Okay, so I bought KotOR 2 on Friday morning (and finished it Sunday afternoon,
which alone should make you worry, but more of that in a moment). First off, I'd
like to say that the original KotOR has to be one of the best games that I've
EVER played. If I had to give it a rating, it'd probably score about a 97%. The
3% that it lost was ironically due to something that was over-compensated for in
KotOR2. The characters were engaging and interesting, as were their personal
side-quests (and the back-story required to GET to the side-quest was extremely
good character development), and the quests themselves were well-thought out and
gave a sense of depth to the game. The storyline was absolutely superb - it was
more like playing an interactive movie of Empire Strikes Back quality rather
than a game.

So. As one might expect, I had high-hopes for KotOR2. I was especially excited
when Gamespot reviewed the Xbox version back in Decemeber and gave it a 9.3. The
fans gave it a 9.5. "Surely Gamespot and a few thousand fans can't be wrong!" I
cried. How wrong I was.

This game has made me bitter about the Star Wars game franchise. Everyone has
claimed that it was going to shit for years, but despite that, I actually liked
games like Rogue Squadron and its sequel. Jedi Knight 2 was a fantastic game.
Jedi Academy was OK, though I did have a few gripes with it, but it was still
satisfying. In a single game, I have nearly had my faith in SW games destroyed
(I say nearly, because Republic Commando is released next month, and the demo to
that was VERY fun, and I'm looking to RC to redeem the franchise). So...onto the
actual reason for the gripes instead of a general, wishy-washy rant.

Now. I got the KotOR section out of the way at the top. For the rest of the
review, I'm going to try to refrain from comparison, because I realise that it's
not really fair. Thus, I will try to keep KotOR2 as a separate entity in my
mind.

First point: The storyline. Skip the rough rundown if you don't want to actually
read this - the points will be discussed below anyway.
**Minor Spoilers alert**
The basic storyline is as follows. At the beginning of the game, you're adrift
on the (badly damaged) Ebon Hawk. T3 repairs the ship and you float to Peragus.
You wake up there and meet a mysterious woman called Kreia. After you level-up
for the first time, she talks to you through the Force and says that your
Force-bond is being rekindled. So. Your character is apparently a Jedi who lost
his Force-connection. Fair enough. You spend about 2 hours wandering Peragus,
meet up with Atton Rand, a Han-Solo type character, and after FAR too much time,
escape. In this time, Kreia has a showdown with a dodgy looking character called
Darth Sion, who apparently was her former-apprentice, who then proceeds to lop
off her hand. You all get on the Ebon Hawk and head to Telos due to limited
hyperspace routes or some other such nonsense. You wander round, meet Bao-Dur
(who knows your character from the Mandalorian wars - you were apparently a
General), who chats to you about the horrific battle at Malachor V, though he
never goes into what actually happens. Then you meet up with a woman called
Atris, who comes out of nowhere, who you find out is one of the Jedi that exiled
you when you came back from the Mandalorian war. She tells you to go look for
other Jedi and you set off to quest across the galaxy. After finding all the
Jedi, they come back to Dantooine.
***MAJOR SPOILERS***
When on Dantooine, the Jedi Masters (who individually were supportive of you)
decide to strip you of the Force. Kreia intervenes and slaughters them all. Then
she buggers off to Telos. You follow her, and when you get there, she's gone,
but Darth Nihilus (who at this point you've only seen in one cutscene) turns up.
You kill him, blow up his ship, and follow Kreia to Malachor V. You fight your
way through a Sith Academy, kill Darth Sion (who up until now you've seen in 2
cutscenes and fought once), then kill Darth Trayus in a very anticlimatic
battle.
***END SPOILERS***

Now. If you took the time to read this (or have played the game), you'll see
straight away what I'm talking about when I say "What the FUCK just happened?".
The plot simply isn't coherant - you spend most of the game wandering endlessly,
then kill 3 Sith Lords in VERY anti-climatic battles, and even better, only ONE
of the Sith Lords is even important to the storyline. And it's not even the one
featured prominantly in every promotional picture - that dude is a minor
character! I suppose I'll have to be a little more specific though, so here's
the main points:


Character History
Your character is NEVER fully explained. He was a Jedi who went with Revan to
fight the Mandalorians. At Malachor V (the decisive battle), he witnessed so
much death and destruction that he tuned the Force out, because it hurt too much
to listen to so much pain. He returned to the Jedi Council to answer for
disobeying them, and they exile him. He wanders the galaxy for a bit, and then
for some reason that's never explained, the Republic wants him. The ship he's on
is attacked, but he escapes unconscious in the Ebon Hawk, which also turns up
for some reason that's never explained. Then he reforges his connection to the
Force, and sets out to save or destroy the galaxy.

This is probably the most coherant bit of storyline (which is saying something).
The only bits that really ticked me off were the Ebon Hawk showing up for no
apparent reason, and what ACTUALLY happened at Malachor V. Lots of characters
say things along the lines of "Yeah, Malachor V...that was nasty. Sooo...another
subject...". The lack of explaination of just WHAT happened there is really
annoying.

Kreia
***MAJOR SPOILERS WARNING***
Now. This is undoubtedly the worst bit of storyline EVER. You find out early on
that Kreia is Darth Sion's original Master. Now. Darth Sion is a Sith Lord. He
is not a fallen Jedi, he was trained as a Sith. So...what does that say about
Kreia? Combine this with the fact that any time you gain influence with Kreia
you also get Dark Side points, and really...what side of the Force do you think
that Kreia is REALLY on?
***MAJOR SPOILER END***

All The Other Characters
Have absolutely no personality. At all. You get tiny, tiny glimpses of
back-story by talking to them, though I got absolutely NO backstory EVER from
Bao-Dur after him saying that he served on Malachor V. Atton only gets
back-story if you talk to him on Nar Shaddaa after being approached by 2
Twi'lek, and only if you have Atton in your party. Visas tells you that her
planet was destroyed and that her master told her to find you. Mandalore says
that the Jedi were good opponents in the Mandalorian wars. T3 isn't
comprehensable, as he talks in deet-deets. HK-47 explains about the HK-50 series
of droids and makes some veiled comments about his former masters. I never
actually got enough influence with him to get him to talk about anything,
though, and I exhausted every possible dialogue option that I had. Handmaiden
actually has some back-story (hurrah!), but it's all dispensed with very quickly
and then you get nothing more at all.

In short, your characters are NEVER developed, at all.

The Random Events (AKA, Why Am I Doing This?)
The main problem with the storyline is that you never get any reason for why
you're doing things. Why do you need to reassemble the Jedi Council? They've
gone into hiding for a reason - why the HELL are you trying to pull them out of
hiding? Isn't that helping the Sith? And when you find them, they all turn out
to be right bastards. Individually they try to help you, but as soon as they're
reassembled, it's "Nope, we want to strip you of the Force again". Why? There's
some absolute shite about your character being a "wound in the Force" which is
why he must be stripped of his power, and that's supposed to be why you're
special, but it's never actually explained.

The game is sub-titled The Sith Lords, and yet they don't feature in the
storyline. There's some stuff about Sion being evil, and Nihilus wiping out a
planet of Force-sensitives, but it's in the past...it isn't really relevant to
the storyline. You see Nihilus in one cut-scene. ONE. Sion features in 2 and you
fight him early on, but at least he has some connection through Kreia. Nihilus
sends his apprentice after you, but she likes you. Then he shows up and you have
to kill him. Just for being him. It makes no SENSE. I said I wouldn't compare to
KotOR, but in one way I'm going to. You KNEW that Malak was bad. It was
repeatedly shown that he was bad. He razed Telos to get to you. He tried to kill
his own master. He wants to rule the galaxy. Nihilus/Sion just don't have
purpose. They lack focus, and this translates to the game.

OKAY! That's the storyline dealt with. Now these are all the problems I have
with the actual mechanics of the game:

The Totally Random Item Generator (TM) was a good idea in theory. The missing 3%
from KotOR 1? It was because every drop was pre-determined. It killed the replay
value when you knew where every good item in the game was. However, KotOR 2
fucked up royally with it. What SHOULD have been done was 50% pre-determined
drops and 50% random drops. This allows you to put really good items in
out-of-the-way places that're hard to get to that are rewards. Instead, there
were random. Every last one seemed to be random. And that led to me breaking
into an ancient box in a Sith-tomb that was quite out of the way and getting a
green and a yellow lightsaber crystal. Ironically, I NEVER had enough
lightsabers to use all my crystals, because only 5 lightsabers dropped in the
entire game (you make your own, and Visas comes with one). Given that 3 of the
lightsabers dropped were short-lightsaber (off-hand weapons, not very good as a
main weapon), and I had 5 Jedi characters, a ratio of 4 lightsabers to 5
characters isn't exactly ideal. On an additional note, though I had PLENTY of
armour, I found about 7 robes in the entire game, 3 of which were padawan robes
(basically useless). As you can see, the random drop idea wasn't well
implemented.


Swoop racing is broken on the PC version. It's that simple: Starting a race
moves my swoop so far above the track that I can't use the boosters till I crash
and land on the track again, and even if by some miracle I manage to build up
enough speed to beat the track record, I'm told at the end of every race that I
took too long.

The game looks ugly. It uses the same engine as the original game, but the
original made the environments pretty. The original Telos looked lovely, and
Manaan was a really well-made planet. It doesn't compare with boxy Nar Shaddaa
and smallest-capital-city-in-the-world Iziz...they just look shabby next to the
tall towers and large areas from the previous game.

Korriban was far, far too short. It's possible to complete the planet in about
10 minutes if you don't bother with an optional side-quest. I suppose this is
really a problem throughout the game - it only took me 26 hours to complete, as
opposed to the 43 hours the original took. 26 hours of gameplay for an RPG is
really sub-par nowadays (hell...NWN took me about 70 hours to complete).

There was a bug in the game where framerates in open areas on Dantooine and
Malachor V would drop to about 5fps, which could only be resolved by alt-tabbing
out and then in (which then crashed the game if you exited the area), or
changing one of the advanced graphics settings. Saving would then bring the
problem back, and auto-saving when leaving the area would cause a crash. This
really, REALLY pissed me off after a while.

Balance was absolutely shite. My L16 Jedi Guardian/L10 Jedi Weaponmaster could
kill just about anything in the game in one hit when he had Master Speed on. The
Sith Lords took about 20 rounds between ALL 3 of them. This really sapped the
last of the fun from the game.

Now...I've pretty much torn the game apart, but it wasn't all bad. The weapon
upgrade system was very, very good this time (though the addition of 3 new
lightsaber slots to stick damage-boosting goodies in was probably the cause of
the lack of balance), as was the construction system. Some of the dialogue was
VERY amusing. And at the end of the game, one of the Sith Lords tells you what's
going to happen in the future, and when you ask about the mandalorians, the
reply is something along the lines of, "Despite Mandalore's efforts, the
Mandalorians are going to die slowly over millenia until all that remains is the
shell of their armour on the shell of a man, who is easily dispatched by the
Jedi". That made me grin.

Overall, though. I'm disappointed. I hope that Republic Commando is going to
make me like SW games again, or else I fear I won't be buying KotOR 3.