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

I am on the verge of beating KotOR 2 for the upteenth time and I decided that it is a good idea to review the game itself.

 

I highly enjoyed the first game (I would need to re-play the original before a review) and as such I had high expectations for this one as well. I can say that they were certainly met. This is a game that I would definitely suggest to anyone.

I highly enjoyed how intricate the game was. the game play is set up in such a way that it is impossibly to play the game exactly the same way twice. What kind of game you play or what kind of story you live in the game all depends on things such as gender, force alignment, companions, random items you find, and the order of the planets you travel to. the storyline is also spectacularly well done and it is very gripping. I find that I like to keep playing just to see where the story will go next. As I said before, the game is set up so that the story is never exactly the same the next time you play the game (with small details of course. The larger story is set in stone in terms of the light or dark sides). The combat in the game is a little clunky but it still is enjoyable.

The lightsabers in this game are also improved. You can get a force crystal that is attuned to you and grows stronger with you which is awesome. Plus, you get some neat colors too. No more green, blue, or red. No, in the game you can get those as well as bronze, silver, cyan, orange, yellow, and purple.

you get cool force powers in the game too. However, the force powers in the game can be both a blessing and a curse of sorts. Yes it is cool to be able to clear out an entire room with one master force lightning strike, but that makes combat a little boring and repetitive after a short while. However, there are a lot of battles that are too difficult to do without it. Also, here is another flaw of combat in the game: quick, grab a sword or an object akin to that (preferably a fake one) and try and hit your computer with it (gently so as to not break it) now hit the wall with it. Did you hit the computer and the wall? If so, congratulations! you are officially way more accurate than the characters in the game when it comes to hitting objects that don't freaking move! Seriously, if it doesn't move then your character should have no reason not to hit it especially if they are a Jedi. It gets better as the game progresses and your characters are more powerful, but until then, you have to sit there while your character misses something that a drunk man could hit blindfolded while that thing proceeds to beat the crap out of you. Of course, this isn't the case all of the time...but it happens enough times in a row that it is frustrating.


A lot of the battles are really cool and fun but I do have a problem with one of them in particular.

That is Darth Nihilus. You may recognize him from the cover of the game. Throughout the game, he is literally built up to be the single most powerful character the galaxy has ever seen. A few years before the story takes place, he wipes out an entire planet in seconds by merely existing. He has grown so powerful that he is not even human anymore. So, what does it take to defeat him?


a 20 second lightsaber duel. That's it. Nothing more. You stand there and within 20-30 seconds he is defeated. In comparison this guy

keeps recharging his health over and over again until you beat him by convincing him to let himself die. He is supposed to be way less powerful. I wanted something more from the Nihilus battle especially since that is the one I was looking forward to the most.

Also, there are many side-quests that the player can do (and it is beneficial for the player to do them) during the game. The game has it set up that at a certain point, these quests are not completable and some don't even tell you what to do next. They just sit there until you beat the game. It's a little irritating.

By far though, the best part of the game is that you can turn your companions into Jedi. Everyone except the droids and one Mandalorian. Everyone else you can turn into a Jedi (if they aren't already) and that makes the game even more interesting and the way that you go about doing it shows that the creators obviously put a lot of effort into character depth which I highly appreciate. Each companion has a great back story and I highly enjoyed that aspect of the game.


Unfortunately, some of your companions are pretty useless and if they weren't in the story, it would not make a shred of difference. Two specifically (the rest are perfectly fine)

This one named G0-T0

And this one named HK-47

They really don't serve a purpose on the game. Their back stories are really difficult to learn and neither of them are particularly powerful. Sure it is kind of fun going around trying to find pieces to rebuild HK-47 and he is kind of deadly so...he's in a gray area I suppose. But G0-T0 is flat out pointless. Once you find out what's up with him, nothing happens. Nothing changes. It is more of a "oh isn't that interesting" thing. With characters like Atton Rand

If you find out what his deal is, you can teach him to shoot lightning out of his hands until all enemies are dead. I much prefer the latter outcome of a known back story.

My last major problem with the game is armor and force powers, specifically how they relate to each other. In the game if you learn a great force power, you can't use it when you have armor on of any kind. I find this pretty inconsistent with the game. If I can beat a guy who can destroy worlds in 20 seconds I should be able to shoot lightning out of my fingers while sporting armor that would stop a missile. It is especially irritating because you find a lot of armor in the game. A LOT of awesome armor. Now, you have 10 companions and yourself in the game. Two are already Jedi, three are droids, one is a Mandalorian who can't be turned into a Jedi and the other 4 can be turned. So, the droids can't wear it, the Jedi can't wear it and as it turns out, Mandalore cannot wear it either. So, you get a ton of great armor in the game and who can wear it? Nobody can. And all of the really awesome armor comes near the end when everybody is a Jedi anyways. The game gives the player a ton of armor and no one to wear it. It is pointless.

However, without a doubt, the biggest flaw the game has, is the obvious cut content.  research into this game shows that there was a lot of content that was cut from the game tanks to rushed development. Yep, this game isn't even fully completed yet. Even if you don't look into it, you find traces of that here and there in the game in things like quests that cannot be completed, rooms that it look like you can go into but you can't, etc. Even whole storylines are cut from this game. They just wanted to release it ASAP and didn't put as much time into the game as they should have. The thing is, in hindsight, the release date doesn't matter at this point. The game the developers release is the one that we are stuck with until we stop playing. Considering the replay value of the game, that will be at least 3 or 4 times through. But now we have to wonder what could have been if the game had been released in its entirety.


Overall though, the spectacular story and great gameplay make this an excellent game and one that definitely has re-play value unlike other Star wars games such as, say, Force Unleashed (but that's for another time). Now if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to go play this game some more.

Final score: 9.0/10