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

New Stuff

There are a few key differences in The Sith Lords, though. Nearly every conversation you have with your party members affects your influence on them. If you tell them what they want to hear and generally treat them well, your influence on them will rise and they will follow you. They will be more reliable in combat, but they will also follow you towards the dark side or light side of the Force. Another interesting aspect of The Sith Lords is that you have to build your own lightsaber. You start the game with some Jedi powers and learn more very quickly, but you don’t have a lightsaber until you find the parts to build it. Depending on the order in which you visit the game’s planets, you can get your lightsaber in anywhere between 9 and 18 hours. Another big change in KOTOR II is that the level cap from the first game is gone. I understand that the games are based off of D&D, but it was frustrating to be 4-5 hours from the end of the game in the first one and not be able to level up anymore. That issue has been resolved and now you can become super powerful by the end of the game, which is sweet. All of these changes are definitely for the better, but not everything in KOTOR II changed as much as I would have liked.

Technical Issues Drag the Whole Experience Down

A huge issue in the original Knights of the Old Republic is that it was unbelievably glitchy. You never knew when the game was going to bug out on you. Even worse is that literally every single load screen was a potential Dirty Disk Error just waiting to happen. For a vast majority of people out there, the original KOTOR was not a smooth experience.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about The Sith Lords. This game is even more glitchy than the first one, if you can believe that. You will fall through floors. You’ll have conversations where the game will skip past large sections of dialogue. There will be occasions where the targeting (which allows you to interact with characters and items) will suddenly not work and you won’t have to take a few steps back and then try again just to get through doors. Other times, you’ll be able to walk right through closed doors. Worst of all, load screens are still a potential DDE deathtrap and the load times in general are even longer than they were before.

These technical issues should have been fixed. We put up with them in KOTOR because it was something new, but it is unacceptable that a year and a half later things have gotten worse instead of better.

Graphics and Sound

Graphics are another area where not a whole lot has changed. One of the biggest complaints about the original game was that it didn’t really look up to Xbox standards. The graphics in The Sith Lords are pretty much the same, and just like the first game there are some areas that are more detailed and nicer looking than others, but overall the game is rather blah. Fable looked good and it was a lot of the same sort of stuff, so why do the KOTOR games have to look so poor?

The audio portion of The Sith Lords is a lot better, thankfully. The music is absolutely wonderful and there seems to be more of it this time around. All of the dialogue is done through full voice and it all sounds really, really good. The sound effects are all perfectly done as well. It is an absolute thrill to hear the instantly recognizable hum of your lightsaber or the shriek of a blaster. This game sounds amazing.

The Bottom Line

If you are a fan of the first Knights of the Old Republic, you’ll definitely enjoy KOTOR II: The Sith Lords. There are a lot of little problems, though, that result in this one not being as good as the original. It is still very good and worth playing, but more is expected of sequels and developer Obsidian simply didn’t deliver. I’m sure it is because they didn’t want to screw anything up since KOTOR was so very good, but making only minimal changes to the gameplay and leaving the sub-par graphics and tons of glitches alone is just not going to cut it.

That said, this is still a must play game. There is a lot more combat this time around, and using a lightsaber is simply a lot of fun. The overall storyline isn’t as satisfying as the original, but it brings up a lot of philosophical questions and will teach you a lot about the Jedi so it is very interesting if you are a Star Wars fan. KOTOR II takes around 40 hours to beat, and you will likely want to play it multiple times (at least once each on the dark and light paths) so I recommend it for a purchase. Give it a rental if you aren’t sure, but you’ll likely end up buying it anyway.