STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II - The Sith Lords™ Reviews

I reference this game every third conversation in my daily life. It is both a master class in how to write philosophical, morally challenging characters and making a game worth playing despite being unfinished. It being unfinished can be somewhat mitigated by mods, but i've always found it to still be superior in its unfinished form. I replay KOTOR 1 more often, but i think about KOTOR 2 more often. KOTOR 1 is a very complete "Star Wars Experience", but KOTOR 2 is what Rian Johnson wanted to make with The Last Jedi. It challenges every convention of the Star Wars universe and things held sacred. This opinion is an old one for anyone that grew up with the pre-Disney Old Canon of Star Wars, but might be new for younger fans. Kreia is probably one of the best examples of an anti-villain that i can think of in fiction. Obsidian is a developer that I follow often for their dialogue and philosophical musings and consider many of their games to be among my favorite RPGS.

oldschool masterpiece,, story is awesome,, 10/10

pretty good dark side is comical levels of evil it's fun light side is just being a space mormon

The best star wars RPG hands down. Get the Restoration mod in the workshop to help make it stable. I promise you wont regret it. (DONT GO TO THE DROID PLANET NOT WORTH IT). Other than that, the voice acting, writing...PEAK. GAME IS GOLD

One of the greatest RPGs ever made. Great story, greater characters.

The Odyssey Engine is the most janky and tedious experience in RPG gaming history. If you queue an action at range from an enemy (for instance, "Use a medpac") sometimes your character will walk into the enemy mob, attack and then use a medpac. There's also an issue with how combat turns are balanced...sometimes the game will spawn six or eight enemies in front of you after a cutscene. The game will give you control back and twelve to thirteen floating point numbers will tell you that you've been hit 6 times before you could queue in one action. These "front-facing, post-cutscene skirmishes" are some of the worst battles, because sometimes you'll be 'debuffed' from standing around chatting or lose positional advantages from being teleported to where the cutscene wants you to stand. Now...the pause system at play in the Odyssey engine does allow you execute your personal strategies most of the time, but basic things like movement commands, pathing and target selection are geared towards the player using a controller. That is to say: issuing and positioning your characters is absolutely pointless and thus a big part of the RPG combat experience in the KOTOR games is non-existent. Most of the time in tough fights you either need to be completely overpowered for the encounters in question or run away and kite enemies with one character. It's not a lot of fun, to say the least... The first game has all these exact same problems, but it also has the added bonus of an extremely overrated and generic redemption story at its heart. I've never been interested in replaying the first KOTOR game after all these years. In fact, sometimes I'm convinced the only reason people are Star Wars fans is because they want to chop up their parents with swords or something; KOTOR 1 reads exactly like that kind of fantasy put to work. Fandom fantasies aside though, both games also have a huge problem with really generic environments and a lot of boring-ass fetch quests. On the plus side: this sequel has a much, much, much, much, much, much... MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH... ...more interesting narrative involving a Jedi Master named "Kreia", who is not a mysterious wizard with a plot twist under her robe; rather, she is a cantankerous teacher who will unceremoniously boot you out of her classroom after lecturing you. It actually pains me to state this, but the story in KOTOR 2 is good enough to make you forgive the Odyssey Engine for all its flaws. Whereas the first Knights of the Old Republic is (for better or worse) a Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker simulator, this second game actually carries a strange philosophical tension throughout the story. The writing in The Sith Lords can be obtuse, but once you grasp the picture Obsidian (in this case Chris Avellone) is trying to paint, a lot of past conversations and interactions you had in the first hours of the game gain an added depth. Personally, I think Pillars of Eternity or New Vegas are Obsidian's greatest works, but the narrative threads about reincarnation, conflict and cooperation are all here in KOTOR 2. It's really too bad the combat in The Sith Lords is so dated...and that fans seem more interested in a remake of the first game instead of continuing the story. Despite all its insanely frustrating gameplay flaws, KOTOR 2 really deserves more attention within the Star Wars canon.

Arguably one of the best classic rpgs of all time, and THE best Star Wars rpg ever released, KOTOR 2 is the only place you'll be ever to fulfill your Jedi/Sith powerful fantasy, or fall somewhere in between. Set during the High Republic, mercifully thousands of years before any Skywalker graced the galaxy, you create your character forge your own path through different planets, factions, and alliances to bring your version of order to the galaxy.

Probably the best single player Star Wars RPG out there in my opinion. Mandatory game for any lover of Star Wars or RPG's in general. There are few games that do player-character interaction as well as KOTOR, making the characters on your team memorable even years later. Iconic. Make sure you also pick up the "Sith Lords Restored Content Mod", which really improves the game further by re-adding previously cut content due to time limitations in development.

This is a good game. But UI and gameplay has not aged so well. It is fun but slow paced. Characters and story are still holding up very well. Some fights are insanely hard.

Finally got around to finishing this when Nar Shaddaa caused massive burnout on me, this was a really interesting game with a great deconstruction on the whole belief system of the setting. The Restored Content Mod can't fix some of the issues it has. Any time a conversation is happening? Most interesting time ever. The gameplay? Obviously not very engaging but it was fun getting force powers that just crowd control the hell out of everything, and the stances are a neat idea too. Some of the dungeons or extended sequences in this game could be very long and draining where I feel this type of combat is better suited for minimal encounters that are more difficult. I played on easy but I never really saw much vision for speccing into stuff like stealth or demolitions either. Gonna look into what I didn't see as a result of my playthrough. I appreciate the variety of cast members on display and the number of them, but doing Nar Shaddaa as one of the last things made getting 2 party members there a very odd experience without much time to get to know them at all. The structure of the game also made switching party members infrequent. And with the amount of variety sections or moments where you're locked out/very far away from your ship, the encouragement to swap members was also bare. Maybe I missed something but also not much content behind a fair few of them either? They're all a lot more interesting than you'd expect though. Namely (and obviously), Kreia. A mouthpiece of the writers for both critique of you as a player and the concept of the force and cultures around it (boy does it not hold back on either, frustratingly so at times for the player lol). At times it can feel like she's seesawing to be contrarian but hey. The return to Dantooine scene at the academy might be of my favourite game story reveals ever, amazing directing usage of Bioware's Odyssey Engine on top of the themes surrounding your characters nature. 11/10 emotional reaction from me. I wish the game got the time it deserved in development and that it was the standard of writing in SW.