Knights of the Old Republic suprised me at first. Since I'd played NWN and beaten that, and discovered the KotOR ran off the same engine, I thought it would basically be like an expansion pack. I was wrong. Controls worked differently, and the weapon selection wasn't exactly exotic. Was hard to get used to the camera at first, and got disoriented during the first conversations. After I got through the very first part of the game on Taris, I had a very good feel of the game.
The way the conversations were handled was excellently done. The widescreen effect is something I haven't seen any game do so far, and I was pleasantly suprised. Bastila's voice grew very tiresome by the end of the game, and Carth always pissed me off with his 'depression syndrome' as I like to call it, but other than that it was marvelous. And damn, the humor was great too. The droid and the old hermit especially. During the second time around I had those two in my party almost the whole time.
Depth of the game was also impressive. I haven't seen a well done singleplayer game in such a long time. Second time through I found a lot more things I could have done that I hadn't done the first time. I may even play it again to see if I missed anything more, which I probably did. The fact that what you did on one planet effected what people said to you or let you do was a suprise to me too.
The plot suprised me too. I won't put in any spoilers, but when that climax came, I had no idea about it. I'm not sure if I've seen that kind of stunt pulled in a game before. Not much more I can say without giving away anything.
One of the main downers was the weapons. There wasn't much variety(which can be excused because it's Star Wars), and attack rates weren't different at all. Getting a rapid fire weapon was pretty pointless, because only 1 shot can hit per 'turn'. There really was no advantage of using just 1 weapon either, especially at high levels when you have the highest level of managing two weapons.
Force powers were excellently done too, though I'm not much of a fan of being able to use both sides of the force. I'm glad they put in the difference of force points used depending on which side you were on though. It was obvious that being on the Dark Side allowed you to kill enemies much quicker, but there wasn't really a way to heal yourself until you got to level 8 for Drain. And even then you could only heal in battle. So my main character had cure even as a Dark Jedi. If I didn't, I probably would have had a much harder time beating the game, which is a good thing IMHO. So that's a little downer.
The rate at which you got items was also excellent at the start, though it was pretty pointless to have any items near the end. At the end I had to have had at least 50 advanced medpacs and 40 life support packs, not to mention an entire load of energy shields. Though the end was mainly just trying to stay alive until you got out of battle and could use all the items you had, it was still fun.
All in all, I'd give this game a 8.5/10, almost solely because Carth pissed me off to no end, and the lack of variety in the weapons.
i love being a weirdo-geekey-nerd-person... its so fun! 