[Review] Revenge of the Sith Lords

Hot on the heels of my KotOR rerun, I decided to dive into its sequel for another dose of nostalgia. Though somewhat more poorly received on release than its predecessor, in no small part due to LucasArts forcing an early release, it is still a great game and an improvement of the formula in almost every way. For this run, I decided to go for the extremely convoluted and time-consuming full mod build, but if you don't feel like investing so much time and effort into modding your game, I would recommend that you at least install the TSLRCM and the K2 Community Patch for the best experience. Out of the 130 or so mods that I ended up installing, I feel like I could have probably skipped about half of them, but it did make for a very enjoyable experience.

That said, let's jump into it.

Story

The story of KotOR2 starts roughly where its prequel left off. Revan has disappeared after having defeated Darth Malak, and you play as one of his generals who was tried and exiled by the Jedi council for having participated in the war. The Exile begins the game being hunted by the Sith, believing him to be the last Jedi. After his exile, he has also been cut off from the Force and must relearn how to feel it again from scratch. On his journey, he collects a ragtag group of mercenaries and scoundrels, as is standard for the genre, and continues to grow in power until he's strong enough to challenge the eponymous Sith Lords. The story features a few twists and turns along the way, though nothing quite as surprising as the twist in KotOR1, and finishes somewhat weak, even with all of the content restored by the mods.

Replay Value

Since it's a Star Wars game, a run with both a Light side and Dark side character is sort of a must if you want to experience all of it, but at the same time, the two extremes cover just about everything there is to see. There is no incentive to play a neutral character, and the different classes don't really change anything. There are very minor variations between a male and female Exile, the biggest one being whether you get Handmaiden or Disciple as your party member (if you're not using the PartySwap mod), and not really worth replaying just for that.

Companions

The companions in KotOR2 are a bit less one-dimensional than in KotOR1. They have quite a large amount of banter and character development, and the game attempts to introduce an influence system that isn't particularly good. Though, to be fair, it's fairly early in gaming history for such systems, and it was a decent attempt for the time. Romances in the game also aren't as well developed as in some of the contemporaries. They mostly boil down to flirting and the companions falling for you as quickly as you can raise your influence with them, which is sometimes literal minutes.

Gameplay

A few years ago, KotOR2 got an unexpected update, which introduced native widescreen support, achievements, Steam Workshop for mods, etc. It also broke a few new things for certain people, but it was a welcome update overall. In addition to being technically more advanced, the game dials most things from KotOR1 up to 11. The system introduces prestige classes for the Exile and allows some companions to gain Jedi classes. It raises the level cap up to level 50, although there's only enough XP in the game to reach about level 30 without cheating/exploits. It also adds new force powers, new feats, new items, lightsaber stances, etc. To be honest, the only change I don't really like is that the loot drops in the game are overly randomized, including any "unique" items. On my current run I got 4 Circlets of Saresh and 3 Robes of Malak, while some items that I wanted for my build didn't drop until the last area of the game. Randomized loot isn't really my cup of tea, especially to this extent. Beyond all that, the gameplay loop is more or less the same as it was in KotOR1.

Art

The game improved on the art of its predecessor to some degree. The models are more complex, we got decent robe/cape animations, the textures are a bit more upscale, the aliens have more different sounds, etc. With the mods that improve the graphical fidelity of the whole game, it doesn't even look half bad on larger resolutions. The voice acting is also great for all the understandable parts, as one would expect from a AAA game.

The orchestral music is top-notch. Perhaps slightly more intrusive at times than I'd like, but very much iconic for a Star Wars game. It definitely wouldn't be the same without that kind of soundtrack.

Modding

The modding scene for KotOR2 is still reasonably active and slightly less disjointed than it is for KotOR1. There are a number of mods that should find their way onto any new player's installation (such as TSLRCM, K2CP, Ultimate High Res mods, etc.), and plenty more, beyond even the full build listed above, that you might want to experiment with. Unfortunately, mod conflicts do tend to be quite common, so it does require some knowledge of what and when to install, but there are plenty of people still around who are willing to help.

Conclusion

Not that many people remember KotOR2, despite the fact that it was well-rated and received upon release and is generally a good game, especially after fan mods/patches. I remember playing the game a lot back when it first came out, but I could not for the life of me remember any of the story or even most of the companions. It lies in stark contrast to KotOR1, where I could remember just about everything about the story but forgot how lackluster everything else was. That's not to say that KotOR2 was bad in any way; it just shows how big of a cultural impact its predecessor had, and the team at Obsidian still rose up to the challenge and delivered a worthy successor, in spite of all the obstacles and external pressure. If I had to rate the games, I would put them in roughly the same spot, though for different reasons, since each of them had their strengths and weaknesses. The games are iconic pieces of gaming history, and they paved the way for other giants, such as Mass Effect, changing the RPG landscape and how companies approach the format forever.

Screenshots

Coming soon...