finished i have not, judging i can not

greg asked how's KotOR2 so far, so i thought i'd blog the review instead of posting it as a comment.

similarity to the first KotOR is obvious, as you have five or six planets you have to travel to look for shit. only this time it's not starmaps. in the first KotOR you travel to find starmaps to hunt down malak. this time you travel to find clues about your forgotten past. the annoying part is that everyone else seems to know what happened in the past, but no one is willing to tell you jack.

graphic is great, like always (using 128MB GeForce4Ti4400). movements are smooth using my computer's supertweaked setting (default setting it lags because we all know pentium decrease its frequency as it heats up to prevent the chip from melting, unlike AMDs). and fighting movements have more variety. they at least have three different movements for each attack.

some new features include different force forms, which usage i have yet to figure out since i've only unlocked one (shii-cho form, or determination). apparently the description says that this is useful when fighting a large number of enemies, but i have yet to see any difference. this might be one of those that gives modifier to your offense or defense, but i'm not sure. maybe later i'll find out. another thing that i've unlocked is force channel, which usage i have also yet to figure out. this one seems to deal more with force and not physical, though.

about storyline, there's quite a lot to say and not enough time. in summary, so far it seems okay. the storyline is a bit confusing, as they tell you shitloads of stuff (that you're exiled, that you served under revan, that you fought some war, and a bunch of other shit) but never told you why. there are twelve people (or beings) that can join your crew, instead of nine in the first KotOR, and like the first one, you can use up to three in your party. however, the other members are not as prominent as in the first one. so far it seems like these are just random characters pulled out of the scriptwriter's ass; they have no relevancy to the storyline, sorta like juhani in the first KotOR. but it might all tie up in the end, we'll see.

what i've found out so far is that the character is exiled, and knows more than what you know. you see dialogue options like "i did not march with revan because i chose to," that brings up questions like "what march?" "when?" "why did he have to march?" "what the hell?"

apparently, the character was involved in this thing called the malachor war (might be something else, i wasn't really paying attention), and apparently something really terrible happened such that the survivors refuse to bring up any talk about it. and the stupid part is that YOUR CHARACTER KNOWS what happened, but YOU DON'T. so if i were to complain about this game, it would be about the fact that you're not in a full control of yourself. in the first one, even though everyone in the free world knows that you are the dark lord himself, at least your character was as clueless as you, hence the awesome, unexpected twist. here, you get surprises constantly, but mostly surprised because your character knows more than what YOU know.

as for the villains, i'm utterly confused at the moment. there's this ugly punk with scars all over his body that cuts off kreia's left hand, and you'd think he'd be the dark lord, but then they showed this one guy in a mask that looks even scarier than the ugly punk. this guy:



he has a disciple, a female disciple, who wears a hood so that you can only see her nose and mouth. and oh, he speaks static. worse than darth vader who speaks breathing.

that's all i've found out so far. i'll update again as i progress further.

oh, and i'm still stuck with fucking vibroswords. apparently lightsabers are not as abundant as they were in the first KoTOR.