Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Some general thoughts on the game.
I love this game and find it immensely frustrating at the same time. In many ways it’s much better than the first. The writing is far more interesting and all of the characters have at least somewhat engaging stories going on (half the crew of the first game are just kinda boring). Where KotOR 1 is a fairly standard Bioware adventure, KotOR 2 sets out to deconstruct the entirety of Star Wars and make a thorough critique of the Force itself, while also dealing with the price or war and conflict more broadly.
The Sith in KotOR 1 are essentially the Sith from the movies. Almost comically evil, with Darth Malak being basically just a bellend with force powers. Each Sith Lord in KotOR 2 actually represents their own idea: Darth Sion is the embodiment of pain and hatred who becomes obsessed with the Exile (creepily so if the PC is female). Nihilus is an all-consuming force of nature with a surprising kinship with the PC. And there’s the third one who isn’t even a real Sith Lord, but is the lynchpin of the whole game and gives the harshest critique of the Sith, the Republic, the Jedi and the Force.
And the fourth, who hasn’t yet realised how far she’s fallen.
And the Jedi are broken, scattered and defeated.
It’s so much more interesting.
Obsidian also fixed, improved or expanded a lot of mechanics in the game, something they’ve done a lot with their sequels-for-hire and rarely get much credit for. Off the top of my head:
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They added a crafting system and massively expanded armour and weapon upgrades.
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There’s far more and more interesting loot in the game.
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The UI is improved with better inventory sorting, weapon sets, better character sheets and it sorts savegames properly.
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There’s a proper UI for reading datapads that pops up automatically now.
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There are a bunch of new feats and force powers, and some that were hidden in KotOR 1 are visible to the player now.
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Empty containers are labeled empty, so no more trying to loot stuff multiple times.
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Security spikes actually work, and you can blow up containers and doors with explosives.
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There’s a first person mode with a special feature that’s pretty cool and even useful sometimes.
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They added the influence system and you can multiclass some companions into jedi.
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There’s some basic companion AI so less babysitting casters, and also Force/lightsaber forms to add some tactics.
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You no longer always go first in Pazaak games and they play out faster. This is a huge blessing. Swoop racing is somehow worse though, and the mini games are still generally annoying and too frequent.
So if the story is good and a bunch of mechanics are better it should definitely be a better game, right? I think it is, but it’s also worse.
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It’s famously unfinished with lots of cut content. The TSLRCM mod goes a long way towards fixing that, but there are still plenty of things left hanging and important quest lines that were gutted and couldn’t be restored.
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The pacing is largely terrible with some sections dragging. on. for. ever, and others feel underdeveloped.
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The level design is mostly awful from a gameplay perspective and they’re also mostly boring visually.
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The combat, while not great in the first, is somehow worse here, character AI frequently bugs out and encounters are often badly designed.
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And while the main quest stories (main and planetary plots, companions) are mostly very good, there’s a definite lack of good side quests. There are some, but usually if it isn’t tied into the main path it’s probably only worth doing for XP.
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It’s bleak as hell. Not necessarily a negative, but everything is awful and there’s precious little you can do to change that no matter how light side you go, and the whole game feels like one big galaxy-spanning existential crisis. It’s an interesting story but it’s not a fun or uplifting one.
So, I love the game for the things it does well, but it does a lot of things badly. I didn’t like it that much the first time I played it. I didn’t quite get how the influence system worked and so missed a lot of the interesting bits of the story, and the bleak pathos of the whole game was too depressing for me. And it was broken as all hell on release. I’ve played it twice since, once without and once with the Restored Content Mod and liked it more each time. This will be the 4th time and I’m looking forwards to the good bits but I know there are parts where I’ll just have to grit my teeth and endure.
