Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords (Xbox)

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Some of the architecture is spectacular

The most bizarre thing, however, is that Obsidian, having wisely decided to make your character a Jedi (albeit an exiled Jedi) from the start of the game, then make the rather perverse decision to not allow you to acquire or build a lightsaber for almost 15 hours of game play. This might vary a little according to how completist you are with side quests, and according to which planet you tackle after Peragus and Telos, but it's easily double the length of game time compared to the original, and a substantial portion of the 40 hours it took me to complete the game. It's almost as if Obsidian are deliberately trying to alienate their target audience. If they are, then they did a rather good job of it, and no amount of pseudo-psychological questioning from Kreia about why you should desire to have one justifies this decision, either...

This isn't the only problem - having finally constructed your lightsaber, or been rewarded with one via a quest, upgrade crystals are then very scarce on the ground, hardly making it an advantage to equip one over a standard melee weapon, though at least one good tweak allows you to open some security doors with your lightsaber, Qui-Gon Jinn style.

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As you would expect from the minds that brought us Planescape: Torment, the tale told is one of darkness and moral ambiguity, with choices rarely being clear cut into Light and Dark. The script is excellent, and whilst the main quests themselves lack imagination, the sub-quests don't, with shades of grey being the order of the day, as you're called upon to ally yourself with unsavoury characters to complete quests. Characterisation is strong, but fairly limited for all but the principle cast. Unlike KotOR, where each crew member had their own sub-quest, KotOR 2 revolves almost completely around the protagonist and Kreia, a mysterious Jedi who takes it upon herself to be your mentor, and who becomes the first NPC to join your party. The other characters, such as the rogue Atton and bounty hunter Mira, are interesting enough characters, but you'll quickly run out of dialogue with them after they join your crew. There are more NPCs to choose from than in the original game, but a couple of the characters are rendered obsolete by the introduction of some of the later ones. Bao-Dur, the Zabrak Tech Specialist, is made useless by Mira's equivalently high skills and better combat abilities, and the Exchange (read: Star Mafia) droid, G0-T0 is entirely superfluous. At no point do you ever need to use him at all.

Another flaw is the storytelling method

Another flaw is the storytelling method. Returning to your ship (the Ebon Hawk, making a return appearance from the first game) triggers a cutscene that moves the plot forward, revealing tensions, treacheries and motives within the ship's crew. If you don't return to your ship enough, it's possible to miss a lot of these events, and despite the game's emphasis on actions not having clear-cut consequences (for example, giving a beggar money could simply make them a target to be robbed, instead of helping them), if you choose to walk a neutral path, not only do you miss out on being able to choose a Prestige Class, you also cannot complete a key sequence on the Sith world of Korriban. Several cutscenes also demonstrate worrying logic bugs. In an early conversation with Atton, you get to decide whether Darth Revan was male or female. There remains absolutely no consistency throughout the rest of the game, with some characters referring to Revan as "he" and others as "she."

Darth Sion (on the right) is one of the curiously underused major enemies

KotOR 2 has a surprisingly high level of bugs, despite the fact that the Odyssey engine used in both games hasn't had any noticeable graphical overhaul. These bugs really damage your enjoyment of the game, especially given that the game engine is well over a year old, and some of them weren't present in the prequel. This brings me to the most important part of my conclusions about the game.

Whilst it's fairly easy to forgive the slow start, and grin and bear the technical issues because of the quality of the script; the ending is unforgivably farcical, and is perhaps the single most unrewarding conclusion to a game in recent history. The manner in which the finale is executed is nothing short of laughable.

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