Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II : The Sith Lords
Posted by Bug-E on March 26th, 2005
60 hours.
Yup, that’s how long it took me to finish this excellent Star Wars[tm] RPG.
I’ll be spending another 60 hours playing it again though…
Why? Well, the first 60 hours was with my goodie-two-shoes male Jedi, that did everything right, never gained a Dark Side Point (well, except for twice… Honest…), always helped everybody, and tried to save the universe…
The second time around, I’ve started with a female Jedi, and she’ll be out to spread mayhem, be selfish, and generally be a pain in the arse… Why? Because this game is worth playing a second time around… And possibly a third time too!
Jump straight to the screenshots here.
When I first played the Knights of the Old Republic 1, I have to admit, I played for an hour or two, and got bored. I thought “What a damned waste this game was… Bugger.”. A few weeks later, I decided to give the game another chance, re-installed it, and started playing again. From scratch. Boy am I glad I did. I didn’t give the game enough time to gain momentum the first time round…
The same can be said for KOTOR II. It needs a chance to gain momentum, and once that’s happened, you end up wanting to be playing this game constantly. The story is original, the gameplay is gripping, the sound and music are on par, and the general look and feel of the game is fantastic. Everything the first game was, and more. Admittedly, KOTOR II is rather more of the same of the first game… This is not a bad thing though. Why change a winning formula?
The game starts off with as much a cliché story line as you can get. Set 10 years after the first game, you start off as the sole non-droid survivor of a wrecked space ship, with a little bit of amnesia. They could have made a daytime soap out of this game. 
The prologue of the game puts you in control of a single droid, that has to save the ship from certain destruction. It serves as a good start-off point for getting accustomed to the controls of the game. The second time playing the game, I promptly skipped it.
Controlling your party
The game gives you the option to navigate your party through the game world with either the keyboard or the mouse, and I’ve found that a combination of both works the best for me, as the default keyboard layout is such that all the keys you need are all within reach of your one hand on the lefthandside of the keyboard. There are some rather important functions that can only be activated with the mouse, but this does not distract from the enjoyment, and neither does the fact that certain things are just easier with the keyboard. Take switching targets for instance. Keys Q and E are used to cycle forwards and backwards between targets. Switching targets with the mouse can sometimes be tricky, unless you pause the game first, choose the target, unpause, carry on, etc. As unusual as that may sound, pausing the game is actually a common occurence, due to the great Auto-Pause feature of the game. By default, the game will auto-pause whenever an enemy comes within view of one of your party members (amongst other triggered events, like a party-member dying, etc.). This gives you time to specify a queue of up to 4 actions that each of your party members should do once the game is unpaused. This is especially useful for such combat situations where you want your one character to lob a grenade first, then move in to attack with a melee weapon. Select the your target, select the grenade type, click, select melee attack type or feat, click, click, click, and your character will throw a grenade in round one of the combat, then move in closer to attack the enemy (if it survived the grenade blast) with whatever melee weapon that is handy, for the next 3 rounds. There are several AI behaviour choices you can assign to each of your characters, to control what type of role they will play in combat when not being controlled by you. The options range from Aggressive, Ranged, Grenadier, Jedi Support and Stationary, each affecting the weapons and combat actions that the character takes. When left up their own choices, your characters will act according to their behavioural choice, and use whatever feats, Force Powers and combat actions they have available to them to kill off those pesky enemies. Very intuitive indeed. It is quite possible to win several fights by not doing anything other than leaving your characters alone to do their default actions, but what’s the fun in that? Get in there and rapid-fire their butts!
Kitting out those Jedi padawans
Items in the game are plentiful, found in everything from footlockers, to wicker baskets, to plasteel boxes to remains of recently departed bad guys. Some of which may need some amount of force to open, if you don’t have any (or enough) skill points spent in your Security skill. And you’ll often find yourself hoarding a lot of items you don’t really need anymore. The inventory system can be frustrating at times, especially if you allow it to become filled with junk. Often you’ll find that you’ve given your characters updated weapons, only to be left with the older, not-so-great weapons in the inventory. That’s why the developers introduced the concept of breaking items down to components or chemicals at workbenches or medical lab stations in the game. These workbenches, far and few between, can be used to breakdown items, create new items, and upgrade weapons, armour, etc. The fact that certain items can be upgraded with a multitude of other upgrade items adds that extra spice to the game to make it interesting. You find yourself hunting for the next workbench or lab station, or trekking back across the whole level to get back to the last one you saw, just to upgrade your Vibroblade with that new Grip you just picked up off the corpse of some poor soldier that just bit the dust.
Breaking down items is not the only way to prune your inventory though, you can always sell them at specific shopkeepers found on every planet that you visit (except perhaps the first one…). One of the hints that appear on the load screens reminds you though, that you are able to create better upgrade items than the ones that you can buy from the shopkeepers. Just a subtle hint by the developers to get you into the habit of using the workbenches. Lab stations are used to breakdown certain items into chemicals, which in turn can be used to create anything from medpacs to grenades, depending on the number of skill points you’ve spent in the appropriate skill. Treat Injury is used to determine what strength medpac and stimulants you can create, Demolitions relates to the type of grenades you can create. Workbenches are used to create and breakdown weapons, armour and upgrade items for the weapons and armour. Your other skills like Repair are used here to determine what items you can create. The amount of skill points you have in a certain skill also determines how many components/chemicals you get when you break an item down, so choose the character with the highest amount of skill points in the skill that is required.
Graphically pleasing?
So exactly how beautiful is this game? Accurate shadows, well-crafted characters and droids, and even waving grass. These all add to the great graphics of the game. At times the visuals are rather dull, but in a good way. It adds to the authentic feel of the environment you find yourself in. A deserted mining station with corpses scattered everywhere has a dreary look to it, the outside grasslands of Dantooine, with the waving grass and rolling hills, are vibrant and filled with colour. Even the caves you visit, actually feel like caves. The architecture of the buildings are in line with the Star Wars universe, but more the Episode 1 and 2 universe though, as the doors in the game actually open slow enough to look real, not like the first trilogy where the doors shot open and closed, severing any limbs that may get caught in their path. The different settings you find yourself in through-out the game are all varied that just by looking at a screenshot you can immediately identify which planet you’re on.
One small detail that I thoroughly enjoyed watching in the game was the portraits of my characters as they change their alignment between the light and dark sides… As with the first game, their look and their posture change between the two extremes. Characters that drift towards the light side get an angelic glow, fairer skin, and an upright, proud posture. Characters that drift towards the dark side start hunching over, with a darker look about them, looking very shady and nasty. A great side-by-side comparison can be seen on the KOTOR II website portal image. What your character looks like might not have a huge impact on the game, but it’s small details like this that make the game so much more enjoyable.
Later on in the game, once you have a lightsaber, the combat scenes get even more exciting, with lightsaber blades flying all over the place, deflecting blaster bolts and chopping enemies into little bits. Coupled with glowing hands and weapons when you use combat feats (such as Power Attack or Flurry), and the colourful glow of different shields your characters can wield, the game is visually very colourful, and looks stunning, even when the screen gets busy with lots of enemies. The graphics are crisp and clear, and the visual effects such as the lightsaber blades flying through the air and grenade explosions are beautifully crafted.
With a relatively recent video card, you’d be able to switch on the anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing in the graphics options. These make a rather impressive difference in the well-roundedness of both the characters and environment. Add to that an already impressive array of graphical effects, the game’s gameplay is only enhanced by the graphics.
There are several full motion video sections in the game, at least 2 videos per planet you visit (there are about 7 or so planets, I can’t remember the exact count), one video for arriving, the other for departing. There are other times that the game switches to full motion video to further the story. The videos are of good quality, not too long in length, and help the game along very well. If you have to skip over a video (press ESCape to do so), there is the option to view all the videos from the main menu of the game.
Use the Force Luke
Even with amnesia, your character gets to choose (at levelling up) and use Force Powers early on in the game. Using Force Powers drain your Force Points (much like mana or magic points in your typical magic-ish RPG), but these get regenerated over time. Force Powers come in your two typical RPG ‘power’ varieties, active and passive. Passive powers include things like deflecting blaster bolts. Most of the Force Powers are activated ones though, and can be split into combat and non-combat powers. All Force Powers are either Lightside, Darkside or Universal powers. How this affects the game is that if your character uses a force powers of the opposite alignment that he or she is leaning towards, that powers costs more in Force Points than a same-alignment power would cost. Universal powers cost the same regardless of your character’s alignment.
Combat Force Powers, such as Force Lightning, Stun Droid or Stasis become available only during combat, and aid in combat situations. Later on in the game I found that I ended up using only one or two of the Combat Force Powers that I gave my character. The AI, however, uses the full spectrum of powers that are available. Choosing the “Jedi Support” behaviour option for your Jedi-like characters makes for great aid in combat. It is possible to switch between which character you are controlling in your party, so even though your main character may have force powers that you don’t personally use often (Myself, I hardly ever used Whirlwind or Stasis), the AI will end up using those powers if you decide to switch your active party member to somebody else in the party.
Non-Combat Force Powers include such things as Heal or Knight Speed. The can be used inside of combat, but they are used on yourself or your party, not on the enemy. Some of the Force Powers affect just you, others affect the whole party (Such as Battle Meditation). All these Force Powers are in actual fact just behind the scenes stats modifiers (for those hardcore pen & paper roleplayers among us). Knight Speed, for instance, doubles your movement speed and give you an extra attack per round. Flurry gives you two extra attacks per turn, at a reduced Attack Bonus, and your character suffers a -3 to Defence for the next round. That kind of thing.
Dialog
The dialog in the game is very well done, with full speech for all characters except your own. Even members of your party have full speech, as one would expect from any game nowadays. All non-human races that you speak to have their own authentic dialect, including the little R2D2-like droids. None of these you can understand had you been listening to the dialog only, good thing there’s text to read. The small droids talking in dwooots and dweeets, but apparently your character (and members of your party) can understand it/them. Just like Lassie. “Dwooooo. Dwit, dweeeee, dweet, dweet.” “What boy? There’s Sith assassins waiting around the corner holding a woman hostage?”…
Dialog by NPCs and your own dialog options are vastly affected by your alignment, Force Powers, Skills, character influence and equipment. (Yes, equipment!). Certain characters in the game will adjust their responses based on these things. For instance, on the one planet, if you have a lightsaber in your hand when you speak to them the first time, they’ll shout at you, and run away (Hey, Jedi aren’t all liked you know…). If you lean toward the Darkside, certain characters will react differently, etc. When talking to your own party members, based on the dialog options you choose, you may gain or lose influence with them, which affects future dialog options you get with them. For instance you need to gain influence with certain characters on a certain subject first, before they will be comfortable enough to discuss other subjects with you. It works rather well, but can be a bit irritating at times, when you think you’re making a good dialog choice, and you end up losing influence with that character. Influence doesn’t seem to have a huge impact on the actual gameplay, but may aid in completing certain bonus quests through-out the game. I’m sure as a predominantly Darkside character, you won’t gain a lot of influence with some of the characters. Even dialog with NPCs on planets will affect the influence of your active party members. Force Powers such as Affect Mind and Dominate Mind, and also your character’s Persuade and Intimidate skills could add certain dialog options to the mix. “We don’t need to show your our Passport ID, you will let us go past.” “I… uh… don’t need to see your ID. I will let you go past.” Very cool! However, these don’t always work. Sometimes choosing an option that ends up failing could end up in combat. “[Intimidate] Give me that droid or I’ll kill you!” [Intimidate: Failure] You can take it after I’m DEAD!”
Do I hear an echo?
The music in the game is a typical Star Wars soundtrack, nothing hugely special, but not unwelcome. Gaining a Lightside or Darkside point plays a certain riff of music from the movies. There’s music for combat, for dialog, etc. And there’s also your typical Cantina-music, with those aliens playing their sax-like instruments and the Twi’lek girls dancing away. I generally play with the music turned down low in the sound options, because I want to hear that lightsaber blade cut the air, clearly, not mixed with Star Wars music. The main menu of the game has a “Music” option, where you can listen to the complete soundtrack of the game. Nothing hugely exciting, but worth browsing through at least once.
Speaking of lightsabers swishing in the air. The sound in this game is pretty amazing. You have environmental effects such as wind in open fields, footsteps, blaster bolts flying past you, hitting walls, etc. Entering enclosed spaces such as caves or hangars changes these sounds. Footsteps are echoed, blaster bolts sound different. Even your lightsaber cutting the air has a certain echo to it. Very well done. Although, there’s not much of a variety in sounds that this game could possibly offer. Different Blaster Rifles sound exactly the same (to me at least), each of the grenades in the game (there must be over 10 different types) all sound the same when they explode, etc. The few sounds that are in the game are great, but the fact that there are so few, makes it a bit dull. But not dull enough to switch it off.
General gameplay
There are several aspects of the game that makes it such a great game. If you want to mould your party members by hand, you have the option to level them up manually, choosing where to spend each of the points he or she gains. If you just want to get to the action, you can switch on Auto-levelling, for both yourself and your party members, but I feel this takes away a crucial part of the game, that of having a character you call your own. If you let the game decide which Force Powers your character gains, you might end up with powers you don’t use, or ones that aren’t applicable to your character. The game might choose Darkside powers for your Lightside character. This is allowed, and nothing wrong with it, but if you plan on playing a pacifist character that does not use any combat-related Force Powers, the game might end up wasting those points. I’d recommend at least levelling your own character up yourself. Personally, I never used auto-levelling for any of the party members…
One thing that I don’t generally enjoy in any Roleplaying Game is the amount of dialog you have to read through to be able to get a grasp on the story of the game. KOTOR2 does not have a huge amount of dialog (such as Neverwinter Nights for instance), but there are times that you will spend 10 to 15 minutes just talking to one or more characters in the game, trying to find out more about a certain subject, or whatever. These sections of the game are few and far between, so does not become a hassle.
The Verdict
Gameplay: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Total: 8/10
Pros:
- It’s a Star Wars game!
- You get to fight with Lightsabers (who doesn’t want to do that???)
- Gripping story
- Very short load times
- 60 hours of gameplay
- You’ll want to play the game at least twice
Cons:
- Slow to get started
- Inventory system not as intuitive enough
- Too much micromanagement for non hardcore RPG fans
This game is definitely worth playing. Go out and buy it now.
My own screenshots
Update 2005-04-15:
When the game just came out, there was a non-critical language patch (aka. typo fixer). That was patch 1.0a. There’s now a new patch, 1.0b, which fixes a bunch of odd crash bugs etc. For the moment, it’s a US-only patch, but UK and other languages will follow soon. Get the patches here.
Update 2005-05-06:
Finally, I noticed that Lucasarts made the International V1.0b patch available. Go here to download it.