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

The Good
The Sith Lords is such an enormous game I'm surprised it doesn't take up all 50,000 MB in the XBox. Still, it's worth every byte. I love the really wide variety of Lightsaber colors (they have a silver crystal. SILVER!). And the fact that they kept the spirit of the previous game and the movies. As soon as I heard "The Jedi" music in the music section of the main menu, I immediately fell in love with it. It's even better the John Williams (sorry fans).

The Bad
It's pretty much the same storyline as the first one accept instead of finding the Star Maps, you find the remaining Jedi Masters. Another blow is not allot of the original characters are in this game. Real disappointment. You only see Carth Onasi on the Dark Side story, Bastila in the tomb on Korriban and at the end of the dark side story, and Darth Revan at the end of the tomb on Korriban.

The Bottom Line
KOTOR II makes it to Number 3 in my top games of all time. Simply nothing else can be said. It is just fantastic. Here's to Knights of the Old Republic 3

The Good
The first Knights of the Old Republic was an excellent game that did a lot to bring serious RPGs closer to the mainstream without making too many compromises. The development of the sequel was entrusted to Obsidian, a new team consisting of veteran RPG designers that contributed to some of the turn-of-the-millennium most beloved classics.

Sith Lords is very similar to the first game, having a nearly identical gameplay system with only a few light modifications. Item-crafting is one of those: you can spend hours at the workbench manufacturing your own upgrades and assembling weapons and armor. Generally, these seem to be more items and more different types of accessories, stimulants, Jedi techniques, and feats. The difference is not striking; but at least nothing was taken out or further simplified. A few battles are actually more challenging than in the first game, though overall the difficulty level remains more or less the same.

Sith Lords improves upon the original game's characterization, dedicating more gameplay time and more refined interaction possibilities with your companions. Using what is probably the game's coolest new gameplay mechanic, you can affect their alignment through dialogue choices and actions of the protagonist. Everyone will respond to what you say and do in one way or another, and the results are sometimes quite far-reaching and unpredictable. In general, the sequel treats ethical issues in a more complex fashion, with more parameters and variables than before.

The characters in Sith Lords are deeper and more enigmatic than the companions you have encountered in the first game. A seemingly lighthearted womanizer will eventually reveal a tormented soul covered by scars of war, and his moral instability will prompt you to make choices. A woman who had to serve a Sith Lord who destroyed her entire home world can still be brought to the light - or crushed forever by the dark side if you decide to pursue that road. One of the typical examples of how the game takes familiar humorous Star Wars icons and fills them with new content is an evil wookie who hates those who have shown him mercy; gratitude is unbearable to him, and he constantly seeks death. The main antagonist of the story, not revealed until later, is also significantly more interesting than the rather standard villain of the predecessor.

The sequel has a noticeably darker, more brooding mood than the first game. The main character has even deeper moral problems to deal with, and overall the story feels more mature, less schematically executed. The quality of the writing is perhaps even higher than in the previous installment, and its style is more thought-provoking, bringing back memories of Planescape: Torment. Like before, much attention is paid to the content of side quests; particularly interesting are those related to your companions, since they allow you to find out more about them and open new conversation choices.

The Bad
Sith Lords was clearly either released too early, or something happened during development that caused designers to cut out large chunks of content. Particularly towards the end, the game feels garbled, with underdeveloped plot branches and a rushed ending that ignores many decisions the player has taken throughout the course of the story. There is a fan-made patch that supposedly restores much of the original content floating on the net, but I haven't tried it yet.

My main beef with Sith Lords, however, is its excessive similarity to the previous game. The problem is not the recycling of the engine or lack of any significant additions to the gameplay mechanics, but the refusal to go beyond the boundaries in structure and world design. To illustrate this, consider Fallout 2, which hardly invented anything of its own, but stuffed a familiar formula with as much content and experiments as it could. Sith Lords, on the other hand, copies so much that it often feels more like an expansion pack with a new story than a full-fledged sequel.

The game's adherence to formula can get irritating. In the original game, the excuse for traveling to other planets was collecting specific items; here, it is meeting specific people - in both cases, the plot wouldn't budge until you completed the whole thing. The world of Sith Lords is by no means larger than that of the predecessor, and the developers employ very similar methods in the design and layout of individual planets. There is little sense of continuity, traveling is restricted, and nothing was done to correct artificial borders that noticeably limit exploration.

The Bottom Line
Sith Lords lacks the polish of the first game and could have been bolder and more expansive in its design and its treatment of gameplay. However, despite being a rather timid sequel, it is an enjoyable RPG with tasty writing, quality quests, and interesting ethical themes open for discussion. May the Force be with you, Obsidian.

The Good
Obsidian Entertainment has stuck with the original formula in terms of how the game runs but tweaked it, so that it's just right. There are more information screens, healing can be performed on other party members with medpacks, and you're now able to use workbenches and lab stations to breakdown or create new items of your own (provided you have the requisite stats).

The sound and music as always is well done, with the voice acting of most of the major characters being of good quality and the music being what you typically expect from a Star Wars game or movie.

The storyline of this game is very interesting and much more darker than the first game. However it fails to resolve properly (as you'll see mentioned in the next section).

The Bad
The graphics in the game is becoming rather dated as it uses the same engine as the original KOTOR. Occasionally, the activation of some Force Powers (e.g. Force Enlightenment) would result in the screen going blurry while you run, but would remain blurry when you return back to your normal running pace.

The most major gripe with the game however is how obvious it is that this game was rushed. The number of bugs that this game has in showing cut-scenes, dialogue trees, quests, AI pathfinding behaviour, application crashes etc. is quite horrendous and shows a lack of any quality assurance whatsoever. True many of the minor technical issues can be fixed with a patch, but another thing that was rushed that is causing much anger to fans of the original KOTOR, is the ending. It has been recently leaked out what Obsidian Entertainment had initially planned for the ending and it would've explained a lot of plot holes that multiply as the game comes to a close. When I was playing the ending chapter, everything was rushing by so fast that I didn't have time to appreciate the fruits of my labour - one of them being the increasing of influence of your NPCs. What's the point of spending the time to improve your characters and get along with them, if you don't learn anything about them or even have a use for them at the end? Very disappointing.

The Bottom Line
If you're new to the KOTOR universe, this game is pretty good, if you can get past all the major bugs and all. To fans of the original KOTOR, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, you'll better appreciate what's going on in the universe since you have past knowledge. On the other, you'll be disappointed by the ending since it just doesn't have the same amount of choice and grandeur that the original managed to achieve. In the end, it sometimes feels that what I've really bought is an expensive, long and buggy expansion pack, rather than the sequel to a previous GOTY winner. Overall, I give this game: 6/10.