Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords

aka: Jiu Gongheguo Wushi II: Xisi Lingzhu, KotOR 2, Star Wars: Caballeros de la Antigua República 2 - Los Señores Sith
Moby ID: 15792
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Description official descriptions

Five years after the events depicted in Knights of the Old Republic, the Sith have become stronger and more determined to rule the Galaxy. The Jedi Order is nearly exterminated. A mysterious ex-Jedi has been exiled from the Order and is traveling alone. This Jedi had served under Darth Revan (when the latter was still on the Light side of the Force) during the Mandalorian Wars, but due to enigmatic circumstances was forced to retire. Now the past is catching up with the Jedi, and soon he or she will have to choose the side to fight on.

The Sith Lords looks and plays very similarly to its predecessor, also being based on the Star Wars d20 role-playing rule set (which, in its turn, is similar to the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons) and having the same combat engine, character development, and a Light and Dark ethical system, which judges the player's decisions and actions and influences story events and characters' responses. Additions to the gameplay include a lightsaber-crafting system, which allows augmenting lightsabers with various items, new Force powers, and the possibility to influence the alignments of the characters in the player-controlled party through conversation choices and other decisions. Most of the exploration and the combat sequences is done using a party of three, including the protagonist and two companions. However, certain parts of the game will force the player to travel alone, or to control a party made exclusively out of companions.

A large part of the military equipment can be upgraded using any workbench that can be found throughout the game world, including one available at all times on the ship that the player uses to travel between planetary systems. Different types of items have more than one piece that can be augmented. For example, the armor has two slots for upgrades (overlay and underlay), while ranged weapons have three (targeting, firing chamber, and power pack), and lightsabers have six. The easiest way to get additional upgrades is to either buy them or loot them, however they can be created as well at a workbench with the right components and enough repair skill. Medical items are a different sort and they can be crafted using lab stations.

At various moments during the game, the player has the opportunity to play some mini games: a card game called Pazaak, shooting targets using a turret from a first-person view, and swoop racing.

Spellings

  • 旧共和国武士II:西斯领主 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Xbox version)

332 People (259 developers, 73 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 58 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 140 ratings with 10 reviews)

A Worthy Sequel if Ever I've Seen One

The Good
Now based on my favourable reviews, you may think that I'm an employee of Lucasarts, Bioware or Obsidian. Not the case at all. I'm just a die-hard RPGer and Star Wars buff who has been waiting years for someone to come out with a good Star Wars rpg for console and PC. Enter Knights of the Old Republic and Sith Lords. Again, as in my previous review (Knights I) I will state that Lucasarts has once again beaten Squaresoft (who I have a lot of love for) at their own game. Before useless flamewar and backlash, note that I haven't played FF Online yet, but FFX sucked (maybe X-2 was better, who knows?). I'm only ten or so hours into the game so far, but I am thoroughly wowed so far. This could be the beginning of a mighty, on going series! I would love to see a Knights of the New Republic series set during the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion yes this is a hint to any Lucasarts ppl that may be reading.

The Bad
I would have liked for my Revan character to be uploaded and used as a secondary PC. MAybe in 3? If any Lucasarts or Obsidian people are reading this, this is your cue to make a direct sequel to Knights 1, where you can play Revan again. No other complaints so far, other than the apparent lack of transit (Citadel Station not withstanding). Some people have been complaining that swoop racing has been ruined in this game. My opinion- who cares? The mini-games (Racing, Turrets, Pazaak) were always my least favourite aspect of KOTOR anyway. What's to ruin?

The Bottom Line
A lush, dark sequel to an already great game. Think of this as an Empire Strikes Back to Kotor One's A New Hope. Brilliant! Great even if you're not an RPG fan or a Star Wars fan, but it helps, trust me!

Xbox · by Chris Parent (5) · 2004

Obsidian's debut, and a brilliant sequel.

The Good
Being a fan of Black Isle's Fallout and Planescape Torment RPG's I was looking forward to seeing what Obsidian would do, as the company was founded by Black Isle members, as I'm sure your aware. Well it’s a sequel, and it's one of my favourite types of sequel, in the vein of DOOM2, Thief 2, Fallout 2 etc - i.e. essentially more of the same! Using the same engine for a third title in the series would of course be pushing it, but it's all good and proper for another 'once round the block'.

I played Bioware's KOTOR through with a female light-side character so I decided to play the second game with a male dark-side character, and it was a lot of fun, there's always opportunities to be irredeemably evil and belligerent, whenever there's the opportunity to be a pitiful goody two shoes, indeed as some of the dark-side dialogue responses were so funny in the first game I only managed to become a rather weak light-side character early on and it was only with an irritating level of self discipline and tongue biting that I managed to get on in this manner, and I'm pleased to say the laugh out loud responses are still crop up throughout the second game. There's some pretty major branches in the way you choose to solve problems or play throughout events in the story line, both light and dark-side characters will be presented with the same problem, but it's up to you which path you choose, may the force be with you...

The game is in 3D, but you can only look up and down about 30 degrees or so, although doing so often reveals the sheer scale of the surrounding architecture, some 'Wow" moments can be missed if you don't look up every now and then! As previously mentioned the game uses the same engine as the original KOTOR, so there's also no levels above levels, you can't jump over things or crawl under them, or swim - whilst playing the first KOTOR outing this kind of left me longing for the real-time fighting in and out of the scenery(and swimming) of Appeal's beautiful Outcast. These limitations are, however, soon forgotten or hardly noticeable as there is just too much fun to be had(incl. Force Powers), besides the 3D environments do add a good level of immersion, and did I mention that they offer some of the most fun gaming to be had in recent times?

So it's a while until you get a light saber, but patience is a virtue - as is collecting bits and bobs so you can construct one at a workbench. There's workbenches and lab stations dotted throughout the game, both enable the breaking down and creation of items, many items can also be upgraded. There's in engine cutscenes galore, and plenty of FMV sequences, I didn't nearly unlock all of them - as talking to your party members can gain or lose the level of influence you have on them, gain dark side/light side points and experience points and unlock extra background storyline or FMV's. Your party members, be they comrades or mere pawns in your destruction of the galaxy, are all very unique and hail from all walks of galactic life. Every single line in the game is voice acted.

The Bad
Although the game is stated to support Windows 98 on the back cover I experienced numerous and frequent crashes to the desktop, always whilst loading and transitioning to another area of the map, this was with an ATI radeon card the latest patches installed(at time of writing the latest version is 1.0b, it's about 12mb worth of downloading and is available from the LucasArts website). So I played it on XP and this solved the problem, only one crash throughout the majority of the game.

I encountered some other bugs when I first loaded up the game, there was one where the swoop bike got stuck on the roof of the track – but this got fixed in the latest version.

Some of the more 'dungeon-crawly' times can get a little tedious occasionally and the combat become a little easy on the normal difficulty during the latter half, though there is a hard difficulty and mowing down hordes of opponents did really add more to the experience;)

The Bottom Line
A brilliant sequel with lots of happenings to find yourself in as the story progresses, on a par or even better than the original, but do install the patches!

Windows · by Jack Lightbeard (2685) · 2006

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away....Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2!!

The Good
Almost everything about this game is awesome This game is one of the best RPGs in a long time. The story is well written and the voice acting is superb. This game features one Bad ass bad guy (well three actually). Great cinematics, Everything is colour full and detailed.

The Sith lords doesn't have the huge plot twist that KOTOR 1 had but it does have a few smaller twists that will leave any gamer satisfied. Depending on the path you take characters from the first game will pop up at some points throughout the game. And guess who's back as the most bad ass character in your party? That's Canderous!

The combat style in this game despite being Turn based is fun and easy to get into. There is a vast amount of weapons and armor in the game as well as a huge variety of lightsaber colour's. Sith Lords is much longer then KOTOR 1 coming in at around 30 hours game time on my first run through where as the first took me a mere (in comparison) 12 hours.

The Bad
Despite having a good engine the game is plagued by glitches and errors. It has some severe slow down problems especially during combat. The characters were not as fun or interesting as they were in KOTOR 1.

Sith Lords is far too easy when compared to the first. I only died about three times throughout the game, also the final battle(s) are far to easy. The story despite being great is more forced then the originals. I'd find myself being forced to use certain party members far to often then I did in KOTOR 1.

If you havn't played the first this game is only half as fun.

The Bottom Line
Excellent game. A must have for the Xbox.

Xbox · by MegaMegaMan (2257) · 2005

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Re: @#$^$%@#$^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Zovni (10504) Jan 3, 2011
OpenGl Drivers hell.. Scott Monster (986) Apr 25, 2009
@#$^$%@#$^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Scott Monster (986) Apr 20, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cut content

KOTOR2 was originally intended to have a longer more well developed ending involving the rest of your party members. However this was cut out and it is rumoured that Obsidian Entertainment was pressured to finish the game in time for the holiday season by Lucasarts. They were only given a 12 month development timeline.

A part of the cut material was an entire planet inhabited by droids. Unfortunately, the entire planet was cut from the game due to time constraints, making several of HK-47's subquests impossible to complete and leaving a crucial subplot unresolved.

The influence system that was introduced to the KOTOR series in this game was originally going effect the game far more than it did in the final version. Like the HK factory and other things the time constraints forced Obsidian to scrapped most of the consequences of influencing certain characters to the Light or Dark Side. An example is that in the original version if you influenced Atton to the Dark Side he would KILL the Disciple, and if you influenced him to the Light Side he would sacrifice himself to save the Exile and the rest of the Ebon Hawk crew. In the end, because of lack of time, the influence feature did little more than change the characters appearance (if the went to Dark Side) and gave them a little more attitude.

Cut content restoration

Because Obsidian was not allowed to work on the game post-release, fans worked on mods to restore the content. The effort by the modding group Team Gizka failed, but the unrelated project "The Sith Lords Restoration Project" was eventually released in 2009. As of 2012 it reached version 1.7 and is still in further development.

Game start

The events of the original game are relayed from the player to another character, giving the player the option to base the sequel on either ending (and the protagonist's gender) the original game offered.

References

  • At the end of the game when the exile asks Kreia about the future she says something along the lines of "The Mandalorians die out over the course of millenia, until the only relic left of them will be a bounty hunter clad in their armor, killed all too easily by a Jedi. She is referring to Boba or Jango Fett (or both) from the Star Wars movies.
  • If you ask Kreia about what will happen to the Republic in the future, she will claim that the republic will fall over the course of 1000 years. This is referring to Star Wars: Episode III where, 1000 years after KOTOR 2 according to Star Wars continuity, Emperor Palpatine destroys the Republic and reforms it as the Galactic Empire.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – #5 Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Xbox RPG of the Year
    • 2005 – Best Character of the Year (PC) (for Kreia)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 02/2006 - #3 RPG/Adventure in 2005
    • Issue 04/2006 - #4 RPG/Adventure in 2005 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Rambutaan and Zack Green.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Nintendo Switch added by Plok. Xbox One added by Kennyannydenny. iPad, iPhone, Linux, Macintosh, Android added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Rebound Boy, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, tarmo888, MegaMegaMan, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added December 7, 2004. Last modified February 16, 2024.