#KOTOR 2 GAMEPLAY MENU SERIES#

When returning to the game today, this lack of feedback can be pretty jarring at times, with the KOTOR player-character shown visibly to be hacking away at an enemy, and the enemy's animation to seemingly confirm the hit, but the game states that the attack missed.Д¬omparing this to the average modern day action game, in something like Dark Souls, each swing of the player's sword has a dedicated animation that either visibly shows that the hit landed, or missed. Especially when attacks repeatedly miss, no feedback is given on what the player did wrong, they're simply told that hidden factors have prevented their attack from landing. This does lead to some potentially engaging strategies, but the stop/start nature of the combat encounters can tend to lead the player feeling a little disconnected to the action on-screen. While the action is technically in real-time, it's often beneficial, and even necessary in some harder fights, to pause the action repeatedly so that the next few moves can be planned out in advance.

In most combat scenarios in the original KOTOR, the player will select a series of attacks while the game is paused, and watch them play out before pausing the game again, and selecting the attacks they'd like to use next.

In theory, this system is absolutely functional, and it is, but it doesn't do a great job of engaging the player. This system is the same for all attacks in the game, from lightsaber flurries, to blaster power shots, and force powers, everything is dictated by the roll of a die.

For every attack that was made by the player, a hidden set of dice behind the scenes would roll, dictating whether the hit lands or not. The original game, much like BioWare's titles before it, uses a dice-rolling system, based on tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. However, KOTOR's turn-based combat has not aged so finely.

Its story is still just as compelling, even when the player knows the twists it takes, the KOTOR characters are just as relatable and unique, and the game has so many world-building references and lore tidbits that subsequent playthroughs are all but necessary to catch them. Knights of the Old Republic still holds up today in many ways.

#KOTOR 2 GAMEPLAY MENU SERIES#

Kotor 2 gameplay menu