At first, I was a huge fan of KotOR 1 over the sequel, I thought the story was far superior, but a 'recent' (last six months) playthrough of KotOR2 really struck me as to just how deep it could be. We see HK-47's character actually expand beyond
just the humourous assassin droid as he becomes Revan's mouthpiece for conveying some of his philosophies to the Exile, Kreia's manipulative, mothering, harsh, caring and ridiculously convoluted teaching methods all rolled into one...it was an excellent story and if there'd just been an extra six months polish (fuck you LucasArts. Fuck you.) on it then it would have blown KotOR1 out of the water and stomped all over it.
You had to look harder at KotOR2 to appreciate the intricacies I found. The story really came off as less good than it could have been if you didn't explore all the sidequest dialogue options available to you, but if you did
everything (as you should have been doing for a game like this
) it was an excellent experience. One I would freely recommend to everyone.
Is Team Gizka finished yet by the way? \o/
As for KotOR Vs. Mass Effect: Not a fair comparison by any means. Two different games made in drastically different times with different capabilities for their platforms and Mass Effect hasn't even 'finished' yet. I'll wait til we get Mass Effect 3 and KotOR 3 before I make a final decision on that.