Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords Review

 What is it you think you have done?

Having played Knights of the Old Republic through nigh on 5 times, it seems like a given that I'd have played KOTOR 2 in between those playthroughs; although for one reason or another I never did get around to completing that which existed of the KOTOR saga. (I don't consider The Old Republic a canonical continuation, on purely personal bias) So I've really left a hole of my knowledge on the Old Republic until today. One previous playthrough ended the second I came across a game breaking bug, which is notorious from a game that was infamously rushed to launch, but this time I was determined. I pretty much power-gamed my way through the campaign whilst completing as much as I could to get the best all around picture of the experience and picking up 'The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod' which is said to clean up the majority of the bugs. (I still had to completely reinstall the whole game in order to finish it because of unforeseen installation woes and the same gamebreaking bug coming back, but I finally managed to hit those credits.) So how about we touch on my thoughts on the game and see where exactly we can go from there? Of course this is going to be a review, but I'm going to refrain on specific story spoilers in case this is a game you want to experience for yourself, but I will proceed assuming that you know the story events of KOTOR 1 at the very least.

Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (Which I'll refer to as 'The Sith Lords', henceforth.) was released a little more than a year after the first in December 2004. And as you can imagine, a turn around that quick would have been impossible from the Bioware team considering the many other projects they were juggling during that time, thus development was turned over to another legendary studio. Obsidian Games bought their talents to work on 'The Sith Lords', and to my amazement you can genuinely see the vast differences in how both companies approach RPGs nakedly on the face of two games built on roughly the same framework. Unfortunately, 'The Sith Lords' was rushed to launch meaning that a good deal of content and plans had to be stripped out or reworked in order to hit the December release date, which is also very clear to see for anyone playing the game. The Restored Content Mod does it's best at piecing together what was left over, but that just does a good job in showing you why some of this content was left out. (Unfinished half-baked ideas are resplendent.)

Gameplay differs little from the round-based real-time action of KOTOR 1, however one can see how Obsidian weren't quiet as married to the whole 'D&D in Star Wars' idea that Bioware was originally shooting for. (Which is surprising considering these companies' polar opposite stance of that design philosophy would completely switch in how they make their games today.) There are several reworked feats and a lot of cool new force powers, but Level 20 is no longer the level cap so all of that serves less as 'build variety' and more as 'over powered tools to tack onto your arsenal as you become helplessly godlike in the late game'. Still, there's an improvement in choice and variety which makes The Sith Lords a better base gameplay experience than it's predecessor, and yet there are caveats there I want to dive into later. Though just as with a lot of this game, my feelings on this approach to gameplay remained turbulent and murky until those final minutes of the credits screen.

Picking up 5 years after the events of KOTOR, The Sith Lords follows a new character called 'The Exile' coming back into Republic space after a long time in seclusion, only to find themselves as the last remaining Jedi in the Galaxy. That title is questionable and thrown about several times despite blinding obvious evidence to the contrary, but it drives at the heart of the threat: The Jedi are being hunted and assassinated by a mysterious threat of Sith Lords that are strikingly more interesting in design and premise than practically every other Sith in Star Wars history to date. Even now. The Triumvirate stand as some of the most distinct and unsettling antagonists I can think of within the Star Wars universe, and it's a shame that these weirdoes aren't better known by the community. They're practically JOJO villains for how wacky and wild they and what they do is. (I think all 3 of them carry tons more weight than 'angry-apprentice' Darth Malak ever did.)

In this brave new, Jedi devoid, galaxy, the Republic is teetering on the verge of collapse thanks to the collateral damage caused by the Jedi Civil war, and it's uncertain fate looms heavily over the narrative from start to finish. (Spoilers) Revan has fled known space to face some unknown dark force from his past and the spectre of his passing hangs over the entire breadth of the story too, as a dangling question mark that was never answered. (As long as we block out the existence of The Old Republic, that is. Really wish Bioware had kept those plotlines to themselves.) It is up to the player to decide both the fate of the Jedi Order and that of the Republic as they try to discover why the Sith are pursuing them whilst unravelling a mystery about their own past.

There is a lot that this game has to juggle from a narrative perspective, which is why it's so surprising how great a lot of the story turns out even when large swathes of it had to be cut out of the game, and I think it a testament to Obsidian's incredible writing prowess. It's something you can see from just about every dialogue snippet in the game, from the esoteric yet buzzing with intent rhetoric of Kreia, to the sternly passionate exposition-weaved argument between the Exile and Atris at the tail-end of the first act. There's a stunning command of character writing talent that shines through this burnished gem of a narrative so that each individual character jumps out and lives in front of you. Which is a blessing, because one of the casualties of the rushed development is companion storylines. Yep, you'll recruit an impressive team of personalities, talk with them, but there's no optional character-building adventure to deepen your connection and fundamentally change who that character is. Without the talent in Obsidian's writing room, these characters and this narrative could have fallen off a cliff so fast!

I do, however, mark the rushed development as responsible for the structure of the gameplay, which is a lot less consistent both with the example that KOTOR set, and within itself. The first world of The Sith Lords is a genuine slog to go through, a linear trek through an excruciatingly drawn out prologue packed with robots, a snail-pace mystery and a tiny bit of genuine suspense on the tail end of the 5-6 hours it'll take just to get onto the second world. Only to discover that the second world is also a railroad! It took me nearly 9 hours to finally get out onto the Galaxy map with some control over my destiny, all because of a first act in desperate need of a editor's hand swiping down to cut some of the fat. Especially considering how most of those initial 9 hours are spent wandering around gun-metal grey corridors and Telos' bland vision of a metropolis. At least KOTOR 1 gave us the fields of Dantooine to keep things fresh.

Even once out into the gameplay loop of visiting worlds to track down the Jedi, you'll encounter worlds with vastly differing levels of fleshed out quest lines. Onderon and Dantooine are straight forward and wrap up neatly, Nar Shaddaa is a gangly branching thing lacking in initial direction and resplendent with annoying heavily orchestrated set-piece moments which rob the player of agency and grate for their trying length and frequency. And then Korriban is a total after-thought. It's just a complete mismatch of development ideas and efforts indicative of a game not really near that harmonisation point which the development process longs for. Don't even get me started on the finale, which switches about fast enough to give you whiplash before giving up and throwing you in a facility brimming with enemies mindlessly standing around and staring at walls until the protagonist gives purpose to their lives by killing them. By every account this game should be an unplayable mess, and it a testament to the herculean talent of the Obsidian team that is all just about sticks together, even if it's rough.

In the absence of a consistent story to entice repeat playthroughs, The Sith Lords features a randomised loot system that keeps the things you pick up as totally random each time you play- and I hate it. Dictated by the level you are and filling nearly every source of loot from trader inventory to corpse looting, the random loot table takes all the fun out of exploration beyond quest completion, because no secret corner of the world is going to hold anything tailor-made which gives it value. You'll find Dark Jedi robes lying on the bodies of bounty hunters in Nar Shaddaa, several clones of Exur Kun's battle armour stuffed in a locker on a random star ship and apparently Darth Malak's armour is capable of randomly spawning, but I was never lucky to see it spat out of a slain Cannock or somewhere equally as undignified. By the late game I was just ignoring all lockers and corpses, because none of them would contain useful drops ever. It felt like a badly constructed looter-shooter drop system, weightless and ultimately inconsequential. Needless to say, I won't be drawn into a second playthrough just in hopes of getting another three random 'circlet of +5 wisdom' drops. 

But did I have fun? The most important question of them all. To which I think the answer is actually 'yes'. Despite the frustrations with the mission layouts, the random loot and the distinct lack of Sith enemies throughout the games. (Yeah, there were hardly any force users at all in the whole campaign until the last hour) I did manage to squeak out some fun from the content that is there as well as from the strength of the story. The direction that Obsidian takes the narrative is fraught with mysterious intrigue that seizes the imagination and even sets the pulse racing in some of the later moments. Kreia's back-and-forth with the player, and her key moments, are endlessly fascinating and I could have spent several more hours just listening to her corrupted teachings about the nature of the universe. And the relationship between the player and the main antagonist results in one of the most gut-wrenching and intriguing conflicts I've seen in Star Wars. And I know I keep comparing this narrative with wider Star Wars but it bears the comparison well, because at times this narrative is in an absolute league of it's own.

The shortcomings in development does effect the wider story too, however, and some lingering snippets of the narrative remain confusing, under explained or out-right ignored by the time the credits role. Including, most frustratingly, the force bond which serves as the impetus for the entire adventure to being with! That was one of the reasons why the finale was building up to be so tricky, only for it to be forgotten altogether by the credits! At least the team found a way to wrap a 'where are they now' section into the game before the credits, unlike in the first KOTOR, with a creepy, yet totally apt, twist of divination baked in there. But the real tragedy has to be the way in which the final 3 hours dedicate themselves to building up the Galaxy-threatening return of Revan in KOTOR 3, only for that game never to be made and the potential of it to be killed off thanks to The Old Republic MMO which squandered the idea, squandered the Galaxy and, eventually, squandered Revan. In my head and heart the cliff hanger of The Sith Lords stands to this day, unanswered and full with the same tantalising mysteries last left floating in the vacuum about the rocks and ruins of the massive space-rock once known as Malachor V.

'Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords' is a clearly troubled game that wears the scars of truncated development which tarnish a game otherwise set to be a powerhouse, and if you squint your eyes you can almost make out that masterpiece in all of the mess. However even with years of fan efforts trying to piece the vision that was, KOTOR 2 just ends up feeling like a game that bit off more than it can chew and barely managed to square up as a good game despite of it's ambitious rather than because of them. There was something special here, and I think the writing still holds some of that magic, but maybe we'll have to wait until the KOTOR 2 remake to feel that finally realised in the way it was always meant to. With all this in mind, I would award Knights of the Old Republic with a C+ Grade, so earned for it's fumblings as much as it's triumphs. In another world I could absolutely see a reality where this game is every bit KOTOR 1's superior, but circumstances tripped it up invoking those old iconic Miyamoto words. "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." And a promising game which crumbles under the weight of it's own ambitions is perpetually and deeply frustrating.