By Elias Dounis on January 2nd, 2005

What is the "Force?"
Bioware’s original Knights of the Old Republic presented Star Wars fans with an adventure that left them beckoning for more. The game dove into the mythos of the "Force" unlike any game had before it, bringing back the spirituality of the original films and successfully explaining what the Force is and how it functions. The Sith Lords expands on this concept yet also attacks the issues of what differs the Jedi from the Sith and the many varying philosophies and teachings of the Force.

The game’s plot is lightyears ahead of most role-playing games available on the market today. It’s much darker than the first game, closely tied to the extermination of the Jedi and the events of its predecessor, concerning the Sith known as Revan and Malak. Unfortunately, a plot twist like that found in the first game, which is comparable to Vader’s "No, I am your father!" revelation in The Empire Strikes Back, does not exist in The Sith Lords. Something that extreme and shocking can only happen every so often and still manage to be believable. Although, this does not mean the The Sith Lords’ plot isn’t as good as the first. In fact, it’s actually more to my liking than the original simply because it delves deeper into the philosophical aspects of the religion.

Choose Your Identity
Most RPGs like to feature a silent protagonist whose actions are dictated by scripted events. Thanks to the many choices given to players in The Sith Lords, as well as its predecessor, the game’s protagonist actually feels like he has an identity; an identity created by the player. As a result it’s hard to dislike the character you play as since you yourself dictate his or her actions.

Just like its predecessor, The Sith Lords allows players to create their own character at the beginning of the adventure. You can adjust choose their class type in a MMORPG fashion and gender, however, there’s still much more to be desired in this character creation process, because I personally find it odd that I just so happened to create a character that looked exactly like one featured in one of the game’s trailers.

When creating a character you’ll have to distribute a number of attribute and skill points to give your character a further uniqueness in terms of what he or she can do and how well they can do it. Areas such as strength, charisma, intelligence, and constitution are applicable in one area while in the skills area you can distribute points in other areas such as computer use, demolitions, stealth, awareness, persuasion, repair, security and treat injury. Interestingly, some of the Jedi classes available for the choosing when creating a character are more skilled in certain areas than another selectable class. However, this basically means that for them certain areas such as demolitions or computer use take less attribute points to increase a skill level whenever a character levels up. So when attempting to unlock a container or slice into a computer terminal, it’s wise to create your character so that his or her strengths in these areas prove to be most useful for you. Of course, you could rely on the colleagues you bring along with you to get passed such obstacles, but its always best to be able to do things solo.

Choose Your Fate
What makes both Knights of the Old Republic games so unique compared to most RPGs are the amount of choices given to players. These games give players the choice of following the path of the light or dark sides of the Force, which essentially means you can choose to be good or evil. Pursuing the light path, the true path of a Jedi, is to live in sacrifice, thus making that path a bit harder to pursue as opposed to that of the dark side.

As Yoda once said, the dark side is the "quick and easy path" and this is true for the most part in regards to The Sith Lords. Let’s say you wanted a certain item from a merchant, you could attempt to barter with him and pay a large sum of credits, but that takes too much time and effort. If you wanted to, you could threaten to kill him or use your Force power of persuasion to immediately get what you want. These types of decisions are tossed towards players at practically every scenario in the game and most of these choices are opened to players through the many branching conversations held in the game.

Because of these large numbers of choices, each time a player goes through the game the experience may vary greatly depending on how players want their character to conduct him or herself. This adds an incredible amount of appeal to an already lengthy adventure.

I would also like to mention that the side quests in The Sith Lords don’t seem to be as interesting as those found in the original. I remember spending many hours attempting to get a through a trial in the first KotOR to prove a man’s innocence and unfortunately there isn’t any kind of side quest in the game that forces players to put that much time and effort into.

Under the Influence
There haven’t been too many additions to The Sith Lords to truly make it feel different than its predecessor. Although, this is not to say that there haven’t been some significant new gameplay additions that improve some aspects of gameplay. The most significant new addition is the ability to gain and lose the influence of your party members.

In the first game, the only two characters that you seemed to argue with were Carth in Bastilla. Well, Obsidian has taken this aspect an expanded on it so that during the adventure certain characters will grow closer to you the more you get to know them and understand their hardships and philosophies. So in essence, these characters become more comfortable with your character, thus gaining their "influence." The more influence you gain by appropriately steering a conversation in the right direction, the even more you learn about a character. Now, do players have to pursue this aspect of gameplay? No, they don’t, however, it truly is one of the more interesting features the game has because it opens up new territory. For instance, you can even make certain characters in your party train in the ways of the force and have others tell your stories (which are shown to players with cutscenes). It’s without a doubt the best new gameplay addition made in this sequel.

"I’m falling asleep here!"
Once again, The Sith Lords features a battle system that is a mix of turn-based strategy and real-time combat. Ultimately, its hasn’t been tooled with much, although, the additions that have been made are welcome. The most notable additions to it are the fighting stances and lightsaber styles learned throughout the game. Each style learned can be used to benefit one’s self in battle against particular enemies and enemy groups. For example, a certain lightsaber style can be used to deflect blaster fire, while its relatively ineffective against lightsaber-wielding foes, and another lightsaber style that is meant for use against a single opponent is obviously not going to be too useful against multiple enemies. Because each style and stance has a positive and a negative effect, players must always take the battle situation into consideration.

What’s incredibly unfortunate is that the game’s battles aren’t fun at all. There are times when all you have to do is enter battle mode, leave the controller idle and multiple opponents will be easily killed by standard attacks that are performed automatically by your character. Perhaps if the game happened to offer some intelligent opponents then perhaps things could’ve worked out better, but there have been times when my strategy to winning a battle had been to run around in circles or around a tight corner, which eventually stops opponent dead in their tracks leaving them open for some easy hits. This is just one of the many examples which clearly shows the sloppiness of the game’s battle system and sure the Force powers given spice things up a bit, but its not like we haven’t seen it done before.

Where’s the effort?
One of the first things fans of the original KotOR will notice about The Sith Lords is that visually the game is identical to the first game. The character models, the game’s art style, even the game’s menus and load screens are exactly like those of Bioware’s original Star Wars RPG. The menus and load screens I don’t mind, however, I was never too fond of the character design in the first game and the art hasn’t improved since the locales in The Sith Lords are quite dull and somewhat lifeless compared to those of the first game. The Star Wars universe is filled with many colorful and unique worlds, it’s a shame that The Sith Lords doesn’t take complete advantage of the franchise.

In Bioware’s original Knights of the Old Republic many of the technical issues the game had didn’t seem to bother me much. The shaky frame-rate, the numerous bugs and glitches, the extremely long load

All of these comments are basically stating that the series needs to up its presentational values. While the cinematic aspect of the game has improved a bit with better looking FMV and in-game cut-scenes, I can’t help but frown upon some of the funny looking conversations held in the game. There have been many instances in which I’ve seen my main character experience, what seem to be, muscle spasms with hands flailing in the air while talking to an NPC, and even more times in which I’ve seen characters run in circles in the background, or not appear on screen when they themselves are talking. Now, that’s just not right.

Good Soundtrack
Almost every Star Wars videogame created samples the infamous orchestrated themes from legendary composer John Williams. Interestingly enough, Williams’ compositions aren’t featured in the game as prominently as they often are in other games. Instead, LucasArts and Obsidian have opted to include original compositions in the game that are incredibly well done, sounding just like a low key John Williams composition. One may argue that these themes aren’t too memorable, but they help set the moody and dark atmosphere of the game. Although, this excellent soundtrack is just one of the many commendable auditory aspects of the game.

The sound effects are as authentic as they could be, ripped straight from the sound archives of Ben Burtt’s original Star Wars effects. Additionally, the voice acting is as impressive as ever. The game features hours upon hours of dialogue for multiple characters all of which are played out flawlessly by the game’s voice actors. Simply put, The Sith Lords showcases some of the best voice acting ever featured in a videogame, a commendable trait that is fueled by believable dialogue.

A Bit Disappointed in the End
Putting all of this into a nutshell isn’t too difficult at all. KotOR II is the same game as the first with a new, darker story. That alone may be enough to satisfy the needs of a few gamers, but for others it’s nowhere near what is desired from a true sequel. A sequel should improve on the faults of the first and The Sith Lords doesn’t attempt to improve anything and in the end feels a lot like a typical Electronic Arts rehash. Even worse is the fact that due to a lack of real difficulty the game can be a bore; its battle system doesn’t really involve much strategy. With that said, it seems that a true real-time battle system similar to Nintendo’s 3d Legend of Zelda games would be more fitting for the next game. Although, the appeal of talking to incredible amounts of NPCs, exploring new worlds and completing all sorts of side missions still makes the game incredibly enjoyable. The Sith Lords is a good second act, but it’s no Empire Strikes Back.