back then you won't find much enjoyment in these games imo.
What an absolute shit take of this game. Talk about hardly engaging with it
The 'Pints of hot lady foam...' line... Chiefs Kiss!!! Unbelievably funny! Haha 😅😂
Speaking of Star Wars, did you know there's a Sith Lord in The Three Musketeers? It's true!
His name is Darth Agnan.
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh
I can’t believe I fell for this joke Agnan
Get out. You beautiful person you.
Did you say "Darth Onion"? I really must get my hearing checked out.
Though, that would make him a spicier, many-layered character. He already made me cry, so that's a thing.
I loved that this series introduced the idea of gray Jedi who basically left the Order and decided they didn't want to be part of the ancient good versus evil BS.
The thing that always bugged me about KotOR was that it forced your main character to multiclass which meant you were in this weird place where you had to try not to level up too much as if you wanted to play guardian you'd end up hobbling yourself too much. Least they fixed that in the sequal.
Problem with married to the D&D3e rules.
@cattysplat wasn't that it just forced multiclassing which put you at a disadvantage when you played a consular. It something the sequal improved upon
The backstory on the Rakatan empire was such a cool addition - it presents a totally different possibility that the Jedi/Sith dynamic never does. What if an entire society was all force users and instead of fighting each other they worked together, and merged technology and the force to create a galaxy spanning empire? And if you play your cards right with the sand people you get their full origin story which goes all the way back to the fall of the Rakatan empire. So good.
Eh, idk. I think that arguments are valid, but it's also different when you have to play it, vs when you want to play it. I've replayed this game a number of times, and recently, and I always felt like it held up. But I fell in love with the game 21 years ago, so I understand I'm biased. Also, there's a "fixed" version released on Android which runs very well. Which I'm going to go reinstall now.
1:15 the BEST thing about Knights of the Old Republic 2, while YES still had the pretty black and white morality choices that were decidedly extreme was that, in the story context it questioned the very nature of the Force, brought up the possibility that it's 'will' could be viewed as tantamount to enslavement and questioned if it wouldn't be better just to be rid of the thing as a whole. It's a shame that game was basically released unfinished. Really the Metal Gear Solid Phantom Pain of it's time.
I kind of wish they would make a Star Wars game where falling to the dark side is believable and character motivated and not just you choosing to be evil because you feel like kicking puppies.
That's probably asking for too much since even the movies and TV shows can't accomplish that.
I'm honestly sick of subversive shit in fiction these days, it's everywhere now. You can't write a fictional story without someone dying of dysentery or it isn't realistic enough for people.
In Star Wars if you're a force user and you get angry once, you're now suddenly evil forever. It's monumentally stupid.
You can do that in this game. There's pretty much always a "selfish, mercenary" conversation option between the Light/Dark one. It moves you to the dark side much slower, so you can alternate between that and the good option based on the situation, then it's up to you if you choose to be a good person and redeem yourself later, or succumb to the dark side.
My first ever RPG, my appalling character setup where I played as a scout meant I won the final battle by running away in circles and planting mines for the Sith to walk over.
Worth noting that this game has a sequel that actually DOES manage really complex storytelling by flipping the Star Wars light/dark conflict into more of a lawful/chaotic one.
I've never played KOTOR, finished KOTOR 2 and I found it to be absolutely fantastic, minus the combat (heard that KOTOR 1 combat was even weaker), the writing in the second one blew me away, and I never was that much of a Star Wars fan to begin with.
Getting it off steam meant you missed out on the 4 cd install, because you love a good dose of the nostalgia.
I rarely admit it, but I was eating while watching this and I nearly choked to death laughing over Gary Glitter with flashbacks to rock and roll part II. Well done! Now how do I clean Chicken Alfredo out of a keyboard?
I think they wanted to figure out how Gary Glitter and his former band mates recorded/keep recording their massively popular project: "Blow up the oppo then fight the Republic", which led to a galaxy wide tour. Only thing they had was Gary's various café and bar stop recollection to go off from.
(4:33) Hey! I am a paraplegic and I have one of those exact reacher/grabber things! 😎🤘☮
You hate mixing turn based and real time, yet I recall you enjoying the slamming of spacebar to pause FTL somewhere between a breach missile and a bell-end piercing.
One of my favorite games. Top 3 easily.
Just need the mods.
This was Star Wars during the prequel era, I wouldn't exactly call the jedi order space monks dedicated to peace and justice, more like enlightened centrists, that must defend the status quo at all cost, especially by waging war, but telling some weirdos to not do slavery is a bit much for their balanced morals.
This video, if nothing else, made me realise that I haven't played the original KOTOR in 13 years... need to remedy that. HK-47 alone makes this a stone cold classic no matter its other flaws!
Seeing Yahtzee wax on about how "of course" the game doesn't hold up because of the 20 years worth of quality of life improvements that it's missing makes me want to hear his thoughts on something like the Super Mario RPG remake (where they added said improvements to a game whose admitted shortcomings in the gameplay department were more than balanced out by the story and characters and charm that it had, while improving all that good stuff about it too).
It makes me wonder if he would dare say that same line for games that he likes, such as The Sands of Time, which is currently 21 years old.
There was a ranged combat build. You cross classed into Scoundrel and Jedi Counselor (or the Sith Equivalent) and then did stun force powers while dual pistol wielding for way too much sneak attack. Make me use a lightsaber? Yeah, as a lockpick. As a belt accessory. For when the blast door takes too long. To light my deathstick. Can't say I lost a fight after the first world, but I was also not leveling until after getting to the Jedi temple because then you get to pick all of your levels, so I was doing things the power gaming way...and abusing Force Persuade so much in KotOR 2 since the same build works in that game too, but I did Sith for that one, that I just couldn't play a paragon of good character in anything for a while afterwards.
This video is not great. At least KOTOR has an excuse for being outdated: it was made 20 years ago. You've been making videos for decades and made this one today and the critiques are very tired. "Old games don't have the quality of life stuff of new games." Yeah, that's obvious. The critique on the narrative is also embarrassing. "Why not a toilet cleaner?" Because that's not the point of the story? It's all about revenge and redemption, not Star Wars war strategies.
I remember watching these videos when I was in High School. For some reason I thought they would grow up as I did.
So, what I got out of this was: that after 15 years, I can finally use Patreon to fulfil my goal of getting you to review Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64
Yes finally ive waited 12 years for this
*21 years
@@bobafettjr85 he just didn't wait for some years of the time
And it certainly wasn’t worth the wait
@@Alpha___00 its yathzee you expected him to like
First Yahtzee video that feels phoned in and half assed. Most complaints boil down to "i didnt connect or understand the plot i went out of my way to not engage in or put effort into understanding.
Starwars Vagabond
Having a "Poo or poo not, there is no try." sign would genuinely help me use the bathroom
I played KOTOR years after I played the Mass Effects and my conclusions were roughly the same as Yahtzee's - the combat and graphics don't hold up, the story is the strength, but it also does stretch credulity somewhat.
It's also why I have the controversial take that KOTOR 2 is actually the better game. Combat and graphics were equally bad. But the story was all the moral gray area added back in. KOTOR 2 was the first piece of Star Wars media that genuinely questions and unpacks the Light-Dark Side morality of Star Wars, in an intelligent thoughtful way (and not the "IMO da Jedi r evul" edgelord way).
Is it controversial, though? I tend to hear (and agree with, having played both myself) this take more often than the reverse.
KOTOR 2 being better is not controversial. KOTOR 2 is known for being better over all if you can get past the fact that it was released fundamentally unfinished and also use the restored content mod to put the ending back in
@Stray7 it is if you think the base game is better, which I do tbh. TRCM is an amazing achievement but the original game is still fundamentally great.
Its frankly sad that this is considered a hot take. I played them out of order and its why I only finished 1 once, its so much better that theres no reason to ever play 1 again
KOTOR 2 would universally be recognized as the better game if it was allowed to be completed. Because it was rushed out the door, it was too unstable and unfinished.
for future retro games, the version of retro games on GOG often has a lot of fixes/tweaks pre-applied, so you spend less time tinkering. yes, even if Steam & GOG re-release a retro game on the same day, the GOG version often has more care.
The effectiveness of the twist is that the Good Guys were both wrong (should have helped Gary Glitter in the beginning) and hypocritical (what they did to Gary Glitter). Playing as Team Good Guy at the end was really unnerving because even if I the player agreed with the ending, I couldn't help but think to why I might have felt that way. It made me feel really, really similar to the ending of Spec Ops: The Line.
This game is the 20-something's Sixth Sense. It is impossible to get the same impact a decade after the fact.
the possibility of a full episode dedicated to reviewing Orc Massage is life changing
I think I first played this game in 2013. I was 17. Even then it was still considered way outdated, but I still fell in love with it and it became one of my favorite games ever. I was still really big on Star Wars around that time, so then you give me this game in which you could explore the Star Wars universe more in-depth than any other Star Wars game? Hell yeah, I was in for that ride. I ended up loving its story and characters even more than the movies. On top of that, I haven't even played any other similar RPG's to it before, so it was also basically my introduction to CRPG's.