Knights of the Old Republic (video game)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Knight of the Old Republic

  • Awesome Ego: Assessment: HK-47 is an egoistical braggart that mocks everyone not named Revan and The Exile, and frequently boasts of his exploits and abilities. He is proud to say fans love him for it.
  • Base Breaker: Most fans either adore Carth to pieces or outright loathe him. Bastila often gets similar reactions.
  • Broken Base: In a case rather similar to Donkey Kong Country, whether the game has stood the test of time as a fun, worthwhile gaming experience, or is a bland, bog-standard RPG so thoroughly surpassed by its successors that it's boring.
    • The MMO coming out instead of a third single-player game. Cue cries of " Ruined FOREVER!" as soon as the announcement was made.
  • Canon Sue: Revan is frequently praised by allies and enemies alike. It makes a fan wonder who he really was not as a Sith, or a Jedi, or a leader, but as a man.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Saul Karath betrayed the Republic he had fought for during the Mandalorian Wars and bombed an entire planet just to prove his loyalties. As if this wasn't enough, he also tortures you, Carth and Bastila regardless of how you answer his questions, just because he can.
    • Chuundar having his brother exiled, inviting Czerka to set up shop on his home planet, and selling his own people into slavery. What else is that he isn't affiliated with the Sith.
    • Darth Nihilus in the sequel. He devours whole planets without a second thought. It is implied that he is so far gone beyond humanity that he is closer to an Eldritch Abomination.
    • In the second game, HK-47 heavily implies that Revan was one of these long before the Jedi Civil War. For being lauded as a charismatic and inspiring leader by many, it's rather jarring being told (by his top assassin droid) that Revan specifically used Malachor V to 'clean the house'; he sent the troops that he didn't like to horribly die there, or be so broken and traumatized that they'd be quick to convert to his cause. Which includes The Exile.
    • And in both games, the player character can be played as one, if you play a Dark Side character.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • The terentatek. They almost never miss, even if you have a high defense, hit hard enough to kill your character in about five hits, have a chance at Force pushing you, poisoning you, and are resistant (but thankfully not immune) to Force powers.
    • The Guardian Droids in the ruins on Dantooine. Their defense is so high that your party will miss two out of three times, and even if they do hit it might just bounce off. They use stunning moves in addition to fairly accurate blaster fire. Finally, they have an abnormally high save rate (for droids), meaning Droid Stun will only work occasionally.
      • Part of this is due to their very high energy resistance, making them nearly immune to blasters and your newly-acquired lightsaber. Switching back to a vibroblade while fighting them makes them slightly easier. Very little will improve your hit rate against them, however.
  • Disappointing Last Level: The Star Forge as it ends on a level of Cut and Paste Environments with lots of pointless combat... more than the rest of the game even!
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Arguably, Darth Revan.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • As a result of her being a non-hostile Sith (at least at first) with a tragic backstory who provides insight into the philosophy of the Dark Side, and due to the possibility of redeeming her in a similar manner to Juhani, Yuthura Ban possesses a respectable number of fans. She stands out compared to other NPCs, with fanart and even a mod to make her a party member.
    • HK-47's hilarious dialogue endeared him to many players to the point that he's one of the few party members to return for the sequels; as a party member in the second, and three times as a Boss Battle in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
    • Assessment: HK-47 is far more interesting than any meatbag.
    • Jolee Bindo.
    • Several fans wanted Luxa as a squadmate or an NPC-type ally, despite her limited screen time.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: The first game's Light Side ending rings hollow when you remember that Revan now has to deal with the fact that not only was his entire life prior to The Reveal a total lie, but that the entire conflict was entirely his fault!
  • Evil Is Cool: Statement: HK-47 is by far your most evil companion, and yet the silly meatbags love him for it. Canderous, to a far lesser extent. His is more the "Lawful Evil" variety, and his One-Man Army stats put him on par with Boba Fett.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: There's a pretty sizeable fanbase of folks who think that Juhani and Yuthura Ban would make a great team. The ladies have backstories, motivation, and temperament, but Juhani stuck with the Jedi and Yuthura went Sith (but comes back if you can talk her into it).
  • Game Breaker:
    • Any high enough party with at least a Jedi Player Character and one Jedi follower.
    • The "destroy droid" spell against any hostile droid.
  • God Mode Sue: Without a doubt, Revan qualifies for this, especially at the end of the game when Malak tells him that he is more powerful now than he ever was as a Sith Lord. Absolutely everyone, friend or foe, speaks of how great he is in some regard, whether it be his limitless charisma, superb leadership, phenomenal abilities in battle, his vast militaristic knowledge, etc. Even Mandalorians, who Revan nearly made extinct, will praise him (especially Canderous). The Exile qualifies with her being able to defeat a world eater (who also qualifies for this), an immortal and a person cunning enough to manipulate absolutely everyone in the game, be they good, bad, neutral or unsure.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The game forgets to add the two weapon penalty when using a double-bladed weapon. So not counting the Dueling feats, using a double-bladed lightsaber has the same accuracy as a single blade. The penalty is still applied as normal when using a weapon in each hand.
    • It is possible to duplicate any equippable item on Manaan by saving the game, removing the desired item, then going out the airlock and then back in.
    • It is possible to get an extra 200 credits and a second copy of Bendak Starkiller's blaster by talking to Starkiller immediately after defeating Twitch without getting the reward for doing so.
    • Similar to the Manaan trick above, if Zalbaar is stripped of all of his equipment before temporarily leaving the party on Kashyyk, everything he was wearing will be duplicated.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Some interactions between Carth and male PC, especially if the PC is light-sided.
    • Light-sided female PC can quite literally say "I love you" to redeem Bastila. It's not really meant to be romantic, but the choice is there nonetheless.
    • And of course, Juhani is Gay Option for female PC.
  • It Was His Sled: Your character in the first game is Revan with his/her memories erased is one of the most famous spoilers of the game's generation.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Hanharr.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Prior to being mindwiped into a blank slate, Darth Revan brought the Republic to its knees. Once a bold, dynamic young Jedi commander who singlehandedly won the Mandalorian Wars for the Republic, Revan slipped to the Dark Side and sacrificed many of the troops whose loyalties he was unsure of. Becoming aware of the True Sith Empire, led by the monstrous Emperor Vitiate, Revan embraced Sith teachings and launched a campaign that crippled the Republic, leaving its infrastructure intact so he may one day harness it as a weapon against Vitiate and his empire. Revan executes a multitude of brilliant, perfect strategies, converting other Jedi to his cause, seeking to both conquer and save the galaxy all at once.
  • Mary Tzu: Revan.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Among many fans, Revan can beat anyone. Anyone. Just google Revan into Google Images, and you will get at least 5 Demotivational posters saying "Revan. Because Vader was a pansy."
      • In The Old Republic MMO forums, the Star Wars Discussion forum is filled with "Revan vs. X" threads. Just to dethrone his status as a Memetic Badass, there are multiple polls of "Revan vs. Palpatine" or some ridiculous fight he cannot win, one of the most unfair ones being "Revan vs. The Emperor of Mankind". The fans decided that Revan would win.
    • Calo Nord. "Go away. One... Two... smart."
  • Moral Event Horizon: Dark Side characters can choose to do this. Forcing Zalbaar to kill Mission is probably the worst example. As far as villains go: "Wipe this pathetic planet from the face of the galaxy." Some context: The villain's Mooks have not been able to find one person who crashed in an escape pod down in the lower levels of the planet. So he orders the ENTIRE PLANET RAZED.
  • Most Annoying Sound:
    • The screeching of the tach on Kashyyyk, particularly when you're trying to concentrate on what Jolee Bindo is saying to you by his home and the noisy little bastards keep drowning him out.
    • The voices of the Selkath on Manaan.
    • Heck, after playing through just Taris, you'll likely get tired of hearing the alien language every time you talk to a NPC that doesn't speak Basic.
  • Polished Port: The mobile port of the first game adapted pretty well to touchscreen control (despite being built from the ground up for either Keyboard and Mouse or controller).
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Whose bright idea was it to make nearly every loot drop completely random, but not the chests or merchants (see the second game and its almost complete randomization, occasionally giving you some pretty good items from the get-go)?
    • When selling items of certain value or higher, the computer will pester you with a message box asking you to confirm the transaction. There's no way to turn it off.
    • Also while shopping, you can only sell one item at a time, including stackable items. Have fun selling those hundred of racing bonds.
    • For a significant number of fans, the turret fighter sequences are all but impossible using the keyboard controls. Especially frustrating is the first one that happens while you're escaping Taris, since if your ship explodes you have to watch all the cutscenes again. Fortunately, there are mods that exist which eliminate all but the plot mandatory sequences and make the fights easier to get through.
  • That One Boss:
    • The Sith Governor on Taris is notorious for the trouble he causes new players, and even experienced ones don't look forward to fighting him. He's the first opponent you fight that can use the Force, and his fighting style begins and ends with "Spam his stun ability, and slice your party to ribbons with his ridiculously powerful dual-bladed sword while you can't even sort of fight back". He's especially bad for players holding off on leveling up the player character until Dantooine, because of how low their stats are at this point of the game.
    • Malak can be this if you haven't done your build right (though he can also be an Anticlimax Boss if the player knows what they're doing throughout the game). Going Light Side Scoundrel/Consular is one example, as you have very few hit points compared to, say, a Soldier/Guardian, and most of your damage comes from stunning your enemies and doing loads of sneak attack. Problem is, Malak's got very high saves and will almost always make his saving throws against your Force attacks.
  • That One Level: The endgame of Nar Shaddaa, which is deeply in love with forcing one- or two-person teams of PCs to deal with obstacles that would be challenging for the party as a whole. And many of said challenges are immediately preceded by long cutscenes with no autosave afterwards, potentially forcing the player to sit through them repeatedly.
  • That One Sidequest: Beating all the swoop racing champions. Not only does it take a lot of practice, patience, trial and error, but the promoters also charge you 100 credits everytime you race. Even more frustrating is an unskippable cutscene of you slowly returning from racing and getting booed you have to endure every freakin' time you lose. It gets really annoying if you only lost by a tenth of a second or so, though you can always Save Scum to just before you talked to the race manager the first time to save money.
  • The Woobie: Juhani, very much so. The very first time you talk to her, you want to comfort her and reassure her that her life isn't over because of one mistake. That's before you learn all the rest: the details of her traumatic childhood, how she had trouble making friends when she joined the Jedi Order and spent time mostly by herself, and how one of the few friends she did make had his heart broken after he confessed his love for her and that she feels terrible about how much it hurt him to hear that she didn't share his feelings because she's gay. It's difficult to imagine anybody not wanting to hug her, tell her that everything's going to be all right, that things will be better from now on, and that not everything she feels guilty about is her fault.
    • Jerkass Woobie: If anyone doesn't want to hug the saddened girl, it probably would be because of her tendency to act like a bitch.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Fan reaction to the news that the next "Old Republic" game will be a MMORPG.
  • Values Dissonance: The controversy over Juhani's sexuality and the pushback from LucasArts that led to it being slipped under their radar is definitely a product of the Turn of the Millennium. It would be unthinkable for BioWare to omit a Gay Option in their games today, as the controversy surrounding their omission in the vanilla campaign in SWTOR shows.

Knight of the Old Republic II

  • Alternative Character Interpretation: The second game makes you think about the first game and what Revan's real motivations were.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Kreia/Darth Traya in the second game can be one. Sure, she hovers three lightsabres in front of you, but all you have to do is sidestep them, then hit her a few times. It really depends on how much you've leveled yourself by the time you get there. Her health is three times yours, and at higher levels that's a number reaching up to 1000. Still, her floating lightsabers aren't that tough. Nihilus counts, too. For a guy touted as an utter monster, a decently equipped party will tear him apart in under a minute.
  • Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The pacifist package sequence. You get this opportunity after doing a side-quest, which results in giving HK-47 a Fate Worse Than Death by temporary turning him into a pacifist. It's utterly hilarious (if somewhat unsettling), it's over quickly and is never brought up again.
  • Broken Base: KotOR II as a whole. It is often considered to be either a horribly incomplete mess, or a sufficiently awesome sequel; perhaps better than its predecessor. Some of the people who criticize the game even say that it could have been better than KotOR if Obsidian was actually given enough time to finish the game.
  • Contested Sequel: Goes hand in hand with the Broken Base above.
  • Critical Backlash:
    • Some people actually didn't find the Peragus level that bad.
    • This is arguably what has gotten more people into the game, as they found the game's plot and the Restored Content Mod made it worthwhile.
  • Disappointing Last Level: The second game is also a major offender, with its last act that is missing most of its content (and sense) thanks to Executive Meddling.
  • Game Breaker: The Weapon Master prestige class. Even more so if the Exile was a Consular before a Weapon Master to get the best of both worlds.
  • Goddamned Bats: The Gand are everywhere in the Jekk'Jekk Tarr, and they all go aggro if you storm the place. They're also barely waist-high and are quick work with a lightsaber... individually.
  • Ho Yay: Atton and Visas' dialogue doesn't change too much with the gender of the Exile. Both of them are still very protective of a same-sex Exile, Kreia blackmails Atton the same way, and Visas is just as devoted (although Atton is pretty glad when a male Exile finds clothes, which is the opposite of his reaction to the female Exile doing so).
  • Idiot Plot: The entire subplot with the bounty on Jedi and the numerous attempts on the Exile's life relies on every bounty hunter in the galaxy being too stupid to notice that the bounty was for a live Jedi.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Kreia is a nihilistic jerk, but she didn't deserve the beating and implied rape that Darth Sion gave her.
  • Memetic Mutation: "APATHY IS DEATH."
  • Most Annoying Sound: Bao-Dur's remote. If you tell it to stop moving, it will make an annoying series of beeps and won't freaking stop until you let it move around again.
  • Polished Port: After a massive update, the Steam release became the definitive version. It has native widescreen support, native X-Input support, the FPS cap was removed, and Steam Workshop support made it extremely easy to install the Restored Content mod.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Disciple despite being an effective Consular is often compared unfavorably to both the Handmaiden (who he replaces as a party member if the Exile is female) and Atton (as the two possible love interests for a female Exile), since he is not as well-developed or dynamic a character as either.
    • G0-T0. At least the Disciple could be used as an effective Consular with some melee feats built in. G0-T0 is basically a dark-sided T3-M4 with an aggravating personality and useless in battle.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: This game effectively demonstrates how conflicts between Good and Evil invariably leave devastation in their wake, regardless on who wins; throughout this game the player sees worlds scarred and destroyed by the battles between the Jedi and their enemies, and encounter countless people driven from their homes by the wars consuming the galaxy. The Black and White Morality of Jedi and their enemies becomes less clear when one sees how much damage is caused by both sides, even when the "good" side triumphs.
  • Special Effect Failure: In a cutscene, the turrets on Dantooine are firing and the blaster bolts go downward, but the cannons are still aiming forward.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: Although the Disciple makes an excellent soldier and Jedi Consular, he is unfavorably compared to the Handmaiden because of the extra perk she gives the Exile (allowing the Exile's Wisdom bonus to be applied to his AC) is miles above what he can do (allowing the Exile to restore her Force to full anytime she's not in battle).
  • Uncanny Valley: All the holograms in Peragus II. The people's eyeballs are visible inside their heads, making them very creepy to watch.