Does KOTOR Hold Up 20 Years Later? | Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Retrospective

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is a 2003 role-playing game developed by BioWare a studio known for the excellent action-adventure puzzle platformer mdk2 a series revolving around the Baldur gate and something about Mass effects I think Kotor needs no introduction it took the World by storm in 2003 and ensured a cozy spot in many a best games ever made lists critics and Gamers like showered Kotor with praise lording its novel spin on the Star Wars Canon deep RPG systems and writing to many Kotor was the breath of fresh air that the Star Wars franchise desperately needed after the mediocre Phantom Menace and absolutely atrocious attack of the Clones but to a 10 year old me whose family didn't have enough money for that fancy official Star Wars merchandise and resorted to mashing his toys against each other and pretending their Jedi Kotor was a game that let me go pewpio and room room which was which was pretty cool yeah a lot of the game went over my head in 2003. half the time I had no idea what the characters were yapping about and the story was this nebulous entity that distracted me from what I was actually there for going Voom Voom with my lightsaber so here I am as an adult replaying this game nearly 20 years after the first time I had played it and it's pretty great Kotor is not a masterfully written meta deconstruction that its sequel was but it's pretty good nonetheless so before jumping into the video let's go through some house rules first of all I've used two fan patches to fix kotor's resolution in UI which I'll link in the description be aware that applying these patches correctly is not as easy as it seems so I recommend watching this video also linked in the description secondly you might have noticed that the in-game pointer looks a bit off as if it's missing a texture this glitch appears only in recordings not in the game itself so try not to be too alarmed by it I couldn't for the life of me fix it so I hope it's not too visually grating for those of you who prefer watching videos with your eyeballs instead of putting them in the background no judgment to those who prefer listening to videos instead of actively watching them by the way it's it's all cool by me now as for the video itself I've decided to stray away from my standard format and go for a more story focused structure this means that I will go through the entire story of Kotor and address things like gameplay visuals some side quests companions characters writing and so on as they appear this is by no means an exhaustive and diff analysis of Kotor I adopted this format to make things easier easier for me to write an edit and I'm already screwing up also spoilers lots of spoilers an ungodly amount of spoilers as for socials I've got a Twitter or whatever the hell it's called right now and a patreon where you can support my work with real life money let's go good [Music] so I'm not gonna spend too much time on character creation if you're watching this chances are you've already played quota and you're here for the spoiler heavy story explanation if you haven't here's the gist Kotor is an RPG based on Third Edition Dungeons and Radiance with a few tweaks to run better as a video game players choose between three base classes with each kind of sort of corresponding to a classic RPG Arch type scoundrel the equivalent of a stealth Rogue class the soldier basically a warrior and a scout a jack of all trades type class that focuses more on skills choosing a class has you invest points into attributes the DND system means that having 8 or 9 points in an attribute gives you a negative one modifier 10 or 11 translates into a flat 0 12 and 13 gets you a plus one and so on because it had been a while since I last played Kotor I decided to roll with a bulky charismatic rogish type who knows his way around the vibroblade by the way I have very limited experience with DND so try to be you know not too alarmed by my lackluster attribute Point distribution I've never been one to min max his RPG characters and the game is pretty easy to begin with anyway Beyond class their skills with the knowledge that I'd rely on my companions to dish out most of the damage in the early game I decided to focus on persuasion demolitions computer use for interfacing with security systems and security for Block picking finally you get to pick a feat which mostly affects combat there is a huge variety of Feats both active and passive passive Feats come in the form of weapon focuses that grants certain bonuses for example choosing Blaster rifle Focus gets you plus one attack bonus with Blaster rifles same goes for melee weapons and Blaster pistols Focus there's also dueling and two-handed weapons focus with dueling characters who use one-handed weapons in combat game plus one to attack and plus one to defense the two weapon fighting feed reduces the attack penalty derived from wielding double-bladed weapons or one weapon in each hand another interesting passive feat is toughness which grants one extra Vitality point every time the character levels up the cool thing is that the bonus applies retroactively for levels previously gained so if you find yourself lagging behind in terms of HP you can activate this bad boy and your good and active Feats are basically combat-oriented abilities being certain that my character would be melee combat focused I went with flurry and toughness again I know my build isn't exactly optimal or even good but it doesn't really matter all that much I beat this game at 10 by assigning skill points and feeds at random and using the auto level up feature it's it's it's fine trust me so starting the game up brings you to a very familiar opening which could have made for an awesome intro for this video had the copyright ghouls lurking within the balls of YouTube not blasted my test clip with claims anyways the story takes place 4 000 or so years before the formation of the Galactic Empire much like in the prequel trilogy the galactic Republic is marked by Petty corruption and institutional Decay after being weakened by a series of external threats first were the mandalorians a warrior Society who launched a devastating Pan Galactic Invasion of Republic controlled space the Jedi were hesitant to get involved until a pair of renegade Jedi Knights Revan and Malik joined the war effort as commanders against the council's orders and turned the tide of the war after winning the Mandalorian War Revan and Malik [ __ ] off to the unknown regions a year later they returned with a Sif Armada and launched their own Invasion against the Republic the Republic barely hanging on like my voice here the Republic barely hanging on after the Mandalorian Wars is now fighting a losing war against the sepharmada whose ranks are filled with Former Republic officers and Jedi who have turned to the dark side sometime prior to the events of the Game Malik now revlon's Apprentice succeeded his former Master as dark lord after Revan was struck down by a Jedi Strike Force led by bastilla an up-and-coming Jedi Padawan whose battle meditation ability is Central to The Republic war effort the game opens up on the Ender Spire which is under attack by Malek's forces over the city world of Terrace the player character is awakened from his beauty sleep by a loud crash and an agitated Tres Olga was like Bastille is here which is definitely why Malik has unleashed the entire force of the Sif Armada on our puny civilian ship anyway here's how the game were works you can you get into the edges of the screen to rotate the camera alternately moving the mouse while holding down the right Mouse button will rotate the camera as well you know hearing the game's mechanics explained in such a non-diegetic fashion reminds me of a famous scene from The Wire where a drug dealer annoyed at the person who didn't understand the code words he used for cocaine over the phone proceeded to blurt out the actual word to the amusement of a police officer who's like when's the last time he heard cocaine on the phone so when's the last time you heard the game character saying you can move the mouse in a game yeah pretty funny anyways after our little encounter with Trask we're immediately introduced to the party system the way this works is that you're gonna be swapping between your party members to use their various skill sets here you're supposed to use tresk to hack this door but since I'd already put a couple of points in security I didn't need trask's assistance in addition to the party system we're introduced to combat the combat looks incredibly similar to an old-school isometric crpg where you target an enemy and use whatever skills you have at your disposal to take them down be it abilities grenades and so on I don't know why I use the word grenades there but anyways it might not be very obvious at first glance to do the 3D perspective but the combat is actually turn based you even have a pause function that you can use at any time during combat to plan your next moves anyways this combat system is incredibly dated and I can see a lot of new players bouncing for this reason it's not that bad I don't have a problem with it though I might not be the perfect person to judge it since well look at my portfolio it's brimming with janky old games anyways we kill some Sif enter a new sector of the ship and Trask is like holy [ __ ] a dark Jedi I repeat a dark Jedi and the light Jedi stay the [ __ ] back at this this ain't for us oh yeah they both kicked the bucket if only the Jedi was smart enough to get away from that obviously malfunctioning uh wall oh would you look at that we just gained our first level so as with any RPG you earn the experience points through questing and slaying enemies you can auto level up or do it manually both for your characters and your companions depending on the level you've reached the player character may earn an extra attribute Point skill points an extra feat and later New Jedi powers in this particular case I earned skill points and new Feats I dutifully invested my skill points in computer use and treat injury and shows the melee weapons Focus feat because you know I'm a sword boy it's worth mentioning that cross-class skills cost more than your class specific skills so if I were say a soldier and chose to put some points into persuasion it would have cost me more than for a class that comes with persuasion pre-baked like Scout in my case thankfully persuasion becomes a class skill when you become a Jedi so don't feel too bad if you choose Soldier as you're starting class right past the anderspires bridge we stumble into another dark Jedi and tress is like holy [ __ ] a dark Jedi I repeat a dark Jedi stay the [ __ ] back kid this ain't for you uh imma go distract him while you go and escape with bestola by he then rushes the dark Jedi and the door closes behind him like was this sacrifice really necessary so we are all alone now which is super convenient timing as right around the corner there's a whole Squad of Sith officers stationed in a tight room this dude called carf tells us that we need to find some way to find their numbers luckily for us he stops just short of pulling a tresky and a non-diegetic tutorial by revealing two options to make our life easier we can either hack the robot and turn it against the sieve if we have enough repair parts or use computer spikes to slice into the terminal and turn the ship's security system against the sieve I chose the latter because I kinda sorta like electrocuting people in in video games I loot some [ __ ] off their bodies and meet the man himself carve onassi who's reluctant to answer our questions on account of the ship literally exploding with us in it bestela is nowhere to be found and since this is the last Escape but it's safe to assume she took her own and crash landed on Terrace anyways let's let's leave this heap of metal crashing on the surface I am knocked unconscious and carve drags my Amnesia carcass to an abandoned Apartment we are on Terrace a sprawling megalopolis spanning the planet's entire surface formerly The Unofficial capital of the outer rim the Coruscant of the outer rim if you will a hub of Commerce and culture Terrace has since fallen into a state of decay we will find out more about terrorists as we go on but for now all you need to know is that the planet is split into three levels the further down you go the worse it gets the upper city is home to the planet's political and Wealthy Elite the lower city is plagued by petty crime and gangs and the other city is a sunless monster infested slum where the planet's undesirables their families and descendants included are thrown to live the rest of their lives ah I like my Star Wars with a dash of North Korea also all non-human species are second-class citizens with little to no rights a nice friendly place when I wake up car fills me in on what's been going on he explains that best of lashan the Jedi Padawan who disappeared during Malik's attack on the Ender Spire is known for her Mastery of battle meditation it's a forced technique that strengthens one's allies and fills the enemies with an intense sense of dread and hopelessness her ability is essential to the Republic's war effort as it has been the sole weapon capable of staving off the Sith Onslaught so far however battle meditation requires intense concentration to pull off which explains why she couldn't use it during the attack we also find out that the Sith are searching for bestela and have declared martial law on terrorists so basically our main objectives are to locate bestela and find a way to escape through the Sith blockade undetected that's a easier said than done of course as all levels beyond the upper City are accessible only to Citizens with the proper authorization after carve's briefing we are finally free to explore the planet I saved this alien from a squad of racist Sith netting my first light side points and proceed to terrorize the tenants by breaking into their apartments and looting them I explained to a tenant that my looting is to support the war effort and that the Republic will happily reimburse them by simply filling the application that I handed to them is what I would have said had their dialogue option been available on my way out of the apartment complex I stumble into this annoyingly aristocratic lady who while understandably upset at my barging into her home is grateful that I'm at least more polite than that pig Hold on kind of a weird time to drop this info but it takes me all about two seconds to persuade Doria to reveal that Holden is a low-life gangster that put a bounty on her head after she refused his advances and embarrassed him in front of his friends what a spiteful little [ __ ] I agree to help her which kick-starts are first of many side quests exiting the apartment complex has us not so subtly nudged by the game to approach carf who seems very moody so companions have their own stories and quests to follow through basically companions will Drip video bits of info about their lives at predetermined points in the story this was a deliberate design decision on bioware's part 2. I don't want to say bad to the game but simulate how real-life relationships work you gotta earn your companion's trust they won't just offer you their lives on a silver platter just because you're the protagonist that being said since I [ __ ] myself out of several companion quests by not going to certain places to trigger them I'm not going to focus too much on companions in this video by the way if you want to get the most out of dialogue get the employee feed as soon as possible cool cool so there's a lot of stuff to tackle on Terrace I first head to The Cantina to get the poles of the city and potentially find a way to access the lower City I meet this off duty Sith officer who's surprised at my approaching her as most people on Terrace can't stand as if it becomes very lonely very fast according to her this was a pretty interesting conversation as it makes some of the Sith seem more human don't get too attached to her though she admitted he goes on to lament her posting on a shitty Backwater planet and explains the population hostility towards the Sith as an attitude problem she actually says with a straight face that they should be grateful for the current state of affairs as the Sith could have slapped a curfew on the whole planet but they chose not to that they shouldn't be so busy and make the best of things boy it takes a special kind of narcissist to like invade the planet and then be like Carpe Diem be positive live laugh love that would be like me barging into your house destroying your furniture pissing and [ __ ] all over the place and then being like dude what's with the negative energy at least I left your TV intact upon seeing you protesting my actions did this woman just pioneered the concept of viper-based military invasions anyways we hit it off pretty quickly and she invites me to a party where the who's who of the Sith Junior officer brass will be present hmm noted before we bounce we can participate in the fighting arena the arena is a great opportunity to earn some XP by defeating your opponents and money by placing bets at this job of the Hutt looking dude since the initial batch of opponents was relatively easy to tackle I felt confident enough to challenge the retired Champion bendak Starkiller to a death match oh yeah uh death matches had been outlawed sometime before the events of the game which caused bendak to retire because he found non-lethal matches you know boring in fact death matches are so illegal that the hood overseeing the arena has to pull a lot of strings to make this one happen so let's see how this one goes we could use those credits from these duels uh Circle back to bendak later let's talk viral deadly diseases the terrible Affliction has plagued Terrace for many generations it is spread by the raccoons horrible monsters that live in the undercity below Terrace's great skyscrapers prolonged exposure to the undercity breeds the disease and those infected will eventually mutate into raccoons themselves becoming mindless beasts that feed on the Flesh of others there is no antidote for the disease though I heard the Republic scientists at the military base here on Terrace were close to perfecting a cure then the Sith arrived they overran the military base and now they refuse to allow anyone access to the Laboratories inside the Sith are keeping all the serum for the patrols they send into the undercity if I could just get my hands on a sample of that serum the raccoon disease could be white from the face of Terrace forever so in typical BioWare slash RPG fashion there's usually more than one way to solve a quest here I can choose to hand the rag gold disease antidote to this doctor so he can Mass produce it or sell it to a gangster in the Lore City and make a nice Hefty profit Kotor has a binary morality system tailored around the franchise's Light Side slash Dark Side Concept in this case handing the antidote to the doctor Nets me Light Side points while selling it for profit is the bad choice obviously let's party hey you made it I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show [Music] sauna that Wine's got quite the kick bottles will be passed out on the floor who cares we're not on duty tomorrow let's live a little come on drink up [Music] foreign so now that we obtained the sieve uniform we finally have the means to access the Lore City and continue our search for best Allah and make my way to the lower City and witness two gangs fighting each other in a hilariously dated in engine cutscene I don't know there's just something very amusing about seeing gang members going at each other with the same clunky and game combat animation I'd seen dozens of times in a cutscene that's supposed to introduce the gritty real part of Terrace on a scale of 1 today 6 Triad fight I'd say this is a strong eight so by this point it becomes very clear that Terrace's glossy exterior is Just an Illusion Taurus is a deeply corrupted city where the criminal underworld led by Crime Boss devic holds its economy and social life hostage as much as the tourism Elite and the Sith authorities would want you to believe that only the lower levels of terrorists have a crime problem that's not actually true in the upper city you'll encounter numerous people being caressed by David's goons in addition shops and businesses pay protection money to devic and worst of all this is all happening with the sieve's tested approval who are profiting directly from devex rackets I mean sure it gets worse the further down you go like you'll never see ganks straight up fighting over territory and Upper Terrace but like even Upper Terrace citizens Who You'd think are wealthy enough to insulate themselves from devic's reach are like legit terrified of him and this is just one facet I haven't even touched on the systemic racism and Terraces cast-based society that practices the literal deportation of undesirables whether human or alien to the lowest level of the planet for eternity this is why I've always ranked Taurus pretty high up despite being considered one of the weaker planets within the community I love games that explore this corrupt crime-ridden Urban environments quarter's analysis may be skin deep but at least it makes an honest attempt at any rate the next phase of the main quest takes us to the lower City Cantina which is identical to its upper City counterparts safe from some tiny visual flourishes meant to convey the idea that it's in the bad part of town first we see this absolute chat of a bounty hunter called Calo Nord annihilating some gang members who got a healthy dose of [ __ ] around and find out he doesn't talk to them he counts to free finally he does the same to me when I approach him even though my intentions are purely conversational color Nord is essential to the plot so this fight is impossible to win whatever nerd I'll kill you later in the obligatory scripted plot convenient encounter much like an upper Terrace the Lore City container functions as a quasi-social hub where the player drives the story forward and picks up side quests we find out that devic or as I like to call him space Whitey Bulger has a ship fast enough to bypass the Sith blockade you know I was torn between calling David space John Gotti or space Whitey Bulger until my friend and fellow YouTuber called of the Cyber skull pointed out that not only is David not slick enough to be gaudy he also sounds like Whitey Bulger when you listen to him speak it'd be hilarious if David was indeed based on Whitey Bulger anyways even with David's ship they're still the issue of the orbital laser which has to be manually deactivated from the Sith military base in the upper City by the way this is Holden the same dude who put a bounty on Dia's head I convinced him to lift the Bounty for a measly 200 credits and he just disappears from the game forever speaking of which the Cantina is also where you can pick up bounties from Zacks a nearly identical Hood to the one we met on the surface funnily enough I had already proactively cleared all the bounties just by exploring so our interactions were like I need you to kill X for 100 credits and I was like well I already handled it and then he went oh [ __ ] really okay here's 100 credits and then I was like well how about more and then he went okay what the Jabba the clown here didn't know was that I didn't so much kill the targets as I invalid did some of the bounties for example I helped one guy stage his own death by planting a bomb in his apartment to which even Zacks remarked that it was a bit Overkill the most important bit in the Cantina is meeting Mission and zalbar Mission is a twilik rogish type with a sharp with tons of Street smarts and a heart of gold zelbar is her rookie best friend and muscle Mission gives us some info about the two super gangs vying for control over the streets of the Lore City the valkers and the becks she then sets up a meet with the leader of the begs gang who may or may not know something about some Republic Escape pods that crash landed in the area what are swoop gangs uh basically space bikers because they ride swoop bikes which are uh space bikes before meeting the gang boss I made a little detour to wrap up some unfinished business by this point I am strong enough to challenge bendak to combat in the arena the fight is not exactly a cakewalk I recall still unlocking Him With Grenades and previous playthroughs which didn't work in this one for some reason but after a bit of saves coming I slay him and met some bad boy points for good measure I got the Tidy sum from both the arena boss and Zach's because surprising absolutely no one there was a bounty on bandax head by the way Kotor has that same early 2000s RPG Hub area issue where certain locations are closer to each other than they should be like the volcker and back bases who are at War by the way are barely a few feet apart from each other I do realize that Kotor was developed with the original Xbox in mind and there's only so much open space that the console can render without like you know exploding but come on there's barely enough space to Stage half a drive by shooting here these trees barely register as streets they're more like Bridges I don't know it's it's fine alright so gedden the PEX leader is a pretty interesting dude for one he's suspiciously trusting and affable for a man who runs one of the most powerful gangs in the second most shadiest part of Terrace I guess he is one of the good ones he only runs protection rackets with a bit of drug dealing sprinkled on top well after a bit of digging I discovered that the hidden Becks gained a lot of cloud with the locals when they joined that region resistance against the Mandalorian Invasion earning their reputation as one of the more honorable swoop gangs in addition the feud between the hidden Becks and the volkers turn bloody only when gedden's adopted son and Heir Apparent brezzek joined and took over the volkers after gedden refused to relinquish leadership to brejek until this Feud the beef rarely turned violent as the gangs use swoop races to settle disputes so the hidden picks may actually be less of a gang and more of a space motorcycle club still the game doesn't really explain how they earn their money to own slash rent this huge ass base but whatever I can't post what do they eat question in every [ __ ] video I make so it doesn't take much effort to get Gaden to talk the Escape pod containing best Allah crashed into the undercity and was picked clean by The volkers Who took her into slavery the volkers put her as the prize for the next swoop race for some reason so to save her we have to participate and win problem is the volkers stole an experimental swoop engine from the hidden backs and without the engine we have no chance to win so we are to connect with Mission and the undercity sneak into the volcker base through the back entrance and steal the engine back complicating things is the fact that only authorized Personnel are allowed into the other City fortunately gadon is willing to trade the documentation for the Sith uniform so that's settled cool the other city is as shitty as everybody made it out to be we get some very interesting insights about life in the other City from this young lady whose family was banished Generations ago into the deaths of Terrace so the story is that several centuries before the events of the game tourism industrialists killed most of the oceanic fauna and Flora causing a planet-wide food shortage seeing the writing on all that recently hoarded the remaining resources while the poor were left to starve and die that region poor rebelled in an event known as the teresian Civil War the rebellion was crushed by that region government who then banished the rebels to the other City during kotor's events the other city has become a sort of prison colony where that regionally banished the poor whether guilty of a crime or not to preserve resources it's a purely greedy driven scheme and it's pretty [ __ ] up the lady also talks about the so-called Promised Land a legendary self-sufficient settlement located somewhere deep in the undercity there's not much to say about this Quest it boils down to tracking free journals left behind by some dead explorers and handing them to either the village elder or this Shady Merchant the former results in the entire population leaving the village to search for this Promised Land while the latter has the merchant destroying the journals and thus any proof of the promised land's existence you want to hear his reasoning relief for the promised land people won't buy [ __ ] from me anymore and I'll become irrelevant well yeah but surely the prospect of ending up in a self-sufficient settlement is better than selling second-hand scrap for a living for the rest of your life right I don't know whatever man anyways it's time to leave the village connect with Mission and hopefully find a cure for the regular disease as the outcasts clearly needed please you have to help me even the back won't help me but I can't just leave him there he is my friend you'll help me won't you it's zabar he's in trouble big trouble ah looks like zalbore got into a bit of trouble and the sewers are filled with gomorian slavers whatever the [ __ ] that means cool so mission is the first companion to join your party after carf as I said in the intro like a million years ago Kotor is all about leveraging your companion skills in this case mission is a scoundrel specialized in stealth and demolitions so I spec her accordingly she has a great addition to my party as she is not only apt at disabling and retrieving the dozens of Minds littering the undercity she's also a great ranged fighter there are a few things we can do before heading to the sewers that lead to the volcker base first a Sith patrol leader fills us in on a Sith Patrol that had been eviscerated by a pack of rare ghouls since we know from the upper City doctor that Civ Squad stationed in the undercity are issued rag goal serums we can go and snatch it without attracting the ire of the Sith we can also pay a visit to the Escape pods where we'll find a republic soldier in the process of mutating we can either give him the serum or let nature run its course and kill him now this is a bit of a false choice because if you cure him he ends up devoured by a pack of mutants anyway so yeah kinda annoying last but not least we can assist the squad of mercenaries and have a chat with their leader kendras who's also on David's payroll hmm so I'm gonna speed through the rest of the undercity because honestly as much as I like Taurus I'm getting kind of sick of this planet the sewers come with two noteworthy Events first we save zalbar and he swears our life dead to us effectively joining our party then there is a Rancor that we can Looney Tunes out of existence by planting bait and a grenade in the nearby body pile oh foreign next up is the volcker base and the garage it's at this point where I realize I am absolutely [ __ ] stacked with supplies guns blades and armor upgrades that I have no idea what to do with I'm also substantially weaker than my companions who mop the floor with these gangsters like season 2 Barry Bergman thankfully I'm not entirely useless as I leverage my computer skills to download the map of the area and open all locked security doors yay I'm useful so here we're presented with the first real dark side slash Light Side Choice One of brazek's cronies offers me 500 credits and bestela if I betray gadden and kill him instead but then he's like yeah you also have to win the race which is like I don't want to participate in some stupid race so I kill him okay the race God this planet is getting on my nerves so super races are not very impressive they basically boil down to driving over these pressure plates to gain momentum and pressing left click when this bar fills up to get a speed boost and that's about it so surprise surprise is a sore loser and throws a [ __ ] fit about me cheating obviously he plans to withdraw the cash price and sell bestola on the slave market then in one of the most blatant plot contrivances in this game bestala snaps out of her trance breaks out of the cage and proceeds to destroy the valkers why didn't she do this before it could have saved us a lot of trouble anyway I killed brezzek and yeah bestalot does not make a good first impression I know she's written to be a young pompous arrogant Jedi but she'd also been sold as a skilled leader who her peers look up to I guess her battle meditation literally nullifies the social consequences of her arrogance I don't know okay let's actually bust out of this planet before I go insane after a bit of back and forth we meet up with David's right hand man candaris in the lower City Cantina he's unhappy with his current boss and being stuck on this planet so he cooks up an escape plan that has us breaking into the local Sith base using a robot companion to steal the launch codes and then going to davik's State and stay eating his ship cool I made the Sith based trivial by hacking into its security systems and disabling The Killer Robots and disposed of the Sith Governor through skill and strategy by which I mean my character was so [ __ ] that I had no choice but to put a little more thought into planning to fight them before we can also help the alien with saved at the beginning of the game escape which is a pretty neat coming full circle moment we give the codes to candres and then we head over to David's estate as a potential new recruit blah blah we kill David's cronies blah blah blah oh my God I'm going insane blah blah oh callow hey and he dies with David and we steal their ship Lord Malik then decides to destroy the planet to kill bastilla but we escape just in time to get a full view of all our effort and choices being grazed into insignificance cool next destination then to win the Jedi Enclave so dantuin kicks off with our guy having visions of some sort that are definitely not foreshadowing a potential plot twist his Visions consist of best Allah defeating Revan and Malik and Raven having a conversation about an ancient structure called the starforge much like Bastille's battle meditation the star Forge seems to be vital to the Sith war effort but we don't know yet in what capacity nor its location also our guy has a very strong sense of the force which is very unusual for an adult and he shares those Visions with bastala hinting at the existence of a force bond between them and with that we begin our training and the ways of the Jedi and the span of a few weeks we Master abilities that other Jedi have barely scratched the surface of after years of intense training meditation telekinesis sword fighting uh walking and talking all that cool Jedi [ __ ] after the initial training we must complete free tests to be fully accepted in the Jedi Order the first test is reciting the Cherry code which I passed by invoking an ancient Jedi technique called looking shut up on my phone for the second test we are to construct our own lightsaber my master makes it out to be this mystical transcendental ritual when in fact all it comes down to is interfacing with the in-game workbench another thing we need to do is choose a Jedi class there are three classes Guardian Sentinel and Consular Guardians focus on Raw strength and hand-to-hand combat consulars are masters of the force and Sentinels are a mix of both I went with Sentinel because some internet guide said it's the best I'm I'm kidding mostly after choosing my class I get to unlock two Jedi Powers there's a large suite of powers split into three categories lightside Powers Dark Side powers and Universal Powers secondly you're free to choose any power regardless of your leaning but there will be restrictions like dark side Powers casting more points to cast for Light Side characters and vice versa so you should mostly stick to your alignment unless you're a Jedi Consular or its Dark Side equivalent who get tons of force points at the expense of raw strength it's a pretty interesting system if a bit inflexible like there's no reason to go for a gray slash neutral Jedi because you're literally stunting your character's development with that said and done it's time to receive our third and final assignment word on the street is that the ancient Grove once used for meditation by the Jedi has been tainted by evil unleashing a wave of bad vibes that has turned the local fauna especially calf Hound's aggressive and ruthless we are to locate and destroy the source of dark energy before it becomes too much to handle for the locals cool I decided to have a chat with the Jedi Council before proceeding with my task there's nothing interesting here with the only notable bit being this dude who straight up blue balls me dudes like we have this biggest library that holds millennia's worth of Jedi knowledge we're talking stuff that will absolutely blow your [ __ ] mind like you couldn't believe the crazy [ __ ] we have here dude and I'm like well can I see it and he's like ah no only like super old Jedi can go there [ __ ] what then why the hell tell me in the first place show me the books you freaking nerd the Jedi Council also provides a bit of context on Malik and Raven apparently it's not as simple as them joining the Mandalorian war and then suddenly turning to the dark side Upon returning from their trip into Uncharted space something happened there Malek and Revan witnessed something so transformative that it outright reconfigured their way of thinking and being and the Jedi are scared shitless because if there exists a force or entity or whatever powerful enough to corrupt the Jedi as virtuous as Revan and Malik then the Jedi Order and the Galaxy as a whole is truly doomed so there is a good reason why dantuin is considered one of the weaker planets danduin is a very visually uninteresting it's basically a farm planet with not much in the way of interesting stuff to see it consists of large stretches of grassy Plains Hills rivers with the odd settlement here and there I guess it makes sense as the location of a Jedi Academy as I can deny the planet exudes something of a Theta Vibe but from a gameplay and exploration perspective it's it's rough it's not only visually Bland it's a slog due to the abundance of loading screens here's the map of dantuin as illustrated by Reddit user uh sorry I don't know if I can pronounce that so here's uh here's the name on the screen as you can see there are a lot of loading screens and then twin does feature a lot of backtracking again I am aware that Kotor was developed for the original Xbox and that these loading screens were necessary but it's made exploration age horribly and don't even get me started on the encounter design God I hate fighting calf hounds they're everywhere the mandalorians are fun to fight though why do all like what am I missing here Mark Mark where am I mark so while we could go straight for the main objective there is a fair bit of side content we can pursue we can help the locals eradicate a group of mandalorians that have been harassing and killing settlers and Farmers locate this lady's missing companion and solve a murder mystery while these quests may seem unrelated they do share a common theme you see the Jedi are not just an order of space monks that happen to set up shop on dantuin the Jedi also served the role as mediators and problem solvers these people rely on the Jedi to settle disputes and enforce the law at the same time the locals are rightfully frustrated that the Jedi's lack of initiative things like addressing the core of the problem and long-term Solutions have never crossed the Jedi's minds they're purely reactive and even then they're very slow to act Jon here has every right to be pissed at the Jedi the Jedi could have done more to address the Mandalorian problem they didn't and now his daughter is dead I am not a big fan of the Jedi as you can see I've always found your idea biology and philosophy and teachings and well everything kinda nonsense their undeniable cool Factor has steadily lost its luster as I've grown older I'm bored of the Jedi I'm so over their [ __ ] so the missing companion Quest is uh more bizarre than I remembered this lady is like my husband passed away and my companion is missing can you please find him because I literally don't know what they do without them okay but then the conversation takes a turn for the creepy and it becomes apparent that the lady has something of an obsession for her companion well it turns out that her companion is a Droid and they haven't so much gone missing as they ran away because they were creeped out by the woman's clinginess the Droid begs us to end their misery as they believe this is the only way their Master will ever pursue a healthy relationship with an actual you know human sentient being whatever now this is the kind of [ __ ] I want from my Star Wars media not the M story about of John Skywalker the 15 for whatever obscure Jedi conveniently survived Order 66 I know my take is far from original but I just felt like getting this off my chest the murderer mystery side quest is one of my favorite pieces of site content in Kotor it's one of those cases of simple concept great execution you have a murder victim two suspects with strong motives a Jedi mediator and a detective Droid cross-check evidence with the way this Quest works is pretty simple there's a round of questioning the suspects and the Droid followed by reporting your findings to Jedi Master boluk if you give baluk the correct answers the quest will advance to the next round of questioning and evidence Gathering the fact that you have to give boluk the correct answers to advance the investigation to the next phase strikes me as pretty bizarre because how would he know that you're on the right path has baluk already solved the mystery and is merely testing me if that's the case how did he know with cross paths did he order the suspects to hang around the murder scene just in case a specific Jedi Prospect came by you know what it doesn't matter it's a good mystery and a good Quest so it turns out the evil force corrupting the meditation Grove is a fallen Jedi by the name of juhani after defeating her after pumping an ungodly amount of battle stimulants into my bloodstream and defeating her I kinda convinced her to change her mind from what I've read this is one of the harder social Encounters in the game but I passed all persuasion checks without any trouble it must be my natural IRL Charisma spilling over into the game or maybe I put enough points into persuasion to make this encounter trivial I don't know probably the latter so I'm a Jedi now which means it's time for my first true assignment as a member of the order I am to enter an ancient structure standing at the east of the Jedi Enclave yes the one from the vision I shared with vestala and explore the ruins for Clues as to the location of the star Forge the council as annoyingly cryptic as ever refuses to explain why these ruins are tied to my destiny and why they decided to send another Jedi to investigate if I am so crucial to the completion of this task then this dude storms into the room and goes Central family has punished so we'll look into this matter Mr metalli you must be patient your accusations have no proof and we do not want you stirring up trouble with the centrals if there is some mistake mistake my sunshine is missing How can there be any doubt the centrals are to blame so I have to deal with this mess too dude I just got here why do I have to act as the middleman between two bickering Rich families isn't this like high level Jedi Master diplomacy stuff so you're basically telling me that I'm too much of a Jedi dum dum to read some stupid ancient Jedi books from your stupid Jedi library but I am somehow qualified to broker piece between two stupid Rich families whose field goes back Generations [ __ ] what why don't you do it master vorak or Rook or whatever the [ __ ] your name is oh yeah wait you're too busy sitting on your ass all day and judging me find me overly critical Perhaps it is because you do not fully understand what is at stake [ __ ] you get a job anyway I deal with that and make my way to the ruins I stumble into this ancient insect-like robot that spit several Death Grips Beats at me until it settles on a language I can understand [Music] so this is the overseer the Builder is an ancient race of super Advanced aliens programmed the overseer to enforce discipline among the slaves and ensure that the temple is constructed according to the wishes of the builders the builders envisioned this Temple as a sort of Monument to the star forge's greatness at project completion all slaves were executed and the overseer was reprogrammed to guard the temple should the Builder return to seek the knowledge of the starforge so the overseer is basically a glorified mall cop right now the overseer points out that in order to access the knowledge of the starforge we must prove ourselves worthy by entering the Proving Grounds and understanding the will of the builders The Proving Grounds are two small attack Droid filled rooms adjacent to the overseer and understanding the will of the builders involves solving a few riddles before the Temple's security systems kill us interestingly and one of the computers used to solve The Riddles there is an Easter egg referencing a volcanic planet that was cut from the game also I now have a permanent speed boost because four speed glitched out anyways I solved the riddles and sealed the doors to the final chamber and discover what Revan and Malik found when they entered the temple a map or rather a chunk of the star map that Revan and Malik used to find the star Forge to find the star Forge ourselves we must retrace the Dual steps and locate the four remaining star maps on Tatooine kashik Monon and korriban ah [ __ ] this is going to be a long video back on the Ebon Hawk I am given the choice of which planet to hit first this is when the game finally opens up the game leaves it up to the player to decide the order in which they visit the planets so after doing some research AKA bugging my friend and Kotor scholar girachian on Discord I settled on the following order that win kashik Manon and korban mind you there is an optimal planet order but the game doesn't punish you for not following it in fact it's recommended you mix up the planet order on subsequent playthroughs as certain quests and events play out differently which adds a lot to the replay value oh and remember the Bounty Hunter who got caught lacking and died under a heap of rubble over at devic's estate not only has Kalo North survived he also took a job with Darth Malik so I'm sure we'll see more of him later okay let's go to that win [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so much like its movie counterpart Tatooine is a god-forsaken desert [ __ ] which is my second favorite genre of [ __ ] after the post-communist [ __ ] I am greeted by a representative from space Nestle who tries to shake me down for 100 credits a docking fee as he calls it to cover for expenses I guess calling him Tony and having him speak in a Brooklyn accent would have been too on the nose so the writers settled on Corporal Mafia adjacent euphemisms being the Suave smooth-talkie negotiator that I am I managed to bring the fee down to a more reasonable zero credits for the current and all future Landings by well hovering the cursor over the force persuade dialogue option and selecting it with the landing fee issue resolved I channeled my inner candle Roy and started probing the Circa employee about the plays moves and Vibes on that twin apparently zerka Corporation set up shop on Tatooine after being Bamboozled by a rival company and to thank thinking that it would be a profitable business Endeavor the Rival company sold their claim on the planet to zerka and [ __ ] off by the time zerka higher ups realized that the geological surveys that the Rival company provided were duked and possibly an attempt at corporate sabotage zerka had already gotten too invested into Tatooine to retreat without facing bankruptcy while zerka managed to do some mining there was no escaping the fact that the ore was flawed and that the entire operation was a clown show with mining becoming increasingly expensive zerka had to look at other forms of business and proceeded to turn their operations on Tatooine into a glorified Mafia racket zerkas want the planet into layers of bureaucracy and seized that small but bustling hunting industry by forbidding settlers to hunt without a very expensive license sold by you guessed it zerka on top of that they make all of their workers sign away their rights to compensation in case of workplace injury and death yeah zerka is uh not a good company as hilarious curious as the idea of a company the size of zerka falling for a trust me bro ruse might be it becomes less funny when you realize that this is the regular people who ended up Suffering The Fallout of this corporate rules Nadi overpaid zerka Executives who couldn't be bothered to skim through the business proposal and double check the numbers sadly as we'll see later when we get to cash check the Tatooine Fiasco ranks pretty low on the list of [ __ ] up [ __ ] zerka has done on the same ducking Bay I am approached by a delivery worker who lets me know that a special shipment of giska has been successfully delivered to my ship my character has absolutely no recollection of ordering a package much less one containing giska but I guess anything is possible on this clown Planet we're in a rush so we'll have to figure out what these guys are a bit later so at this stage I could just as easily go for the main objective but there are a few activities to hit first there's this lady caught in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare her husband a hunter and the sole Breadwinner of the family was killed out in the dunes all she has left is a hunting trophy but she can sell it to the hunting lodge without a Circa Corporation approved hunting license which she obviously can't afford our options are as follows we buy the trophy off of her we persuade the woman to entrust us with the trophy by a hunting license and sell it to the hunting lodge and give her the credits or the heartless baster route of taking the trophy selling it and pocketing the money I had to do some shopping anyway so I sold some of my junk and bought the trophy directly from the poor woman while it's a pretty simple question concept it perfectly illustrates the Ripple effects caused by a circus and Humane business practices upon exiting the zerk offices where we were offered the hunting license in exchange for eliminating the sand people tribe roaming outside the city we are greeted by a conservationist who asks us to infiltrate and negotiate peace with the sand people I am all for [ __ ] over greedy corporations so I take him up on his offer then we can save a hunter whose wife trapped him with his own droids and left him to die in the desert don't worry he deserved it finally we can help some miners ward off waves of sand people while most of these quests are short and sweet the sand people Quest is more involved and requires jumping through several Hoops for one nobody has managed to communicate with the sand people not that they've ever tried luckily I got wind of a merchant who had a Droid that can he wants 5 000 credits for the Droid but you can talk him down to 3 000 if your persuasion is high enough I still couldn't afford the Droid so I signed myself up for the local swoop racing tournament to raise the cash for the Droid by the way nobody believes you when you mention that you won the swoop Championship on Terrace as all records were all around together with the planet anyways with my swoop championship title secured I circled back to the shop owner exchange a bunch of race bonds for cash money and purchase the Droid so HK 47 is one of the best characters in this game if not the entire history of video games he's a sassy bloodthirsty assassination Droid with a high enough body count to make Max Payne blush he lies when he needs to calls all non-droids organic meat bags and throws a [ __ ] fit when I try to mess around with his circuitry and when the shop owner says he's worn out he calls me master sarcastically as his programming prevents him from addressing me in any other way he has a God complex rivaling system shocks Showdown the only thing he knows is killing which he is more than happy to do at my behest I absolutely love HK 47 with HK 47 at the tour party we may as well head out into the desert and try and broker piece with the sand people since the sand people haven't been made privy of our peacekeeping mission my party got attacked by their Warriors from every direction fortunately we managed to secure some disguises which made our infiltration efforts a whole lot easier until we got recognized as Outsiders as soon as we stepped into the San people's Enclave after some back and forth between HK 47 and the guard we meet at Chieftain who was in absolute disbelief that we made it this far in exchange for letting us go peacefully and reducing their attacks on miners he requires proof of good faith in the form of a moisture vaporizer from zerka which I happily Oblige by the way the corporate drone that asked me with eliminating the sand people Enclave once nothing less than their total Destruction so we'll have to find a way to trick her into thinking we eat at them back in The Enclave the chieftain is absolutely shocked that we held our end of the bargain he still doesn't trust me but since we have done more than any other Outsider he promises to slow down the attacks on the miners donates his tribal scepter to serve as proof of their elimination to zerka and provides a map with the star map's location it's in a cave I'm sure it's empty so I have some good news and some bad news the good news is that we found the cave containing the star map not far from the sand people Enclave the bad news is that it's guarded did by a gigantic space Dragon that's nearly impossible to kill without resorting to uh creative hunting methods luckily our hunter buddies set up a Minefield in front of the cave so all we need to do now is lure the dragon out in the open by herding a pack of bantas to the Cave's entrance which is easier said than done as my party is immediately attacked by waves of sand people who apparently didn't get the memo anyways the dragon goes boom and we secure the star map on our way back we are of course greeted by Shadow Nord and his posse of Intergalactic gangsters my party had come a long way since Terrace so Nord and his group posed no danger to us alright let's get off this dump kashek otherwise known as The Wookie planet is our next destination in transit shit's getting officially real on the Ebon Hawk there's romantic tension between me and bestala karth a deeply traumatized individual and one of the most misunderstood characters in the game opens up to us he was betrayed by his mentor whose swore allegiance to Malik and proceeded to bomb card's home planet killing his family candorus brags about his exploits during the Mandalorian Wars kandorus is a murderous bloodthirsty scumbag who actively participated in the slaughtering of millions of people still I can't help but respect him in a way because he knows exactly what he is and is quick to dismiss any pretense of him being anything other than a pure Warrior following the Mandalorian code of war with candres what you see is what you get and the weird thing is that he holds no ill will towards Revan and the Republic for annihilating his people from his point of view the Republic was the better combatant and they beat them fair and square it also helps that the dude's a brilliant Storyteller peppering his stories with little flourishes in the odd anecdote has to make these events of impossible to comprehend Galactic scale more relatable so on cash check we are greeted by yet another zerka employee who tries to shake us down for a docking fee and keeping with my philosophy of not paying a single dime to this corporate parasites I wave my Jedi want and convince him that I don't need to pay anything foreign Force should not be used also our companion zalbar has some unfinished business on cash check that may or may not be connected to our main objective to locate the star map earlier I said that zerka's predatory business practices on Tatooine pale in comparison to their exploits on kashek Well turns out zurka has set up a pretty lucrative slaving operation on kashek with the complicity of a Wookie Chieftain called chandar husalbar is reluctant to discuss the arrangement is so incredibly [ __ ] up in its Simplicity chandar gives Wookies to zerka and zerka gives weapons to chandar why does zerka need live Wookies medical and biological experiments apparently not only that but the zerka [ __ ] have the audacity to declare that this operation is very Humane and that even The Wookie leadership knows it's more beneficial to work with them as kashik's status as a non-aligned planet puts it outside the Republic's fear of influence with its laws and protections and you know basic rights this seems not only cynical but incredibly convenient there must be more to this Arrangement than meets the eye we gotta go meet this Chandra dude and see what's up but not until we waddle through waves upon waves of trash Mobs interspersed with the occasional microstory event this is the great walkway a network of walkways connecting the Circa Outpost to the wooki Village from which chandar has been selling his own people to a ruthless Galactic Corporation no offense to The Wookie culture but I hated the great walkway with a passion the great walkway marked the first time in the playthrough I did for this video when I felt like the game was testing my patience it's an excruciating 30 minutes slog where aside from two or three small story encounters you do nothing but fight droves of these mantis-like creatures it didn't help that thanks to my own stupidity I was still pretty weak for this point in the game and I relied mostly on my companions to deal reliable damage since zarbar is a required party member in the first part of kashik the game does this occasionally for story reasons I frankensteined him into a powerful melee ranged tank hybrid capable of sustaining massive amounts of damage which made a great walkway a lot more tolerable bestola was my main support slash healer and she was doing a decent job of it I was also absolutely stacked with utility items that confer passive bonuses to my attributes as well as party and 1980s Miami quantities of injectable stimulants which I abused before every important fight including this encounter with a group of dark Jedi anyways turns out chandar is zolbar's brother and zalbar was exiled from kashek for attacking his brother with his climbing claws violating an important rookie code of conduct because of this zalbar is now known as a mad claw a title of designer which renders the holders effectively social parias of course it's more complicated than this long story short zalbar and chandar are the sons of freyr a mighty Wookie Chieftain who much like zalbar was exiled many years ago prior to this zalbar caught wind of chander's plans to do business with the Jerka Corporation and attacked him with his climbing claws freyr then naive to chandar's evil intentions banished zalbar from kashik only to have his title usurped when he eventually discovered that zalbar was right all along and this is where we are now chandar selling his own people to zurka in secret with the help of a small group of loyalists while the rest of the tribe sees him as a hero for dethroning the tyrannical madclaw former Chieftain chandar imprisoned zalbar for not honoring his Exile in exchange for his freedom we are to descend into the shadowlands and kill another Wookie matko who had been pestering chandarzerka allies the shadowlands is the uh like ground level of kashex forests it's a very dangerous place that even Wookies enter only for ritual hunting we also know for a fact from the Visions we shared with best a lot that the star map is located somewhere in the shadowlands so chandar here played himself big time by forcing us to do his dirty work because one it gives us some breathing room to dig around for proof of his dealings with zerka and two we had to go there anyway great work chandar so the shadowlands is exactly what it sounds like a damp dark and foggy Place inhabited by qatars to rent attacks and Savage beasts called mandalorians I like the shadowlands it looks pretty it's very atmospheric and most crucially its 10 orders of magnitude more pleasant to play through than the great walkway I pulled that number out of my ass but that doesn't make it less true well there is one problem though thank you [Music] who the hell fought looping that monkey sound every five seconds was a good idea at any rate the shadowlands is where we meet the last of our companions Joe Lee bendo Jolie is a stubborn grumpy old Jedi living in the kashuk wilderness for the past decade or so you'd think living in the shadowlands would earn him the respect of the natives but even the wookies think he must be absolutely insane for choosing to live there willingly anyways it turns out Jolie is perfectly sane if a bit forgetful and easily distracted though I like to think that is part of his grumpy old man act while Julie doesn't talk much about himself he lets out his disinterest in debating the Light Side Dark Side dichotomy almost immediately preferring a more nuanced view on this issue mind you he doesn't want to discuss it he just prefers it we need more people like Jolie bendo you have no idea how many nights out in the city I've had room Point by random tryhards who are dead set on debating pointless philosophical topics after overhearing and misinterpreting a snippet of conversation from my table just let me drink my beer and peace also Julie is a Jedi counselor sitting smack dab in the middle of the alignment graphic which means that we can turn him into a force Power wielding Powerhouse that I that sounded better in writing we can also safely add some dark side powers to his Arsenal and compensate for the penalties thanks to his class and Alignment so our task is to drive away some zerka [ __ ] poaching a local species called touch whose glands are used to make the region ale that's the same alcoholic beverage that knocked those Sif officers on their asses back on Terrace by the way all you have to do is deactivate two of these little Radars keeping the Predators at Bay and a rancor-like beast will barge in to vacate the premises it's a funny little Quest partially because literally no one except the corporate Circa drone wanted to be there but mostly due to it being the result of Jolie wanting these officers of his lawn I mean if I set up shop deep in the wilderness only to have a bunch of corporate poachers [ __ ] around with the local fauna with their little Radars 10 meters from my Hut I'd be pretty pissed too we deal with the poachers kill some cloaked mandalorians who attacked only unarmed passerbys meet with the Mad claw Wookie who's of course chandar and zalbar's exiled father freyr slay a dark side Abomination and recover freyr's ritualistic sword from its guts and also we find the star map deep in the shadowlands yes there's two separate shadowlands don't worry about it so the star map is protected by an AI directed to give the coordinates only to the individual matching the parameters who'd programmed it this bit has us answering a series of questions themed around morality and stuff with each question having only one correct answer judging by the fact that the answers it deems as great fall and denialistic slash Evil slash Machiavellian end of the spectrum the AI seems to have been programmed by Revan himself disposal forces us to put ourselves in Raven's shoes and see his point of view AK answer as Revan would have I didn't get the memo so the AI Unleashed a group of Killer Robots onto my party even Jolie's disabled droid's power wasn't enough to prevent my party from being wiped another interesting tidbit the AI reveals is that kashuk is the way it is due to an ecological disaster that caused the trees to grow to incredible Heights uh give me give me just one second 30 000 or so years before the founding of the Republic you can bet the builders had a hand in this also Julie tried to access the AI 152 times out of sheer boredom a feat for which I found him even more endearing by human Jolie bindo all denied call me stubborn I guess there wasn't much else to do around here we extract the coordinates try to talk things out with chandar he refuses I kill him freyr resumes his role of Chieftain and proceeds to fight the slavers zelbar and I become best friends and off we go to the next planet so my main Takeaway on kashek is that while Tatooine had a sort of interconnected design where side quests connected with each other across several areas kashek is more linear with the bulk of the quests leading to the shadowlands I don't dislike this but cash checks linearity might seem jarring compared to the openness of other planets assuming you visit it as your second or third or even fourth planet okay next up Manon [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] s we are treated to another melak cutscene melak very disappointed about kalonor's failure decides that his Apprentice Darth Bandon has a better chance of standing against the Jedi of my stature as if on Q Darth Bandon comes into the room and causes like 4 billion credits worth of property damage before slowly walking to his master and accepting the task I guess he must have been like hanging outside the room and what about the property damage does Malik dog abandons pay for every piece of equipment he destroys I guess there must be a clause in bandon's contract allowing for X number of sift [ __ ] Tantrums per month without penalty otherwise that should you just pull their abandon that's just that's just fiscally irresponsible okay so Monon is a huge ass ocean planet the only above surface settlement on the planet is octo City where we'll be spending the majority of our time for the first time ever I am not harassed by Circa operatives for protection money instead of zerka employees I get to watch a republic Soldier and a Sith officer duking it out in the lobby like a couple of toddlers not for individual gain I weak-minded fools like you to be ruled over by the straw like we sit I'm warning you Manan is amongst my favorite locations in Kotor because it's the least Star Wars the planet if that makes any sense so while up until now we've seen Kotor adopt most of the Star Wars tropes in iconography we've all come to love and scoff at an equal measure Jedis sand people Wookies whatever as if checking things off a list at gunpoint we all know George Lucas is holding the gun in this hypothetical scenario Manana marks the point where Kotor finally gets a little weird and experimental believe it or not the cutscene with the Sith officer and the Republic Soldier roasting each other sets the tone for the planet pretty well the reason why they're arguing instead of whipping out their blasters has to do with monon's special political status you see acto City sits on top of the Galaxy Soul reservoir of culto a precious liquid sought out by the Republic and the Sith for its powerful healing qualities your Monopoly on colto allowed the cell Cafe manan's native species to go we'll let both of you chill on the planet as long as you play nice with each other and respect our autonomy if not we'll like destroy the culto and none of you gets the tasty sijus so we got a planet with a precious resource that you can't find anywhere else two worrying factions both seeking said resource reduced to a pathetic game of chicken and a native species playing both sides of the conflict for a profit you can [ __ ] rest the Sith and the Republic are in full Tinker tailored Soldier Spy mode Tinker Taylor Soldier Star Wars whatever you get the idea what strikes me about this planet even more so than its overtly political theme is the length to which the devs went to illustrate the minutiae of this strange Arrangement beyond the public displays of hostility and bravado there is a sense of uneasiness of uncertainty in the air as if the Sith and the Republic don't quite know what to do once they've exhausted all their creative insults they've been fighting for so long and now they just have to kind of tolerate each other in public public while the spies are doing their thing in the background bioware's decision to set all this on Monon also deserves some notice as the idyllic almost quaint peacefulness of Monon makes for a tragic comic contrast to the scheming and spying occurring behind the scenes another aspect I want to touch on concerns the silkath now BioWare could have just as well left the cell Cafe in the periphery and focused all their attention on the Sith Republic conflict but the cell Cafe particularly the web of interests and political motivations revolving around the issue of monon's neutrality are given just as much screen time so unsurprisingly the cell calf are not a monolith there isn't a consensus regarding monon's alignment there's a ton of nuance some cell cath are hardliners thinking that the planet's cultural reserves are too great of a strategic advantage to waste by aligning with one side or the other other silk have feel iffy about this Arrangement particularly the allowing the objectively evil Sith to chill on their Planet part another common opinion in this Camp is that Sif being Sif it's only a matter of time until they drop any pretense of respecting monasterity and attempt to seize its cultural reserves for themselves so the cell Cafe may as well join the Republic another cell kafar well their pure Sith apologists they think the Republic is weak and corrupt and that monan has nothing but to gain by joining the Sith I can't say I don't see where they're coming from the Republic is not only losing the war it had been affected by institutional Decay way before this war but come on what do they think is going to happen if they join the Sith they are just as naive as the neutrality Camp who have repeatedly been so so comically oblivious to the sith's true intentions as you can see I like this planet quite a bit it's not only thematically interesting it's also the prettiest to look at I don't know there's just something about the idea of an above water City baked in the sunlight of an eternal afternoon that I find so very enticing though for all its visual strengths Manan has the same problem I noticed on Dental in it's an absolute chore to navigate the issue is not so much the abundance of loading screens as the layout of the city with its sectors arranged successively instead of branching out from a central Hub meaning that a complete trip across the map involves going through three or four loading screens granted on my 2023 rig the loading screens are over quickly but this must have been a nightmare in 2003 so the first chunk of the story has us connecting with the Republic Embassy on Manon to inquire as to the whereabouts of the star map the Ambassador agrees to point us in the right direction in exchange for a teeny tiny little favor breaking into the Civic Heron Monon to recover a droid's data module containing sensitive Republic intelligence that the Sith managed to steal via some clever bureaucratic maneuvering that clever bureaucratic maneuvering being that the data module ended up floating in the ocean and the the Sith got the cell Cafe to delay the Republic's recovery Mission long enough for the sieve to steal it instead oh that's wow what an operation I'm given a few ways to access the Sith base I can decrypt some sift pass cards interrogate the Sith prisoner or break into the Sith Hangar the crypting past cards involves the solving of a logic puzzle so that's obviously a hard pass for me breaking into the hangar is still noisy and obvious for my tastes so I choose the most accessible one interrogating the Sith prisoner now since I've been conditioned by years of media to think of interrogations as 69d mental chess games I was bracing myself for something along those lines sadly all the interrogation boils down to is meshing through the dialogue options until the capture Sif spills his guts that's such a stark contrast to how the situation is set up you got this veteran intelligence officer who makes a big deal about how difficult Sif spies are to interrogate due to their conditioning and that it takes months of resistance to break one then he's like oh but since we're short on time here's a truth serum to speed things up but don't give him too much or his mind blanks if you do that you'll have to inject him with a neutralizer to reset his mind but give him too much neutralizer and he might forget everything that he knows I [ __ ] up like 15 times and he never forgot a thing anyways I grabbed the info make it to the Sith base grab the data module and brace myself for the 500 or so loading screens I'll have to go through on my way back to the Republic Embassy instead I am placed under arrest by the cell cath so remember the hole will let you chill here as long as you play nice with each other thing turns out my breaking into the Sith base and murdering the entire staff runs contrary to that Arrangement hey it's not my fault the Sith soul for my flimsy disguise I am assigned a lawyer who tries to defend me by saying that my presence in the Civ HQ was a case of wrong place at the wrong time my lawyer even goes as far as to say that as a member of the Jedi Order I would not have murdered so many out of spite that goes poorly it's worth mentioning that you're free to dismiss your lawyer and defend yourself at any point during the trial an option I did not take because I'm just naive like that only when I saw my lawyer desperately pleading with the court to rule not guilty on account of my supposed mental incompetence that I fully realized the extent of his will incompetence remember kids if your lawyer looks like this you going to jail conveniently you're given the option to present a data pad demonstrating that the Sith are planning to overthrow manan's government as evidence right before the court is about to adjourn I guess BioWare wasn't up to creating an entire jail subplot just imagine how that would have looked trading cigarettes for cultivials to treat your shank wounds or Vibra Shanks stab wounds where was I oh the court drops the charges because of course it [ __ ] does and I'm free to proceed with my task for the Republic and yeah in case you're wondering no the Republic click hasn't lifted the finger to help me with this trial even though it was I who did her dirty work and now of course you can't bring up the subject of the Republic abandoning you to the convoluted monani and justice system of the Ambassador who gave you the task because why why would you right so before proceeding with the story Quest we have a few loose ends to tie up on Monon while this planet is quite thin in terms of side content what it does provide is pretty high quality not just narrative wise but also and how the side quests are connected to the main quest the first side quest I picked up concerns a group of missing cell cath now had I not sequence broken the quest I would have discovered that they were course to join a secret sift training program that would have involved inserting double agents into the Monon government and overthrow it I didn't so I killed them whoops the second side quest concerns a trial involving a decorated Republic war hero called sundry accused of killing a young Sif officer we are to invest investigate the circumstances of the murder and present the evidence to the court I'm not going to go into too much detail here but basically the woman also sundry's mistress was a triple agent sundry thought he was well on his way to turning the woman into a double agent when in fact she was only pretending to be turned while actually acting as a double agent for the Sith that's what a triple agent is right I'm I'm genuinely asking I feel dizzy just thinking of all these layers of spycraft anyways after discovering that he'd been played sundry waited for the woman to fall asleep and killed her so we just present the evidence to the court and let the justice system handle the rest right well not so fast because you see this case can have some serious political ramifications you may remember that the Republic is losing the war and needs the call till to keep up with the Sivan slot well if sundry is found guilty of murdering a Sith In Cold Blood the cell calf would be entirely within their right to ban the Republic from the planet and let the Sith have all the cult of for themselves so onological pragmatic level if you don't want to [ __ ] the Republic war effort the right choice would be to Omit certain pieces of evidence in court and present only the ones that point towards sundry's innocence on the other hand Sanji got angry and killed a human being a defenseless human being [ __ ] this is very complicated no choice is the best choice here the third and final side quest involves investigating the circumstances behind the Republic's aggressive recruitment campaign on Manon we get an answer to this from the Ambassador himself in short the Republic struck a deal with some moderate cell Cafe to build a base right on top of the planet's cultural reserves the quantity of kolto the Republic extracts is just small enough as to not be noticeable and it's a temporary solution until the genius scientific minds of the Republic find a way to synthesize it as you may suspect this deal is aggressively of the books and illegal which makes the Republic lose in contact with the underwater base and especially awkward situation we are too you guessed it travel to station and find out what the hell happened while hoping to Got The Accidental Awakening of an ancient lovecraftian entity as not the source of the disturbance and uh and and find the star map of course the underwater mining thingy is where the game takes a sudden turn for the spooky we find out from this panicked mercenary that the cell Cafe on the station have gone insane and started killing everyone some survivors managed to board the station submersible and leave but if the explosion the mercenary overheard was any indication the escapees might have become food for the big [ __ ] shark that's been chilling near the station okay [ __ ] I hit my microphone looks like Lovecraft is on the menu boys so our objective station is to find an environmental suit for our underwater Excursion and a Sonic emitter on my way I fought cell Cafe destroyed the odd security Droid and stumbled into this dude who hid in a locker to avoid the massacre and refuse to get out any block picking attempt results in an automatic failure because you can't actually get him out he doesn't even have a model so to speak he's just a disembodied voice now as for the station itself I have to say it's one of my favorite locations in the game mainly due to the novelty factor of being locked up in a deep ocean mining station with dozens of insane fish people it just feels so different miles away from the aggressively Star Wars Z we got Coruscant at home Terrace and the space Iowa that is done to him space Iowa because uh dantuine is a farm planet um I hope my American viewers will appreciate that reference what nearly ruins this location is the seafloor exploration segments no attacks no Force powers and by God your movement is so slow and clunky so remember the Sonic emitter we had to grab before heading out turns out it's quite a handy little tool for slaughtering monon's shark population finally even though the Sonic emitter presumably shares the same animation assets as the force Powers the character briefly assumes the merry Idol animation after using it inside the culto extraction wing of the facility I come across two scientists who theorize that a big [ __ ] shark that's been chilling near the facility might have something to do with the cell calf going insane uh how did he get so big he ate a lot of culto alright so we got an aggressive submersible sized shark literally surrounded by the substance that made him so big how the hell are we supposed to to deal with the shark and reach the star map we are given two options we either reprogrammed the harvesting machine and caused it to explode or put toxins in the harvesting machine and poison the water the former renders the shark harmless but would put the Republic's efforts to synthesize culto a few like maybe 50 years behind the latter results in the shark dying and the harvesting machine remaining intact but also potentially in permanent ecological damage as they'd never tested the experimental toxin outside a controlled environment I choose the former option because I I respect the shark's hustle if I were a shark and stumbled into a free source of Life rejuvenating ocean juice you can bet your asset be all over that [ __ ] in seconds and even go as far as to invent recipes call to carbonara koltopane culto Bolognese deep fried Cortel called tiramisu culto cake culto parmigiano got [ __ ] damn it I'm so hungry so I do just that after solving a logic puzzle that I definitely didn't look up on the Internet the big shark is like okay go ahead I get the coordinates from the star map return to the surface and I'm arrested again they go what were you doing there and I'm like big shark and they go holy [ __ ] that's like that's like literally our God okay you can go okay time to hit the final planet is what I would have said had Soul carve's former mentor and the reason why he doesn't trust anyone not sent a fleet to board us into his Battleship yeah it's the obligatory early 2000s prison level I'm not gonna spend too much time on this section because aside from one notable story reveal it's pretty bland I had actually entirely forgotten about this level's existence and felt extremely annoyed at this detour I just wanted to go to koraban and spelunk through Sith tombs and [ __ ] so it all starts with my party cooking up an escape plan where the party member with the best chance to escape capture is Left Behind so that they can come later and rescue us carve bastella and I are out of the question because we're kinda sort of the main targets so I chose juhani for some reason I can't exactly explain the plan works the sieve barge into the Ebon Hawk and dragged the three of us to a dingy prison facility deep in the ship's bowels to be tortured and interrogated and potentially turn to the dark side Soul informs us that Antoine has been Alderaan boy this game sure has an act for destroying tutorial planets huh and that Malik is on his way to interrogate us himself with the excruciating bolts of electricity we've been zapped with being just a little taste of what's to come once Malik arrives oh and also thank you you're defiant I'm certain Malik will find your loyalty to the Jedi amusing the dark lord would probably reward me if I just kill you once and for all but he may want to question you given the trouble you've caused him and the history between you you mean oh this can't be true can it you really don't know what's going on here do you [ __ ] what just just tell me what don't I know hey come back here hey ah [ __ ] anyways it's time to break these suckers out of jail but not before I put like three or four levels of abilities on juhani blah blahs if trooper's dead blah blah terminals hacked blah blah my party is broken out of jail our objective now is to head to the bridge and open the hangar Bay to escape hey so I'm absolutely stoked to be exposed to yet another 15 to 20 minute dungeon filled with trash mobs but you know what would make this level even better a space walking segment of course soul karef and his posse of SIV goons and Jedi are on the bridge ready to what keep us busy until Malik arrives I mean surely he must know they don't stand a chance against us right speaking of which where the hell is Malik is he still in transit must be a big ship just when carf is about to finish his old Mentor off Bastille is like no don't do it it's not the Jedi way and I looking to preserve my Max Light Side alignment for like stats reasons go yeah no don't it's not a Jedi way what the [ __ ] are you talking about we've just spent the last week's murdering literally hundreds of people so with his dying breath Soul calls scarf over to whisper one less secret into his ear which causes scarf to lash out at bastilla gee I wonder what that secret may be alright time to kill a few more Sith Troopers and leave this oh hey Malik sub dude let me just skip past this scripted non-winnable battle quickly and be on my way to what do you mean reunion tell me why did the Jedi spare you inventions you seek at this reunion what that you mean you don't know all this time and you still haven't figured it out I wonder how long you would have stayed blind to the truth surely some of what you once were must have surfaced by now even even should I counsel couldn't keep your true identity buried forever could it [ __ ] [Music] yeah I'm Revan boy you cannot believe the velocity with which this twist flew over my head the first time I played this game The Twist was so wasted on 10 year old me so here's what happened the Jedi lured Malek and Revan into battle against a small Republic Fleet during the attack a Strike Team of Jedi Knights boarded the ship instead of killing Revan the Jedi Strike Team captured him hold his ass to then to win or whatever and reprogrammed his brain into a loyal soldier of the Republic if you're thinking wow that's [ __ ] up that's because it actually is the Jedi for all their teachings about peace and unity and the value of Life kidnapped and brainwashed a person of sound mind into thinking there's someone they're not it's also an insanely stupidly convoluted scheme that can backfire at any moment like what's stopping Raven from turning back to the dark side and using his brainwashing AS anti-jedi Slash Republic propaganda did the Jedi Council have a contingency plan in case one of them turned to the dark side and informed Reverend about their scheme in fact what's stopping Manic from like telling Riven he is not who he thinks he is he didn't even have to do it personally he could have just had one of his goons do it worst case scenario it's just enough to plant the seed of doubt in revan's mind and push him to confront the council just to be clear I'm not bashing bioware's writers here rather the Jedi Geniuses who concocted this pear brain scheme The Twist itself is actually pretty well executed there's tons of hints alluding to your true identity going all the way back to the Ender Spire where Trask was wondering how a new recruit such as yourself was assigned to the ship carrying literally the most powerful weapon in the Republic's Arsenal bestala and her battle meditation then there's bestola who's asking you questions about your past she claims that she's asking to see if you're serious when in fact she was checking if the false Memories the Jedi Council planted it were still there basila claims that your shared Visions about Revan are due to your Force Bond that's only half true indeed you do share a force Bond but there's also the fact that you are literally there because you're a reverend but the biggest hint the game gives players as to your true identity is on kashek where the computer recognizes you they really did drop a lot of freaking hints okay so here's how this fight goes Malek uses Force Freeze on my friends when I get him low enough he runs like a [ __ ] to the next room I take this opportunity to inject my ever expanding collection of battle stimulants into my body I follow Malik when I get him low enough a cutscene place where he freezes me and best alarm now visibly unfrozen barges into the room for a needlessly heroic demonstration of courage to allow me and carv to escape carf is like destlano and then we leave cool back on the Ebon Hawk everyone is kind of super fine with me being Riven mission is like well what matters is who you are now Jolie figured it out from the start but chose not to tell me because to paraphrase it's none of my business candorus is literally [ __ ] and pissing and coming his pants at the prospect of having traveled and fought together with the guy who bested his people through sheer tactical genius in a force even carves sort of okay with this yeah sure he's a little upset but nothing unmanageable so all's well on the Ebon Hawk koraban is a fan favorite and for good reason it's this hostile volcanic planet where evil people attend the evil Sith Academy in the hopes of becoming more evil the evilest of evil you couldn't have conceived a more cartoonishly evil lair if you'd copy that straight out of a James Bond villain's wish list so there's not a lot to this planet at first glance I am greeted by a Circa employee because of course the evil Corporation had to have an outpost on the evil Planet I beat the [ __ ] out of some Sith and spend some time immersing myself into Caribbean culture which mostly revolves around the zerk Outpost its free corporate shops and one Cantina I get a nice bit of story reactivity in the form of the Circa drone lamenting the destruction of their kashic operation which as you may remember my party had a direct hand in engineering so my task is to get into the Sith Academy and infiltrate the order by pretending I want to join it thing is the guard won't let me enter the building even after I enter inform him that I'm Darth Revan so we have to find another way in we have to be sponsored so to speak by one of the Masters and luckily one of them Master yutura is chilling in the Cantina at this very moment once in the Sith Academy I am informed that in order to become a true Sif I have to best the other candidates through cunning strength or any combination thereof back in my room Master yutura is like I need you to help me kill my master so I can take his place with you as my second in command lady do you have any idea who I used to be well I still am but I used to be too anyways she tells me that I have to be officially admitted into the Sith order to access the tomb where the star map is I clear out like three tombs kill two of the students redeem the other one and the Sith Master is like yeah you can join us oh and I also struck Darth Bandon down I killed Malik's Apprentice right next to the Sith Academy for my final task I am to travel to the tomb of Naga Shadow and access the star map there I fought a few basic creatures fought some non-basic ones through cryogenic grenade into an asset pit solve the logic puzzle that I definitely did not look up on the internet and voila the last of the star Maps the last item on our list is helping yutura replace her master but since I was merely committing heinous effects in Minecraft and not like for real I decide to turn against both of them apparently there is the option 3D mufura after she betrays you like the good Sif she is but honestly I think I've paid my deals throughout this playthrough I think I am allowed to kill one perfectly redeemable Sith As a treat and dozens of other Sif in the Sith Academy Force wave is absolutely op by the way but John the ball with the final star map secured it's time to press on to my final destination and tear that malagaya new one at the starforge carve sends out a signal to the Republic to come help out a squadron of Sith Fighters ambushes us leading to another turret section oh yeah I forgot to talk about the turret sections didn't I yeah the game has turret sections they suck there are stabilizers go down and carve crashlands the ship on the only planet in the vicinity a lush slice of Tropical Paradise called rocata Prime apparently the Sith were cunning enough to set up a field disruptor on rokata to prevent enemy ships from getting too close to the starforge the planet is now a glorified graveyard which we are to scavenge for parts to repair the Ebon Hawk we also need to destroy that field disruptor thingy before it turns the entire Republic Fleet into scrap alright disable the field disrupter find salvage repair the ebenhawk and leave easy job in and out 10 minute stops let's [ __ ] [Music] ah [ __ ] this planet's gonna be a whole thing isn't it the first stretch of my stay on Rakata has me running into these natives which are technologically very primitive they refer to me as the great warrior from the sky right freaking rank horse and battle and call the force magic though I have to say for a primitive race that shuns technology they do seem to have a lot of these standard issue mass-produced Viper blades I know this Kevin [ __ ] I'm just being an [ __ ] about it not long after my encounter with the natives I learned from the one that Revan had been here on some official Sith business back when he was in his Joker phase apparently raven made a deal with the natives to slay their enemies in exchange for them helping bypass the barrier into the temple Revan double crossed them and sought the knowledge from their enemies instead so now it's time to hold our end of the bargain or not so it turns out their enemies are more Rakata as opposed to their barbaric counterparts these Rakata called the Elders are smarter and more technologically advanced also remember the builders whose knowledge that insect-like robot was guarding on dantuin these are the builders well their ancestors were the rakatans we see now are what remains of the Fallen Empire that once sprawled the entire galaxy until they started killing each other with weapons of mass destruction deeply ashamed by the star forge's destructive capabilities their ancestors sealed the knowledge within the temple ensuring that it doesn't fall in the wrong hands well it did eventually fall in the wrong hands when Dark Side Raven count the elders into giving him access to the temple and now I'm back with the same request a request which understandably they refused to Grant unless I prove that I've changed my ways by Saving an elder that had been captured by the Primitive rocata when I returned to the ones Enclave the rokatadir attacked me instantly I have absolutely no idea how they caught word of my supposed betrayal so fast but whatever I saved the kidnapped rocata bounced back to the elders entered the temple fight a [ __ ] ton of dark Jedis and robots solve a logic puzzle whose solution I definitely did not look up on the Internet interface with the temple computer and get hit by a tsunami-sized barrage of lore and Exposition go to the roof to disable the disrupter and uh Bastille as a Sith now look I totally understand where she's coming from with the Jedi being arrogant and hypocritical and passive and whatever the Jedi teachings have proven again and again to be entirely disconnected from how human beings actually function just look at the countless examples of Jedis who cracked and went to the other side I'm all for disbanding the stagnant Jedi Order and starting from scratch but going to the dark side is not a way you're just replacing one set of flawed teachings with another this is actually one of my biggest problems with Star Wars the utter lack of nuance with which it treats this light side Dark Side issue I'm another first nor the last person to express this frustration it's why Kotor 2 is so beloved because it's one of the only pieces of Star Wars media that had the balls to like deconstruct all Jedi related things point out their flaws and propose Solutions whatever I'm rambling okay so with that being said let's let's get out and here we are ready to board the star Forge and strike my former Apprentice down once and for all even with the coordinates secured and the field disruptor disabled the odds are still stacked against the Republic because Bastille's battle meditation is wreaking havoc on their Fleet to avoid taking further heavy losses the top brass meaning our boy carve and this Admiral that we haven't seen until now decides to send an elite Jedi Strike Team on board the starforge to do some Jedi spy [ __ ] I assume meanwhile Malek's plan is to stall for Time by hurling metric [ __ ] tons of battle droids Sith Troopers and dark Jedi in our Direction while he's been busy reaching his climactic bad guy villain final for my Zoo now while many RPGs fizzle out towards the end I have to say that as far as final missions are concerned the star Forge is pretty okay by this point you should have your party fully leveled and geared up and the enemies should pose no challenge the star Forge is basically a 20 to 30 minute Victory lab where you just destroy everything in sight I use my maxed out Force wave to knock dark Jedi on their asses Jolie's Force storm to burn Sith Troopers to a crisp Johannes uh well she's very strong she hits like a truck I also copped some cool digs from a replicator too bad were like five minutes from the credits rolling I eventually come across best Allah who Malek Left Behind as a final stall tactic while he is I don't know doing hot Sif [ __ ] she goes through power lies in the dark side Revan and then she proceeds to put my companions into stasis and best lachan all over the place it takes me about 2 sec chance to get through her first phase and then another five for the second phase which followed her second monologue about how cool the dark side is the third and final phase is when best Allah snaps out of her Joker personality and sees the error of her ways it's a I don't know let's just say I remember this moment being deep and emotional but it's actually pretty superficial like most of my dialogue options are some variation of remember the Jedi Code bastila or this is another way of the Jedi bastilla or the dark side is wicked and corrupted best of luck like holy [ __ ] you'd think Revan this legendary Larger than Life figure who has experienced both sides firsthand would have something deeper to say to his Fallen girlfriend than bad bastella bad uh whatever so if bestra redeemed in her battle meditation back to the Republic side it's time to make our way to Malik and end him we find Malik in a hallway flanked by two Jedi Knights who he'd been choking to death he then pulls the corniest stunt ever by throwing his lightsaber at one Jedi and electrocuting the other was he like waiting for us to do this he then goes the star Forge fuels my power or something like that activates the most annoying combat puzzle in the game and runs like a [ __ ] good thing I built my character as a hacker type because I can't imagine spending hours farming these Droids for security spikes now as for the final fight with Malik it's uh let's say that my experience with it has been mixed historically speaking so the gimmick is that every time you bring Malik close to death he uses these comatose Jedi to regenerate his health there are like 8 of this Jedi and only two specific Force powers can break the stasis tanks if you don't have those Powers you're [ __ ] out of love have fun fighting him eight times luckily I had fro lightsaber in my roster so the climactic fight with the most powerful Sith in the Galaxy turned into a space Benny Hill skit that had me running around the battle arena and destroying the stasis tanks and then finishing Malakoff in one go I like to think Malek renounce the dark side in the last moments of his life not because he saw the error of his ways or some weak [ __ ] like that but out of embarrassment so Maddox did the star Forge goes boom and we all go to rokata Prime of all places and that's Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic I don't have any thoughtful insights for the conclusion but I will say this I understand better than ever not only why this game is so beloved by the public but why I fell in love with it back when I was a 10 year old kid in Eastern Europe with a newly purchased CD-ROM and too much free time on my hands Kotor is magical in a way that not even the movies feel it's Star Wars but with just enough of an edge to feel fresh Ironically in an era where the Disney cinematic industrial complex owns the rights to Star Wars Kotor feels fresher than ever it's setting so far removed from that of the movies is brimming with potential for interesting stories its characters are nuanced and charming and so well written the multitude of side quests with interesting stories and outcomes make the setting feel that much alive there are so many things this game does right I'm not a very nostalgic person but replaying Kotor as a nearly 30 year old adult gave me a sense of longing for a time when games were not only more willing to take creative risks but also for a time in my life when I had the free time to turn them on all sides I'm rambling anyways yeah Kotor great game I hope I did it justice with this monstrosity of a video and that you'll enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it thanks for watching as always a huge thank you to my wonderful patrons whose generosity makes these videos possible I'll see you next time

Channel: thesummerofmark

Views: 5,201

Keywords: kotor, star wars kotor, star wars knights of the old republic, knights of the old republic, kotor review, kotor retrospective, kotor 2023, kotor fixes, kotor gameplay, knights of the old republic gameplay, kotor critique, star wars knights of the old republic review, thesummerofmark, knights of the old republic story, kotor story explained, knights of the old republic review, kotor story, bioware, darth revan

Id: _N9ilLxDpyg

Length: 104min 35sec (6275 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023