I have beaten it light and dark side. I played both games as a female and am currently playing it as a male. I wanted to get handmaiden. I think it is a great game but it is definately way too geared towards light side characters. The only way to get the whole story is to gain influence with the other characters, and the only way to do that is to be nice to them and gain light side points. I played first as dark side and was pissed when the ending came along and it didn't explain anything to me at all. That and the end was way too easy.

Overall though, gameplay is better if you can get through the many boring areas.
I think I enjoyed the first one more, but there are definately things in the new one that I would have liked to see in the first one.

By far and away the hardest fight in the game (for me at least) was when your party splits up before the assault drop into the planet where the military coup is being attempted.

With my main character out of the fight, my party was getting beaten to a pulp Right at the end of that mission, when you have to fight...what is it? Four or five sith lords at the same time? All my characters were killed except Atton, who had to take care of them all on his own...

Oh, sidenote, Atton is pretty.

i found that bit easy, i used jedi atton, jedi handmaiden and mandalore, i guess its easy if you've built up all of your party members beforehand though...

Crappy game, as you have to compare to KOTOR, seen as a game on its own its okey, but not compared to good old KOTOR.

I thought it was an incredible game, even compaired to the origonal. I do understand that there's a great deal more talking involved...the plot certainly goes a whole lot deeper...so if you're more interested in getting into a fight every five minutes instead of being willing to sit in a conversation for half an hour to get the most complete story, then it might not be for you...

I liked that personally Hell, from the first outing I was hooked...I feel the Paragus mining facility is one of the best executed "iscolation scenarios" in any game since Resi awesome stuff.

Subby said earlier that the ending to 1 was far better...that's definately true. It was a lot more complete (and the good ending made the Sera One all happy joy joy ), and said something about what happened to your character...instead of just flying off into space, without any idea where you're going, who survived to go with you (except for Krea's cryptic predictions), and so on.

i must say i enjoyed every planet more in kotor 2 than i did in kotor, there just seemed more to do, although korriban in kotor 2 was rather lame