I said Hey Baby, Take A Walk On The Dark Side... (Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic II - Sith Lords (PC))

Member Name: CaptainD

Product:	Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic II - Sith Lords (PC)
Date:	25/10/07 (835 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Has most of the strengths of the first game, a few additions...

Disadvantages: ... the storyline isn't as good, some technical problems...

It is about 4,000 years before the events of the first Star Wars film, and 5 years after the events of the first Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) game. As usual the Jedi, guardians of the galaxy and all that, have managed to let themselves almost be wiped out entirely, and yes - it’s somehow all up to you to save things. No change there then…

You start the game unconscious and desperately in need of help, and in the prelude (I‘d advise skipping it unless you‘ve never played the first game) you control a droid trying the get the ship you’re on, the Ebon Hawk, to safety and a place where you can recover. However the Sith aren’t the only people interested in Jedi, there’s bounty hunters galore, and everyone seems to think you are the very last of the Jedi. The plot quickly thickens of course, and nothing is as it first appears - but then, is it ever?


Installation
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Like the first game, KOTOR 2 comes on 4 CD-ROMs. It takes a few minutes to install, and did so with no problems. I ran the in-game update straight away which took another couple of minutes. Again no problems with that. Initially the game ran fine but I soon ran into some problems… more on that later.


Interface
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The game is controlled using a combination of the mouse and keyboard. At first I kept expecting the character’s viewpoint to change when I moved the mouse, but the mouse actually is just to point and click on characters / objects (though if you have the cursor to the very edge of the screen it will swing the perspective that way). Character movement and rotation is controlled via the keyboard, which doesn’t take long to get used to and works fine once you convince your mind that moving the mouse doesn’t change the viewpoint!! Various commands are accessible via a keystroke or a menu accessed from the mouse. It really doesn’t take long to become very familiar with the main controls and it works very well, even though I haven‘t played the first game for ages.

You control up to three characters at a time, and through the game you can meet up to nine other playable characters in addition to your own character. Each of these has their own unique skills and abilities, as well as their own history to be discovered… Most of the time you can easily change the characters in your party, though at times they are unavailable until you complete a particular mission. At certain points in the game your party will be changed automatically depending on the situation.


Graphics
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The graphical style and indeed some of the locations will be familiar to fans of the first game. This is no bad thing as the graphics were very good anyway. If you have played the first game then a lot of the character models and environmental graphics are clearly unchanged. The only things that seem to have significantly improved (though this may be because I was not able to use a very high graphics level when playing the first game) are things like the effects when you use force powers, shields and the like. A lot of the indoor locations tend to be a bit repetitive and bland – where the graphics come into their own is in the outdoor locations, which really look great.

There are occasional glitches such as gaps appearing in objects and sometimes characters’ heads (usually when the perspective shifts to just above and behind the character) – certainly not frequently enough to interfere with the gameplay. The locations are nicely detailed and the many different locations are depicted with graphics unique to that area, along with a few standard pieces that appear in each one. Character movements appear quite smooth and realistic, while other effects such as lasers firing, explosions, automated computers etc all look very good. The only part where it really fails to impress is when characters are performing various tasks such as hacking the computers or portraying motions. Some tasks look realistic or unrealistic depending on exactly where your character is positioned. A fairly small complaint really though and sometimes funny, which helps to make up for it! Effects such as mist or close-up views of explosions can cause a lot of slow-down even if the game’s running at a nice speed otherwise.

The minimum resolution is 800x600, which doesn’t look too bad but if your graphics card can handle 1024x768 or higher it really makes a difference. There are plentiful options to get the best mix of aesthetics and performance, the most important of these being anti-aliasing and anthroscopic filtering. Even if you have these set on the lowest levels it makes a huge improvement over the appearance with neither of them activated. Each user will have to find their own best setting - change a few things at a time and see how the performance goes for a few minutes.


Sound
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As with most of the Star Wars franchise games, the voice acting is very good. I did find one or two of the main characters, including one of the main characters (the cranky old not-quite-Jedi you meet just after the start of the game) tended to be a little over the top. The music was pretty good too, though I tended to think it was a little weaker than other games in the series. As always it’s based upon music from the movies or variations of those themes. The ambient sound effects are almost always very good and add to the “being there” feeling quite a bit. At times the music or other sound effects at default level seriously interfered with being able to hear the characters talking – though as long as you have subtitles enabled you will be able to see what’s being said even if you can’t hear it.


Gameplay
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As you go through the game you follow a main storyline, but there are several ways you can go ahead in different situations and there are many optional side-quests. The number of different items available to find or buy – weapons, armour, upgrades, health items, permanent and temporary stat boosters, special items etc – is quite overwhelming. At the end of the day your playing style will largely determine how you decide to equip your party.

The dialogues can get a bit lengthy, though in truth you can skip most of it if you‘ve heard it before. When talking to your crew or others you might have opportunities to gain experience points or light / dark side points, as well as accepting missions or learning valuable information. Depending on your skill levels in various attributes – for instance awareness, intelligence, persuasion etc – new dialogue options may become available. Generally speaking there are several ways around each situation, but some things won’t be possible unless you have particular abilities or alignment. You can often, though not always, go back and try again later when you’ve enhanced your skills. You will definitely need to play the game at least twice to complete all / most of the quests in the game, especially as many quests are opposed to other quests in the same area (often the quests will be from opposing factions).


- The Force

As time goes by you and your companions gain power and abilities in the force. You can also go towards the light or dark side of the force depending on your actions. Your force powers can be light, dark or universal – when you are oriented towards the light side of the force your light side powers will increase in their effect whereas the dark side powers will decrease, and vice versa. Effectively three distinct ways to play the game – go on the light side, try to help everyone and be nice to everyone; go to the dark side, be evil to everyone and speak harshly to them; finally, try to maintain a middle ground and keep everyone more or less happy.

- Influence

Your choices and the way you speak to different crew members will affect your influence on them. High influence on a character makes them more likely to open up to you about their past, more loyal to you, and affects their force alignment in line with yours. This is an interesting addition and adds a certain extra depth to the game. Different characters respond well to different things, so being kind to everyone not necessarily the way to obtain everyone’s loyalty.

Character Progression
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There are several key ways to progress your characters as you level up (for lazy people there is an “Auto Level Up” button!).

- Attributes

How tough / dextrous / wise / charismatic etc your characters are. These stats affect all parts of the game to a certain extent.

- Skills

Do you want to be an expert in using / disarming demolitions? How about a skilled computer user, or a wizard at bypassing security systems? Maybe you want them to be very persuasive… These are the sort of choices you must make. As always, it’s a good idea to try to have a good balance of skills in your party.

- Feats

Many feats are automatically gained throughout the game, but there are also many you can choose from. Some of these increase your skill stats, others give you the ability to use particular weapon or armour classes, while still others give you particular skills that may be useful if you want to specialise in certain abilities.

- Powers

Ah, using the force, that’s what we all get the Star Wars games for in the first place, eh? These are spilt into light, dark, or universal powers. Some give you healing, some protection, some are offensive weapons, some are more general skills that might be useful both in and out of battle situations.


Mini-Games
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Manning the turrets – sometimes you’ll have to man the turrets of the Ebon Hawk to stop ground troops boarding or in space battles. One of the space battles seems practically impossible (or at least, I‘ve never managed it!), though I have a feeling it may be supposed to be impossible. Not a bad diversion from the main game.

Swoop Racing – A simple drag-race type game which seems a lot harder than in the first KOTOR. Quite fun but frustratingly difficult at times.

Pazaak – this is a card game similar to blackjack, you can win (or more likely lose) money wagering on the games, and some characters will only talk more or put up special items as wagers if you beat them once or several times. Relatively diverting but not exactly addictive.


Technical Details and Overall Verdict
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I had problems with the game not starting up properly on many occasions, which seems to be a regular problem for Vista users though its more to do with the graphics drivers than Vista itself. Hopefully in time this problem may diminish as newer drivers come out. (My graphics card is an nVidia GeForce 7500LE).

Despite the technical problems and a few other niggles, I really enjoyed playing Knight of the Old Republic 2. There’s a lot of depth and it genuinely is worth playing through the game twice or perhaps even three times, as the style you play it in affects your path through the game considerably. Completing it just once a mammoth task in terms of hours spent (I haven’t actually completed it yet but would say that 40-50 hours might be quite a conservative estimate). It has much the same look and feel as the first game – naturally enough as they use an almost identical game engine – and though the story wasn’t as good as the first game, it was still good enough to hold my interest most of the time.


Despite the problems with the game not starting and some niggles, I still really enjoyed the game, so I’ve given it 4 stars.


System Specifications
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DirectX 9.0c compatible computer.

OS: Windows 98 SE, Millennium (ME), 2000, and XP. (ran on Vista but with problems)

CPU:
Pentium III or Athlon class 1 GHz or faster required.
Pentium 4 or Athlon XP class 1.6 GHz or faster recommended.

Memory:
256 MB RAM required.
512 MB RAM recommended (ran on 1Gb RAM system)

Graphics Card:
32 MB OpenGL 1.4 compliant AGP or PCX 3D Graphics card with Hardware T&L Capability required.
ATI Radeon 9200 or NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti or better recommended.

Sound Card:
100DirectX 9.0c compatible audio device required.



Availability

Play.com - from £10.50
Amazon.co.uk - from £6.49

Unfortunately the above are being sold on the Marketplace second hand. It’s difficult to get a new copy of the game anymore as it was after all released in 2005.

Summary: KOTOR 2 has its problems but if you can get past them, it's a very good game.