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

Knights of the Old Republic II delivers an incredible story and intriguing plot intertwined with clunky gameplay and dated graphics. Star Wars fans will find a lot to love, and even non-fans will find much to like in a well-designed game provided they can be patient with some of the game’s shortcomings.

KOTOR 2 has one of the most involving storylines of an adventure game ever. You’ll begin unconscious, adrift an asteroid field on the Ebon Hawk, and soon to realize you may be the last Jedi left in the universe. A Jedi Civil War has decimated the ranks of the once proud order. You are the sole survivor, beginning the game with literally nothing. Using your cunning and deduction, you’ll find out what has truly happened to the Jedis, while hopefully avoiding the bounty on your head. Many subplots abound in the game, making this one of the most involving storylines to date.

You build your Jedi using a variety of skills and attributes.

During the course of your travels, you will encounter generic components that can be used at any workbench to upgrade or create items, provided you have the necessary skill. The mini-tutorial to use the workbench is lacking in detail, but once the player has worked out exactly how to upgrade and create items it becomes a valuable tool in progressing through the game. You will also meet a variety of characters throughout the game world, making the world feel alive and varied. Your conversations with these characters, although pedestrian, allow you to control your alignment to the light or dark side. The more light (or dark) side points you gain the greater your force powers in that particular alignment.

Character creation is straight-forward. You allocate points to your skills, pick the type and appearance of Jedi you wish to play, and you’re pretty much off. Allocating points to your attributes directly affects your ability to do certain things and modifies your success rate with certain skills. This intuitively translates into the game itself.

The Star Wars environment is well constructed, and the player will encounter and add droids and other non-humans to their adventuring party. The game also allows solo mode, letting a member of the party scout another location, while allowing the party overall to investigate in another direction. The plot and story is much more engaging than the recent Star Wars movies. There is more of a mystery to be solved, and many, many plot points to be unlocked along the way. That being said, the acting is unfortunately sub-par. Some of the characters dialogue is downright laughable, ranking among the worst in recent memory. While this isn’t a complete buzzkill, it does lessen the overall effect of the great, cut-scene driven plot.

An example of one of KOTOR2’s dramatic cutscenes.

Slight technical issues abound, particularly during the cut-scenes, where the game will collapse into windowed-mode or lock up. This is a minor complaint, as the game generally runs exceptionally well otherwise. The biggest knock is that this is basically a “walk around and find stuff” game. There is nothing more to do than exactly what the game designers intended. There are no two ways to solve one puzzle. You must do exactly what the game wants, in the order it wants.

GAMEPLAY: 8

The first KOTOR may have been game of the year, but the follow-up plays like game of the last year. There are several good things about KOTOR2, but recent releases far surpass KOTOR2’s gameplay; and some of the bad things are inexcusable.

The gameplay is easy to pick up. Combat, while very, very basic, is easily learned. While this makes for a boring first half, you’ll appreciate the simplicity later on when you have multiple characters in your party. Basically, you select which enemy you want to attack and the selected character will attack that enemy exclusively and automatically until it is defeated. Managing the party is an easy task. You select each individual portrait to control that character. Equipping items is similarly easy. You select where you want an item to be worn, and then the item itself. You immediately see the item on your character in the appropriate place. Furthermore, you can equip multiple weapons, allowing for more than one attack per round.

Combat in the early game amounts to targeting one enemy at a time.

Interaction with the game world also can remove the player from the experience. True to Star-Wars form, there are plenty of suspended bridges through high-tech pits. These bridges, of course, have no railing, but that doesn’t matter, because the game prevents you from walking off the edge. This makes the game much less challenging, as you cannot walk anywhere the game doesn’t want you to. It’s as if an invisible wall stops your progress as you run in place.

The Star Wars universe is excellently realized in KOTOR2.

Walking around outside in space is equally ridiculous. You can only take short, stubby steps in the space suit, but you can take them really fast, so your movement speed remains the same as without the space suit. Evidentially, this was in response to player complaints with the first game, but the animation should have been changed accordingly. Walking in the space suit looks like a Benny Hill sketch without the happy sax.

The combat system, while boring at first, became much more appreciable once your party begins to grow in size. If the player has the patience to make it through the early levels, he or she will be rewarded with a streamlined and exciting experience later on.

GRAPHICS: 8

The graphics in gameplay mode are worth an eight, but the cut-scenes are worth a nine. The cut-scenes are nicely animated and feel as though they are on a grand scale. Seeing capital ships dock and navigate through space is a real treat, and the opening is a faithful adaptation of Star Wars movie openings.

The textures and environments are pretty well done, but again, in comparison to Doom III and Half-Life 2, are incredibly dated.

SOUND: 9

Aside from the idiotic voice acting, the sounds are well done in KOTOR2. The environments are filled with varied sounds, and each is appropriate to its application. The sound during the cut-scenes is at its most impressive, especially as the first chord strikes when the giant “Star Wars” title fills the screen.

REPLAY VALUE: 8

KOTOR2 has a single greatly redeemable quality in the replay value department: the player’s ability to control his or her alignment and skills through interaction and character development. This makes an otherwise very linear game more re-playable to see what skills and challenges await different types of characters.

The variety of weapons, enemies, and items you’ll face and find is truly mind-boggling.

All the corpses look the same...and a bit fatuous.

How you interact with other characters in the game changes your alignment to the light or darkside.

The in-game graphics are decent, but nothing more. The character models are well done, but the animations aren’t always in synch, particularly when characters are speaking. Some of the droids look great, but some look like they were designed using only primitive shapes. The environments are varied, but again, hit-or-miss in quality. One of the most anticipated effects, being frozen in carbonite, should have been a great effect, but instead looks bland.