Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

kreia is an all-time villain, if that's what she is

but i think this game is a failure tbh and can only really be appreciated as an autopsy. it's not, or not just, that it's unfinished-- the Restored Content Mod renders the plot and most of the character arcs complete if still obscure; and these days it runs much stabler than kotor1. (haven't played the recent rerelease but presumably that works too.) but the more you understand what it's trying to do-- link the story's themes of teachers/students/choices to the practice of a padawan-rearing CYOA-- the more you feel compelled to plan the narrative development of your character far in advance, exactly as if it were a mechanical "build".

the game wants you to stumble naturally across triggers in the plot and environments that develop, not just your character, but the (many!) characters in your party. this is normal enough and now in fact an obsidian cliche, but unlike fallout new vegas or the pillars games or the (not good) the outer worlds, your relationship w your companions is the primary theme of the game's plot and the source of most of its content; the triggers that shape them are unevenly scattered and easy to miss or lock; and reaching the end of the main plot without having properly developed your companions leaves you w a very strange feeling that you have been told a story that had a point which has been removed. so you play it again and this time you know what you're doing, and suddenly the game is about cycling people in and out of your party in order to get the game to tell you the version of its story you have decided you want to hear. instead of being a kind of narrative space you freely explore while listening to lectures about freely exploring narrative space, the game is at first almost impossible to appreciate and then on replay responds to appreciation by becoming a game where you are always taking arbitrary actions in the service of picking plot components like feats. meanwhile you are listening to lectures. (stand by my spoilery assessment of kreia above-- an extremely cleverly designed NPC-- but the circuitous bull-session avellone dialogue style where everyone says "perhaps" 9000 times a conversation is tested to its v limits w her.)

a noble failure tho, which would be still be better than kotor1 if its environments weren't so denuded and hasty. as it is they're both huge wastes of time lol

anyway just checking if pom's still up