Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords Review

Knights Of The Old Republic II

A while has passed since the events of the first KOTOR game and the galaxy is a very different place. The Sith are spread across the galaxy and lack the strength they did in the past, but the Jedi are in a far, far worse situation. Jedi are a dying breed hunted to extinction by ruthless bounty hunters and the Sith themselves…

Taking the role of yet another self created male or female lead you find yourself on the hit list of Jedi to be removed. You fought under Revan’s banner in some of the most brutal and bloody clashes in the galaxy but you turned your back on your former leader and returned to the Jedi, only to be exiled and severed from the force for your crimes. After years of wandering the galaxy your past has caught up with you, as no matter as to what your own views are on the Jedi, your enemies count you as one and the vessel you were travelling on has been attacked…

KOTOR II has a hard act to follow when it comes to living up to its pedigree and to be fair developers Obsidian have done a fairly good job in taking over the reigns of the series from Bioware. What KOTOR II offers is a much more fine tuned game play experience than the original title but lacks a huge amount in terms of actual story. What you have here feels more like an expansion pack to the original game, adding slightly different locations mixed in with updates of planets you visited before rather than a stand alone game.

The most noticeable difference between KOTOR II and its predecessor is the fine tuning of the gameplay aspects. For a start you no longer have the rather annoying issue of having to repeatedly check lockers/corpses/storage containers only to find them empty as if a container is empty of items it says so above it. Secondly the character interaction which, while good in the original KOTOR wasn’t exactly perfect has been refined. When talking to your other party members you can now gain influence with them if you are nice to them and say things they agree with, which in turn helps their storylines progress as well as changing their attitudes towards you. Obviously you are going to have to react differently to the various characters depending on their personalities (some aren’t particularly keen on you to begin with) and this whole “influence” system allows for a level of depth missing from the original. You can also mould your non-Jedi party members into becoming Jedi (should you choose) as the adventure progresses. KOTOR II also adds the ability to select a “prestige class”. Once you reach a certain point in the game so you can become more specified in your chosen path. For example if you are a character who has heavily relied on force powers, you can select a prestige class that makes those abilities even more powerful.

With the high level of character interaction going on in KOTOR II, it would help it’s excellent features to be even better if the cast were an interesting bunch. Returning from the first game are the two droids T3-M4 and HK47 the assassin droid as well as whole new cast to fight alongside you. The most important cast member is Kreai, a wizened old woman with a mysterious past who takes you on as a pupil, and provides a very interesting character to interact with, accompanying her and the droids are such characters as Atton (yet another Hans Solo wannabe), Visas (a blind Sith who swears a blood oath to serve you) as well as a few others. This time the game will often force you to play as characters in your party that you wouldn’t normally select to be in your party from time to time, so you get a feel for the entire cast more in terms of personality and how they fight. While at first this may seem frustrating this is actually a nice touch as it adds an extra level of immersion and doesn’t leave a certain character stuck on the ship that you never play which happened frequently in the first.

Despite the great cast and AI KOTOR II really falls down with its storyline. What begins as an interesting premise that seems poised to reveal many details about the history of the era ends with a wet fart rather than a big bang with little or no actual details of the plot making sense. The game also ends exceedingly abruptly which was a major letdown after the epic ending cut scenes of the first. A few slightly less serious issues with the game spring from difficulty, the final few battles (by which my character has a very powerful force attack) simply consisted of me standing still and repeatedly using that attack again and again till the boss in question fell over. Not really a challenge whatsoever and very dull. Finally the game does get a little mixed up at times, early in the story Atton asks you questions which let you describe the events of the first game depending on your actions in it. You get to describe what happened to The Republic, Revan and Malek as well as inputting a certain characters gender. It’s a nice touch to be able to do this, but in future conversations the game sometimes seems to forget this, even having characters from the first game being referred to as both male and female in the same conversation despite what you specified earlier. It’s only a minor issue, but a noticeable one.

Graphically and sound wise what you get here is exactly the same as the original, which in terms of graphics isn’t exactly wonderful seeing as the game came out considerably later. But still, they aren’t extremely bad and don’t detract from your fun. The game also lasts even longer than the original (assuming you do a lot of the sub quests) and has the Dark/Light side replay factor too.

Overall KOTOR II delivers a more polished game play experience than the first game, which is mostly let down by having a poorly concocted story I have seen in an RPG for a while. Despite the stories short-comings there is still plenty of fun to be had here and it’s well worth it especially if you’re a fan of Star Wars.

Final Scores

Story 6/10

Gameplay 9/10

Graphics 7/10

Sound 9/10

Length10/10

Overall 8.2/10