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

The Good
With a slightly different flavour from the original, Knights of the Old Republic II : The Sith Lords (k2 from now on) keeps just enough continuity with the original to be accessible, enjoyable, and at time extremely compelling. Because it is a sequel, it lacks the features that made KOTOR I a unique and superior to many RPG’s on the market, but while it doesn’t pave any new road, k2 provides an excellent gaming experience, even superior to its predecessor in many ways. This review will be written primarily for those who have not played the first KOTOR game.

As in all RPG’s, the fundamental questions of quality relate to storyline and character quality. Are the quests good? Are the characters memorable? Can I make meaningful alignment-related (e.g. good/evil) choices? Can I customise my character sufficiently to provide a ‘role-playing’ experience? Is the plot interesting? I would argue that in terms of these RPG/plot/character questions, k2 excels.

The plot starts out a bit confusingly, as you wake up on a station (in the age-old gaming plot device) without any recollection of how you got there. The confusing bit for the player, and a weakness of the story, is that somehow the CHARACTER seems to know a bit about his history, but you, the player know absolutely nothing. It’s quite odd to learn about your character by seeing him say ‘I used to be a Jedi.’ There are other hackneyed plot bits throughout, but it’s important to remember that this is an RPG, so the line between ‘hackneyed’ and ‘epic’ can become blurred.

These weaknesses aside, the plot is quite good. You’ll travel with your band of characters throughout the galaxy to different planets. You’ll then be embroiled in numerous minor and major quests that drive the ultimate story line about your main character.

The ‘boss’ bad guy is not revealed until quite late in the game, a la Neverwinter Nights. I’d argue that this is a strength to the game, as it makes the experience more compelling.

The characters throughout the game are fantastic. NPC’s abound, as well as the standard ‘commoner’ characters. ALL of the human conversations are voice-acted, and quite well I’d add. The NPC’s you interact with are usually memorable and lifelike. There are few ‘caricature’ characters in this game. Your character is a sort of anti-hero, another commonality between this and KOTOR I, but there’s a distinct subtlety to his anti-heroism. He has just enough mystery to be intriguing, but not enough to be clearly crafted as the ‘mysterious’ character. I think playing it through with a female character would be even more interesting, as anti-heroes are so rarely female. There is apparently the option to pursue romantic ties between your character and others, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Too busy force-choking people.

Additionally, ALL of the party members have distinct personalities, most of which are quite engaging. The meddling Kreia drives me up the wall, I chuckle at HK-47’s commentary, and also enjoy getting to know the somewhat-too-obviously-elusive Atton. It makes for satisfying gameplay to know that there are 8 or so people you can choose to have hang around your character. Like in the original, the party members you choose will interact with one another and you and you can learn more about their respective histories through fighting alongside them, much as you’d expect from real life, were you to be a space-faring adventurer…An additional element to this game that sets it apart from the original is that your main character will have ‘influence’ with each of the other characters. This influence is affected by whether or not you treat them well, agree with them, etc. The more influence you have, the more this character will ‘open’ up to yours in dialogue, and also the more their alignment will switch along with yours.

The quests contain the garden variety fetch quests. But in addition to the bread-and-butter quests you’d see in any RPG, there are a number of interesting minor quests available. Sometimes they involved playing two NPC’s off one another, sometimes there’s a betrayal involved, etc. Overall, the minor quests are good, if not great. Incidentally, a fair number of them involve puzzles which vary in difficulty, which might please the adventure-gamer within some players.

The major quests, which further the story line, are fantastic, and require their own paragraph. There is a great deal of party shuffling in this game (a la Final Fantasy 3 & &) but this is never a pain because all party members earn experience together (see gameplay comments below). Instead, it becomes really exciting to split the party up to see how other characters interact and get a chance to see how strong they’ve all become. I was riveted by all of the times in which your party gets split up. Usually, the cuts between groups are quite frequent and are tied to actual plot cliff-hangers with reasonable levels of importance (e.g. one of your characters appears to be dead). These are actually some of the best moments I’ve had in PC RPG gaming.

All in all, the RPG elements of k2 are fantastic, above and beyond the quality present in the first.

The gameplay is also excellent in its own right, even if it builds on its predecessor. It’s all a complex series of stats and dice rolls, a la D&D 3rd Edition. However, rather than simply having one motion for ‘attack,’ each melee move or blaster shot technique has a number of animations. The effect is that it appears to be real-time fighting even though it’s actually a series of rolls. Clever. One will eventually see all there is to see in the combat system, but this is to be expected and is hardly much of a weakness.

There are feats, skills, attributes, and force powers to contend with for each character. Obviously, non-force users don’t get force powers. The number of feats has been increased since KOTOR I, which I feel is a positive thing. KOTOR I felt like dumbed-down D&D 3rd Ed (no comment) and k2 has done much to increase the complexity of choices available to players. Still, much remains the same. There are two basic paths to combat: ranged and melee, and within each are three feats to use for attacking. There are also 8 or so skills (computer, repair, etc) which are identical to KOTOR I. Suffice it to say that there is a reasonable amount of customisation available, but not as much as in a proper RPG. But this is also expectable. Think of k2 as Neverwinter Nights with training wheels.

Actual in-game control is fluid and intuitive. There is a optional training scene at the beginning of the game to assist in orientation to the control of the game, but many won’t need it.

The Bad
The graphics and sound are beginning to look and sound their age. With the source engine, far cry, doom3, and all manner of other great graphical engines, k2 is dated. Full stop. The sounds are also mostly recycled from a) John Williams’ now 25-year-old score or b) the same as in KOTOR I. The dated quality of the graphics and the samey-ness of the sounds are clear weaknesses to the game. Still, because this is an RPG and not a FPS, I’d argue that they are minor weaknesses.

The Bottom Line
To summarise, KOTOR II is a fantastic game. It is simple compared to other RPG’s out there, but it is also accessible, engaging, and entertaining. It has an excellent plot, memorable characters, and a reasonable amount of room for character customisation. While its graphics and sound are a bit drab, these weaknesses are not significant when compared to the strengths, as this game contains some incredible gaming moments. And hey, who DOESN’T want to be a Jedi for a little while?

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!

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.