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What games have the best writing but the worst gameplay?
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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pic unrelated? kotor's gameplay is perfectly fine for a crpg
It uses the 3e (3.5e?) DnD ruleset; I loooooooved kotor 1's ruleset (which Im assuming kotor 2 also used)
If they remade these two games, it would probably be an instant buy for me.
it'd d20 something i don't think it's strictly any published version
it's very rushed, not very stable, soft-locks aren't uncommon, most of the combat is far too easy, once you get force wave/destroy droid, everything stays stunlocked for the rest of the game. until the game forces you to fight with a shit character for a story mission, and then you stack 15 plasma mines in a pile and Darth Sion dies instantly when he steps on it. tons of walking back and forth in pretty bad looking environments, and the power that lets you walk 2x speed applies an awful visual distortion effect, while still feeling too slow. half the power tree does basically nothing or applies a minor buff which lasts literally 12-30 seconds. The side quests are pretty unengaging and mostly just complete themselves if you click all the dialogue NPCs have while doing the main quests. there aren't many puzzles, and those that exist are typically outright asking you to do alegbra, not themed to anything, e.g. "Figure out which operators are in the equation (6_2)_8_9_1=13" which actually manages to be enjoyable compared to the monotony of everything else. have the decency to give me a towers of hanoi puzzle and tell me I'm stabilizing a power core, You know.
agree it was rushes, fuck lucas arts management, but a bunch of those things aren't "gameplay" and stuff like using mines to solve a fight is cool player freedom
To be fair, this is very much in line with how a dnd party usually defeats the Big Bad in my experience. And since the game's systems are inspired by tabletop games, I think it works ok. I agree with the rest of what you said though.
You know, I totally agree with all the points you said, but I always thought that while these points are annoying/non-engaging for the most part, they also make up most of the distinct late 90s / early 2000s game charme that kotor 1 and 2 had.
That was the peak era in video games, the middle point between creativity, experimentality and tech being just advanced enough to allow large games, but not yet bloated like AAA games in the last decade
i actually like this bc it's a nice little (likely accidental) example of the gameplay backing up the story (which is a big theme in the game) - when you ask atton how he of all people was a feared jedi-killer he straight up tells you his method was something to the effect of "gas them, drug them, blow them up, shoot their friends and their puppy too, make 'em mad and make 'em make mistakes"
plus it's very in-character in general for him to look at a fair fight and go "um no thank you", doubly so since he's also your han solo type
But crpg gameplay sucks shit, which is why most of the rest of this thread is various crpgs.
TTRPG systems only work because there's a human running them, and most CRPGs use the worst TTRPG system, d20