Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Xbox, 2004)

Unlike the first installment, I'm amazed at how easy it was this time around, save the last Boss battle (which is actually cake once you figure out the weakness). I'm happy to say that the characters are a little more diverse this time. If you read my last review on KotOR, you'd know that I had a problem with the rehashed character models. But that's not to say I didn't run into any of these clones, just less this time. And not to mention I could finally pick a Jedi with a beard!
Speaking of easy, I couldn't believe how ridiculously easy the enemies like Dark Jedi, Elite Sith and Bounty Hunters were. And ironically enough, the Boss's were even bigger push overs. Take Darth Nihilus, you know him as that scary masked guy on the box art, well right from the start he's portrayed as this unstoppable planet killer who gobbles up Jedi like fresh popcorn. Not so, if I spent 90 seconds on him that was a lot.

Another issue was the frame rate. It fluctuated more than the emotions of a pregnant woman in her 2nd trimester. This happend as more enemies cluttered the screen. On a number of occasions it got so bad my game literally turned into a slide show making it impossible to coordinate any attacks until some of the bad guys died off. This is a big "no-no" for console games, considering the hardware is built-in and not upgradeable like a PC. There were still a number of issues still not fully addressed from the previous game. One was the leveling up of light/dark force points, again if you fill the meter, that was pretty much it. There was no real incentive to keep on doing the good or bad you were doing, well there was a "light + con" bonus I got, but it was negligible.

Another pet pieve was the gratuitously awkward menu screens. It was such a chore sifting through it all. For example when you try to upgrade your characters equipment on the workbench, you couldn't tell who had what and which would best fit them next, all it showed was if it was equipped or not. You'd have to exit the workbench and go back through the character menu's, with their 11 different slots (It stopped being fun when I had 10 party members to work with). It was unnecessary trial and error BS I never want to do again. Remember the dumb swoop bike races? Their back, only now with moving obstacles...that explode! Yippie. This time I chose not to even bother. They also left out that pointless Ebon Hawk gun turret mini-game *mouths the words*-"Thank God!" And you know what, I think I had a better gaming experience because of it.

Lastly was the convoluted story integration from the previous KotOR. Through out the game your given scattered insight of our last character Revan which almost never fit the way we remembered him...uh...her. See, thats the problem. The developer couldn't make up their minds. At various points in the game Revan is referred to by many NPC's as a "she" and later again a "he". And if that wasn't bad enough, some NPC's commented on the things I never did on different worlds. Once I was told how Revan went into Adjunta Palls tomb on Korriban quelling the Jedi spirit for his sword. Thing is, I was never able to get into that Tomb for some reason, the door was always locked despite any of my characters security skills, I made many trips to Korriban right up til the end of the game trying to unlock it, no dice. Over all KotoR2 was a great game despite its flaws. As long as you're a fan of movie and game, you'll be happy.

Now, i've been playing the XBOX for a few years now, and i've played a lot of games. But I have never come across a game that it is so easy to get lost in. This game is great fun from start to finish. I played the first game and thought that it couldn't possibly get better than that. Boy was I wrong. In both games, actions your character performs, or things they say influence their alignment (as in light or dark side). This adds a new challenge to the game and makes for better gameplay. But, in the second game, you are not limited to just the light or dark side, but your character can gain a "prestige class". Not only can you be on the light or dark side, but your character can have a specialized class. They can be a Sith or a Jedi. Each prestige class has special benefits, including force powers limited to that particular class. Another great addition is influence. In the game, you affect the alignment(light or dark) of your companions, in addition to yourself. While all of this is cool, there is one little negative to this game. If you play this game, it will become obvious that Lucasarts rushed to get this game on the market. There are a lot of bugs in the game. None are really serious, except a few that may corrupt the file(allow it to no longer be played). My favorite factor of the game is the story line and wisdom that can be applied to everyday life. You don't have to be really into Star Wars to see the wisdom there is in what many of the characters say. I will leave you now with this quote from one of the characters in the game: "It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it."

First thing I like about it is that it has very good re-playability. It is very fun to play and a very long game. That is of course if you pay attention to side quests and character quests. I love how you can make most of your characters into jedi and I also like how the characters follow you be it dark or light. I think the only thing people really get annoyed with is that you have to be very careful what you say to your party members and what you say to others when your party members are around since they obviously will disagree with you on things and that will make you lose points with them which in return makes them incapable to become jedi since you have to have them respecting/liking you a lot in order to turn them into jedi. My favorite character is by far the Handmaiden since she is By far one of the sexiest characters in the star wars franchise. She is also very useful in battle since she is an ecchani and I love the robe glitch on her since you can get infinite money by selling those robes (which is amazing and if your a noob at games then it may help you get enough health packs to last throughout the game; although I say beat the game once without cheating or glitching and then after you beat it once go crazy and cheat all you want you earned the right to cheat) anyway I recommend this game to anyone who likes star wars games or rpg's in general since this game is easy to adapt to and the storyline is darker than the 1st's which I personally like since I like a darker storyline better than a happy one. Well I also rather be sith then jedi since being good really has no rewards in games you have to sacrifice more than you gain which in my opinion isn't worth it. I also would like to say have fun and happy gaming to all those gamers out there and I hope that my review was at the very least a little bit helpful.

Oh yeah and to those who complain about not getting into "Adjunta Palls tomb on Korriban quelling the Jedi spirit for his sword"; you have to use that special fire grenade and put it in the dumb statue and it goes boom! wow how hard was that and before you complain about not knowing how to do something look up a guide since there are guides for noobs everywhere. Also another way to get in their is hitting the black button simultaneously near the statue to switch characters rapidly and one will glitch through the statue/pillar thing.

While I enjoyed this game for the PC, don't waste your time buying the Xbox version. This game doesn't play right on the Xbox360.

The biggest problem was the major problems with sound. At first it was just loud screeches like the speakers were messing up, it occurred every once in a while and I just tried to ignore it and go on with the game. But then the sound completely cut out and you're playing the game in absolute silence. The only sound I still had was when I would talk to another character.

There are also major glitches when fighting - the characters jerk around and it's almost impossible to control them. At times, using force powers will lock up the game, it's like there's too much going on and the Xbox can't handle it.

I've also read that there are major problems with saving and that ferquently characters get stuck in place and you can't move them, so you have to save and re-load. I do not know about these because after the above issues I experienced, I stopped playing. What fun is playing a game essentially on mute?

If you want this game, I highly recommend the PC verson. The game has major storyline holes (though it's still fun to play), but I never once had any technical problems - it always played perfectly.

KotOR 2 is a great game and all, but it's not quite as good as its predeccesor. The graphics are nearly exactly the same as the first, which came out like 5 years ago. Lame. It's almost a requirement these days that game sequels have better graphics. If you enjoyed the first KotOR then you should get it, though the store price is too high.

The main thing is that this game is too much like the first. The only 3 really noticable differences are: new story, your alignment and additude affects your allies, and the random items found. In the first game all of the monsters dropped the same things, and the boxes contained the same things. In this game most containers have totally random items in them, allowing you to get the most powerful stuff at the very beginning and also get nothing but garbage the entire game. Other than those 3 things the game is almost exactly the same.

WARNING: Do NOT beat this game as a dark side jedi first because the ending is comepletely unexplained and it's totally pointless trying to beat it if you haven't beat the game as a light side jedi first (I won't give away the light side ending, but as a dark side jedi you see yourself, then the camera zooms out until all you can see the planet you are on, and that's it, that's the ending, there's NOTHING else at all).

Over all it's a good game and is worth buying, but only if you enjoyed the first game and are hungry for more.