So I ended up playing KOTOR2 on my Laptop, and I haven't logged into WoW for at least a month and a half, maybe as long as 3 months. I do miss WoW, but that's because it kept me occupied, true L4D and TF2 are great, but after playing one for 6/7 hours none stop I think the next day "Hmmm... lets play something else?" this is especially true of L4D where I find i've exhausted the single player options (no way can I do Expert on single player) and don't want to play with random people. TF2 is fine with random people, but I can't play it every night.
Fair enough, I might just need to get some new games, but KOTOR2 needs playing so I played it. Played it all the way to the end infact, but haven't killed the last boss yet. I've tried about 5 times, and failed horribly each time. Phase two screws me every time, I read a guide that suggests Force Wave but they always resist it, I've read you should run away, I might try that yet. I do think the game is beatable with the set up i've got, even if i've annoyed myself in a couple of ways, mainly the skills, and the bloody named crystal, which I forgot to update at all during the game, and even took out of my lightsabre for being poor.
So, i'm playing through the game again. This time I started with a wopping 16 Int, and boosted my Con from 14 to 16 on the first two upgrades. True my Strength is 10 and my Dexterity is 12, but it's not overly important.
Last time I played through as a Good Woman, this time i'm going for Evil Woman. Of the "No Armour" force powers i've always been more impressed with the light side ones. This is because they're buffs, bosses seemily resist most powers you throw at them (to stop them being a walkover I suspect) and on normal people i'm happy to use other powers. So this time i'm planning on using Armour. I can upgrade my armour to resist alot of Energy damage, and I can try and get as close to 100% resist on it with other items and stuff. I'm loving the idea of entering the final fight (maybe even recording it) and simply laughing at Lightsabre "damage" doing nothing. And for all these upgrades to armour you need it to be armour, not "robes" and not "Light Armour" either, since they sometimes allow force powers.
The High Int is because I want the good upgrades, and I want to be able to do stuff. With a charater build in mind you can seperate Force Powers and Feats into 3 catagories.
1) There are a number that are vastly important for the build. Like Flurry
2) There are a number that are quite nice, but you can probably live without them.
3) Some of them will be useless.
Unfortunatly letting the game "Auto Level" a character it picks alot of the useless stuff, especially in feats. Fair enough, you could say no feat is "useless" but someone can happily end up with Flurry, Power Attack and Crit Strike. While they're no doubt rubbish, you'll probably pick which you want to use, and spam that, i'm unsure at what point you'll be in a fight an think "I always Flurry, I love Flurry, but i'm glad I have Power Attack for this 1 time".
As such, in my mind as long as you actually level (IE, don't get stuck in the game) then the actual number of Feats and Force Powers you get means nothing. If class A gives you 15 Feats by level 30 and class B gives you 30, if you only have 10 feats in catagory 1 (must have) and catagory 2 has maybe another 10, chances are you'll take class A based on that, simply for other reasons.
Unique powers are given to each class, unfortunately I have no idea what they are, I gather a Weapon Master gets some sort of damage reduction, but searching on the Internet gave me some idea, but not alot. If Damage reduction is your thing (I'm hoping the Sith equivilent gets it as well) then no matter how many times you level a Watchman, you'll still be missing out on this extra reduction.
Skills, while the same is try for Skills as it is for Feats and Force Powers, it's a bigger gap. For making things, breaking into things, disarming things, etc, you'll usually want a higher score. True with 2 skills leveled you can still complete the game, you'll miss out on alot, especially alot of gear. Without Computer Skills and Repair you'll be lagging behind alot, and without Security you'll be missing out on alot of free stuff. Maybe it's just the way I am, but switching to another character everytime there is a door annoys me, I want to be able to do it. Especially when i'm stuck taking other people, or can't take the people with the skills I need.
Upgrading items is similar, I think you can use someone elses skills to make stuff, but switching characters, getting them to make stuff, then going back to the ship you put it in stuff you're allies are using is annoying. Even more annoying if you want to try and upgrade everyones armour and you're either running back and forth because you forgot one of your allies can't use armour and that upgrade you made doesn't fit in Robes. Or get everyone naked and try and sort it out at the desk, then get them all back equipped... Nightmare.
A much easier option is to just do everything yourself on the Work desk in your Ship, you can upgrade everything everyone is wearing from there as well. But to do that you need the skills on your character.
Anyway, thats why I started with 16 Int, no doubt I'll not increase that, and look to increase other stats (with using Armour, I'm unsure if increasing Dex is a good idea. Maybe I should increase Strength). I've gone with the Con because I want more life, but more importantly, I don't want to miss out on Implants. If I get an implant that increases another stat by 3, then it's exactly the same as having less 3 con and 3 more in that stat, apart from the health.
Anyway, one thing that I realised when looking at this, was how starting decisions can screw an entire game against you, and chances are you'll never know you're screwing yourself for a while. When I last played it was around level 10 before I found out the number of componants you get from dismantling things is based on your Repair, shortly after dismantling all my none needed gear, I was short of Componants to build anything for a while. I took the feat to get Repair as a class skill, then levelled nothing but that until it was max. This ment instead of having 4 skills on max level, they were all over the place... Which is always annoying when you're 2 points short of getting a level 5 upgrade instead of a level 4 one...
The end game is different to the rest of the game. Even if you consider that the end game is 2 fights. Maybe it's just from playing WoW alot, but are most RPGs like this? You work your way through the game and some combination of attacks, items, bonuses whatever work really well. Then you hit the last boss, and he does something different, or something doesn't work, and you find something along the lines of "Wow, lowering my defense for power attack means they kill me instantly" which leads to "I wish I could level 6 times more to get Flurry". While that example goes against my "Useful Feats" argument, since you'd auto have both, I hope you see my point. The game doesn't allow you to change feats, powers and skills just before the final fight. You've screwed yourself at some point by taking the wrong thing, but the important part is, that you didn't know it was the wrong thing until right at the end, because until then it was the right thing.
One of the first times I played KOTOR I took alot of the force powers that do damage. Whether we're talking Choke, Lightning, or whatever, and would happily jump into a room and force power to death everything. I find myself at the fight at the end and the boss just goes "Saved" to everything taking practically no damage. Damn, I didn't realise I had to read every force power and try and pick out the ones that are good when resisted, I thought any of them might be cool... Fair enough with say Choke, I wouldn't expect a final boss fight to be me throwing a choke and sabring them to death while helpless... but I had hoped the power would actually work...
Makes me wonder alot about SWTOR, obviously the end game is going to be different to the rest of it. But how much is going to be 10 people crowded around a Sith all of them smacking him with Lightsabres for 10 minutes until he dies? I doubt they'd do that... but what else will they do? Keep groups small? But its an MMO... Give each player someone else to fight? Sounds good...
I do worry though, will there be a point while leveling that you can screw yourself for the end game... I hope not.
Just as a side note, I've played the "New Order" games, I think they're called that... set after the films, where you use the mouse to actually move the lightsabre. When I was talking to a mate he mentioned that he'd played KOTOR, and it took about 10 minutes to figure out he wasn't talking about KOTOR, although he still says "Jedi Knights of the Old Republic" even though it's not the old republic...
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