[h1] Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords[/h1]
I’ve been trying to expand my horizons recently in gaming, which means playing genres I don’t typically like. This might seem counter intuitive at first, especially for someone who writes reviews. Why play something you’re not going to like? To be clear, I don’t play games I don’t like to be miserable for a few hours a day or just as an excuse to complain online, but to broaden my understanding of video games as a whole. Through this you’ve probably gathered that I didn’t care for KOTOR II, yet, despite this, I still recognise it as a good game. I did come to a new realization on a game genre I didn’t fully understand, which is why it’s worth exploring and diving into why exactly this game didn’t click with me.
[h3]Overview:[/h3]
You play as a Jedi knight who, after fighting in a terrible war against the wishes of the Jedi council, is exiled and cut off from the Force. After the war, the Jedi council and the Republic you fought so hard to protect are plunged into a civil war. With the Republic on the brink of collapse and the Jedi all but wiped out, a new threat rises from the ashes. A resurgent Sith menace seeks to destroy what few remaining Jedi are left. It is up to you to reconnect with the Force and stop the Sith before they snuff out the Jedi entirely. You can follow the path of the light and earn your place amongst the Jedi knights once again, or turn to the dark side and use its power to destroy the Sith.
[h3]Gameplay:[/h3]
Combat is the main gameplay loop of KOTOR II, or at least it kind of is. See, you don’t exactly fight each battle yourself as much as you watch the battle unfold. When you click on an enemy you are locked into combat where your and the enemy take turns attacking each other. Whether these attacks hit or miss are based on dice rolls.
As you play you level up your character through stats, such as dexterity and strength, and attributes, like weapon proficiency. These all affect your dice rolls, allowing for more damage each hit or do more hits per turn, with a long list of other specialities and modifiers (poison, bleed, etc) that can be tweaked to further affect each encounter.
At first I hated this system. Having a combat system based around random dice rolls, with no avenue for strategic placement or tactical skill, felt terrible to slog through. So often I’d fight a battle and lose, only to go back to the same fight and win through no change in my approach. I spent the first half of the game, by no exaggeration, mostly shooting the floor. So I tried to adapt and changed to a lightsaber, based on the rather childish notion that if I was closer to the enemy I’d hit more. I did not. As it turns out, you can’t just choose what looks the most fun because building your character incorrectly will basically cripple you in the long run. A game whose combat relied on chance, with little to no player agency, and a leveling system that can hurt you if you try to express yourself seemed antithetical to the interactive medium as a whole, and I was going to write this game off as a failure.
After I had finished the game I had a fellow reviewer, Quouar, look over my work, and they made me realise I had approached this game all wrong. I tried to go into this game with the understanding it was an older title, yet I still brought many pre-conceived notions of modern RPGs with me. Leveling your character however you want and expecting them to work isn’t the point of the game, it’s not a one size fits all. KOTOR II is about specializing, and making specific character builds, through each of your companions, to take on various potential threats. These specializations ensure your characters are combat efficient and turn the chaos that is the random dice rolls on its head, you’re supposed to manipulate the dice rolls in your favor.
To be very clear, I still hate this system, but I recognise that the gameplay isn’t technically bad, it’s just not for me. Despite my misgivings, the gameplay does function. It’s certainly janky in areas, but for what it is trying to accomplish it gets the job done. If the idea of specialising characters statistics interests you, you’ll probably have a good time. This is, of course, only half the pie; if this was all the game had to offer I’d probably be a lot harsher. Where the game really shines, and perhaps the saving grace, is its fantastic writing.
[h3]Story and Writing:[/h3]
There are so many nuances to the complexity and execution of the game's storytelling it is impossible to do it justice through the text limit of a Steam review. So I’ll focus on two major aspects I think it absolutely nails; how it grounds the universe in real world issues and how it challenges your pre-conceived notions on the ethics of war.
KOTOR II makes the limited physical setting you play in feel like a living, breathing world. Hampered by the technology of the time, with an engine that was outdated even by 2005 standards, entire planets can be represented by maybe three areas and a handful of NPCs. Yet the depth given to the world through its lore and its dialogue make each space feel far larger and really lived in. This is in no small part thanks to how it grounds the universe in real world problems.
This is not the Star Wars story of heroics or whimsy we see in the movies. It's the story of people trying to piece their lives back together after years of devastating war and destruction. It’s about rebuilding bombed out homes, taking in thousands of displaced refugees, the logistics of overseeing a colony on the outer rim of the galaxy backed by a Republic on the brink of collapse, political intrigue, instability, rebellions and civil war. This adds so many layers to the universe, where morality falls into a kind of grey area. This adds a lot of weight to your choices, forcing you to weigh in on your actual moral framework rather than just choosing the good guys or the bad guys.
It also deeply affects your character arc, where the real conflict is within. It’s never directly stated what you did in the Mandalorian wars, but it implies some terrible decisions were made to decisively end the war. It directly questions your morals. It poses the question, “do the ends justify the means?” At first the answer seems obvious, is it your moral and ethical duty to stop an army from killing millions of people if you have the power to do so? Yet the game continuously challenges this idea, dissecting it to its core principles without ever giving a decisive answer. There is no dancing around it, no middle ground or good guy path, the definitive answer is what you decide based on your beliefs, and you have to live with that decision come what may. It makes your choices so much more meaningful. It’s been a while since I had to step away from my computer to weigh the moral implications of my choices.
[h3]Conclusion:[/h3]
KOTOR II is, what I might call, a flawed experience through no real fault of its own. The writing is phenomenal, and more or less, carries the game over the finish line of a recommendation. With a gameplay loop centered around specialization, though hampered by a lack of player agency, it still delivers an experience worth having. Despite its age it still holds up fairly well as a CRPG.
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