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

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords is the sequel to the excellent and award-winning KOTOR game from a couple years ago. It is a role playing game based in the Star Wars universe and is set about 4,000 years before the events in the Episode I movie. The character development and leveling system is based on the Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, which for me is a really cool system to go by. The first game was excellent despite a few flaws, and this sequel is basically the same type of game but with a different story. Is it better than the original? Well…

The story for KOTOR II is set five years after the events in the first game. It starts out by showing your ship, the Ebon Hawk, floating through space. It is badly damaged and you and a robot are the only survivors. The prologue also serves as a type of training level where you use the robot to restore the ship’s power and get things going. You can skip over this part, but you’ll miss out on quite a bit of experience that will help jump-start the game later on. Eventually, your ship will wind up in a mining colony and your character, supposedly the last living Jedi, must figure out what happened and uncovered yet another big mystery as you talk to hundreds of different characters and go all over the galaxy on various missions. The story itself is pretty good though it takes forever to unfold and you’ll be constantly distracted by side missions. I suggest you do as much of the extra stuff as possible, just to gain the experience.

This game is played using a third person (like Tomb Raider) perspective. I was a little apprehensive about playing an RPG this way, but I quickly adjusted with the first game. I still like my overhead view or games like Baldur’s Gate or Diablo, but after playing for a while I quickly realized this game was much like a 3D Baldur’s Gate, only set in the Star Wars world instead of Dungeons and Dragons. It is no coincidence that a lot of the same people worked on both of those games. Like all RPGs, you have to deal with inventory management and must speak to all kinds of characters to get the full story. You will have to do a lot of running around, which can sometimes slow things down a bit. You will also often get involved in very long conversations with certain key players in the game, and this too slows things down.

When playing, you run around through caverns, spaceships, bases, and so on. To speak with another character, just walk up to them and click. To open a door or container, you do the same. This entire game is mouse and keyboard driven, much like a 3D shooter where you use the mouse to look around and the keyboard to move forward and back. Just like the first game, there is a collision problem where your guy can get stuck behind columns or other obstructions and will just stand there running in place. I also noticed that sometimes the floating camera gets in the way when your character gets turned around in a tight space. I wish this had been improved upon for this sequel.

For players of the first game, there are a few key differences. Like all sequels, this one comes with more weapons and special abilities. The inventory management system has been completely overhauled and is much easier to match weapons and objects where they should be. This new ways keeps you from having to sort through all the junk your character can’t use. In the original game, you could find workbenches that let you modify your weapons. In this sequel, you can still do that plus use the workbenches to create minor items like medical supplies and such.

Combat is just the same as the first game. Since most of the basics of character development and combat are based on the D&D rules, the combat is sort of turn based and real time. When you encounter an enemy, it automatically pauses the game and alerts you to their presence. That way, you can choose your target and a method of attack, such as guns, swords, grenades, or force powers. Once you choose this method, you unpause and let the fighting begin. During combat, you just tell your character what to do and he will keep attacking until he wins. It is not like Diablo where you have to click-click-click every time you want to swing your sword.

One of the coolest things about this game is that you can choose to play light (good) or dark (evil) side. Depending on the path you choose, your character will meet different people and have different missions. The overall storyline is basically the same, but having the option of going good or bad makes this two games in one. You also don’t always have to go with one or the other, and the force powers are always available for both sides. What’s interesting is that a lot of your light and dark side influences come from conversations and how you deal with other people. During these conversations, it never actually tells you which responses are light or dark, so you just have to follow your instinct.

The graphics in KOTOR II are a slight improvement over the original game. The levels are laid out pretty much the same as the first game, but the edges look a lot more crisp. The character faces are a little more detailed, but the animation looks about the same. To be honest, this game looks like they just took the original game engine and made a new game out of it. That is part of what bothered me about this title. Sure, there is a new story and new levels, but I was expecting a big improvement over the previous title. Not that there is anything wrong with this current system, but there are games on the market these days with far superior graphics. I’m running Windows XP with a gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon X300 video card. When I set the resolution at 1024x768, I notice it slows down a bit when a lot of movement is on screen, and that is with all the high-end detail options like anti-aliasing turned down or off. Yeah, I know my video card is kind of weak by gaming standards, but I figured it ought to handle this game a little better.

The sound design of this game is excellent. As you walk around, a genuine Star Wars soundtrack constantly plays in the background, just like you were in a movie. All of the weapons have their own sound effects and a lot of ambient environmental sounds are used. If you have a surround sound speaker system and a SoundBlaster card that supports EAX, you will definitely get a lot out of this game. The voice acting is, for the most part, also very good, though sometimes the voices don’t seem to match the look of the characters.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords is a fun game, sure, but as a sequel I expected more. It is too much like the original for me to give it exceptionally high marks. I also found it to be a little more tedious than the original, especially when you get locked into a revolving 10-minute long conversation with one character. I could play the original KOTOR for hours at a time, but this one only works for me in 30-40 minute spurts and then I’m ready to play something else. Bottom line here is that if you liked the first one, then you will enjoy this sequel. If you didn’t like the original, things didn’t get any better with this new one. I’m having fun with it.