You guys ruined Bloodlines for me!

All of that is opinion. Objectively the two sequences are very similar.

The sewer maze simply wasn’t that long and the Star Forge wasn’t as interesting as you make it sound (or the combat throughout the entire game for that matter).

The point, my dear fucknuts, is not about whether the sewer really is that bad. It is that it’s best not to listen too seriously to what people say on the Internet and use your own opinion and intuition.

I wonder if I’d even play games or like them anymore if I did that.

-Kitsune

Sure, but if you don’t listen to anyone else, you can waste a lot of time too. I don’t think the solution is to quit getting outside opinion on games. That’s at least partly why we are all here. I think it’s to take everything with a grain of salt maybe. But this sewer thing is so universally reviled, it just surprised me. It’s not long at all, and I never got lost. It’s not that big of an area, even.

The sewers in Bloodlines was just the first combat area that was longer than the norm. By the mid-point you think you’re near the end, hopefully with the light at the end of the tunnel around the next corner…

In retrospect it wasn’t that bad. I definately thought the chinese temple with worst.

Hence why I said don’t listen too seriously. In the end, one considers opinions, but it’s important to simply let them slide when you need to. Otherwise, you also get a lot of angry people.

Anger leads to angst and angst leads to crappy dramas on TV.

Nobody wants that.

-Kitsune

It was just really tedious. One second you’re playing Deus Ex with Vampires. The next you’re playing a sub-par Bloodrayne clone.

KG

Different games, different build-ups, different anticipations.

The Starforge in Kotor is where you finally get to take all your jedi powers and overall bad-assness out on waves of minions. It’s got intensity and climax, and a sense of urgency. I wasn’t overly enthused about the D&D combat mechanics overall, but the Starforge was where you got to pretend to be Luke Skywalker blasting storm troopers left, right and center.

None of these points can be said about the sewers in Bloodlines.

The temple was worse (respawning enemies is just horrible design), especially if you got lost/had to backtrack. Only upside: it was optional (yeah right, like anybody didn’t save to get all the endings).

Although I’m not among the haterzzzzz for Bloodlines, I can see why the sewers get so much hate. It essentially represents the nadir of the gameplay slide the game takes from its zenith in the effing awesome Haunted Mansion in the beginning. The Awesome-O-Meter absolutely pegs in that stupid mansion as paintings hit you in the face and shit. Then you just just keep sliding on’ down until you’re suddenly in a stupid sewer wandering halls and sidestrafing like you did in Quake 2 and doing feints with melee weapons like you did in System Shock 2, except this time the suck is for real. Then you sort of climb out of it, both literally and figuratively, but the stink of that bum’s rush never quite goes away, and then some gay demon in Chinatown is pwning you over and over, and you’re all WHERE’S MY FUCKING HAUNTED HOUSE ACTION BITCHES?

The Star Forge run in KotOR1 is just straight mowing down fools, JK2-style. The only problem there is your idiot party members keep running off like bloodhungry retards and casting their faggot clown powers without you wanting them to. It creates tension instead of dispelling it, like the sewers do. The sewers drown tension like a rat under your boot.

Come on, Kalle. Do you really think you’re going to do anything to mitigate the bile that years of festering your own mind willingly at RPG Codex can do?

I keep meaning to go back to this game. I sure wish Troika was capable of making (relatively) bug free games, I think they would still be around and I think PC RPGs would be in a better place.

sigh

I still have the pilot episodes for that. What a great, great concept fucked up by corporate vision. My kingdom for an engineer who knew he should start with fixing the trans-digital freon converter.

You’re oh-so-clever except for the fact that I don’t come from RPG Codex. If the combat in Bloodlines is “shit awful”, why does your review only make one passing reference to “at times frustrating, combat”?

Yeah. I would have liked to see them last long enough to make a sequel to Bloodlines or ToEE, assuming that the 2nd sequel to an PRG is often much improved.

My squeeky chode cries himself to sleep every night. I was pretty excited for Chris after SCIFI picked it up after showtime and some others passed it up. I was a lot less excited when they ditched him and Chuck, meaning they had no creative input. It was almost amazing how much they fucked it up. I knew it would suck with out the original creators, but damn. I couldn’t watch more than one episode .

The combat in Bloodlines isn’t “shit awful”. The combat in the sewers is.

The haunted house had no replay value whatsoever.

I played as a Toreador and the sewers were a bit long but really not a problem. Where I began to have problems was in the Chinese place where the enemies kept respawning every turn I took. Then I got to the end game and died so many times I had to use a cheat code to finish the game. I’ve never had to use a cheat code to finish an RPG before.

KOTOR’s end wasn’t great but you could easily pause the game and issue orders and catch your breath.

Indeed, which is why I think Troika was right to experiment with other types of gameplay instead of trying to replicate the Hotel’s brilliance elsewhere. OK, maybe they tried with the Primogen’s mansion or the flesh crafter’s house, but they did add some additional elements instead of straight illusionary scares.

As for the ending of KotOR, I thought it was typical for the game, they just lost a sense of perspective that ruined any hope of believability. Basically, I thought KotOR was nothing more than a dungeon crawler. Sure, they changed the art work away from traditional gloomy fare, but why does every single important plot advancing quest require you to go through several regions of lower level hostiles complete with chests or even jars to give you loot? This design mentality hit its zenith on Dantoine when you had to break into a farmer’s house, only to find it divided into hallways guarded by war driods complete with rooms where you might find some loot. The ending where you find yourself up against wave after wave of dark Jedis is just silly. It didn’t help any that I can’t stand “Real Time w/ Pause” combat, though having multiple players makes it much more palpatible then NWN. Oh, and the first time I played I created a scoundrel/consular and concentrated on healing and debilitating force powers. I always had a soldier with me to do the heavy fighting. Loosing my party members made the game impossible for my character to finish. Got through Bastilla by the skin of my teeth with life support packs, just couldn’t beat Malak. Here’s a full review I wrote of the game, if anyone is interested: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starwarsknightsoftor/player_review.html?id=214451 .

Now, was the Star Forge level worse then the Golden Temple? I don’t think so. The respawning enemies was the biggest fun killer in the game, as was the annoying puzzles and lack of any roleplaying options (not that KotOR had them). On the otherhand, I thought Ming Xaio was the best boss fight in the game. That, and the Bloodlines ending was shared between two locations, and the Prince’s Tower did not suffer from respawning enemies. Finally, the actual game endings (what you see after all player input is finished), were worlds apart. In KotOR, they just stated in obvious conclusion based on your actions that does nothing to tie up the loose ends (you think they would have learned better from NWN). Bloodlines has four unique endings that can make the player pay dearly for making the wrong alliance (perhaps the greatest penalty though is never finding out what is in the coffin). And they were all different. The ones with Jack looking down on the city with his “friend” are especially amusing. So ultimately, I was more satisfied with Bloodlines ending. I mean, for all the enemies you had to kill in the star forge, they might as well be respawning (no not really, vrai respawning is really, really bad).