Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Genre: RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: There are multiple Star Wars bundles on Nintendo Switch. If you want a breakdown of which bundles contain which games, please check this page.)

After the success of Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic in 2003, developer Bioware passed the reins over to Obsidian to develop the game’s sequel, releasing in 2004 on Xbox, then ported to PC in 2005, on mobile devices in 2020, then on Nintendo Switch in 2022. This released upscales the visuals, and was supposed to receive a “Restored Content” DLC that ultimately got canceled, but overall this is largely the same game that came out two decades ago.

Being roughly two decades old, one would expect this game to have aged somewhat, and it definitely looks dated in some respects, but in others it has held up fairly well. The resolution and textures have gotten an upgrade here, though sadly the framerates still drop noticeably in some areas. Furthermore, the low-poly 3D character models, sparse environments, and clunky animation definitely mark this as an older game.

The sound here fares much better. Not only do you have an excellent soundtrack from Mark Griskey that does a good job building something unique that still fits with John Williams’ film scores, but every character in the game is fully-voiced. Also, I should note that if you’re getting the digital version of the game, all that music and voicework comes at a cost, making this game take up nearly 16GB of space on your memory card.

Taking place a few years after its predecessor, Knights of the Old Republic II once again takes place thousands of years before any of the films, before Anakin and Luke Skywalker’s stories, before the Galactic Empire… while players will see familiar races and locations, both the characters and the struggle for power in the galaxy are completely removed from anything set outside of the Knights of the Old Republic series.

After the events of the previous game, the conflict escalated into a Jedi civil war, with the sith nearly wiping out all of the Jedi, with your player-created character being one of the sole survivors, hunted down by multiple powerful sith lords. You begin the game in a wreck of a ship trying to escape the clutches of the sith influence, as well as those looking to get rich off of a bounty placed on your head, and you must make allies and ultimately find a way to confront your hunters.

Once again, the light side/dark side system returns, as well as the Dungeons and Dragons-esque mechanics dictating combat and other facets of the game’s world (with mixed results, in my opinion), once again the game’s story is fairly linear with restrictive environments and sometimes vague quests to complete, and the camera isn’t any better than the first game’s either. In other words, this game plays pretty much just like the prior game, with all of that game’s positive and negative qualities.

When it was first released, it was generally agreed that Knights of the Old Republic II was a good follow-up to the prior game, but not quite as good. In this, I have to agree. Not only does this game not feel as fresh as the first, but I like the story and characters less too. It’s still good, and players who loved the original game should absolutely follow it up by playing this one. But those who haven’t played either are far better off starting with the original.

tl;dr – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II is a decent port of the classic RPG. Both the graphics and the gameplay have aged poorly in some areas, but much of what made this game great nearly two decades ago still remains intact. This game isn’t quite as good as its predecessor, but it’s a solid follow-up, and one that fans of the first game should definitely play too.

Grade: B-

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