"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

It Could've Been Great Underneath the bugs and plot holes of Knights of the Old Republic II is a great game struggling to get out. The gameplay, which is essentially the same as the first KOTOR is wonderful, though the addition of lightsaber forms really doesn't do much, and prestige classes really make your character way too powerful. While many other reviewers have complained of bugs, I didn't have a major problem with bugs, though the first zone on Dantooine ran like a PowerPoint presentation for the first 1 minute I would be in it. My main problem with the game was in the level design. Most zones seemed to be laid out in a rather unnecessarily complex and arbitrary way. There is also the issue of the appearance of the levels. I suppose in order to highlight the darker nature of the story, the level design called for using darker colors. The result is that almost every world is either very drab and dull in appearance, or has varying shades of dark gray as the only colors. Consequently, the worlds feel not so much dark as jsut plain boring, especially the last few zones in the game. Even worlds such as Dantooine, Dxun, and Telos cannot escape this monotonous art design. Additionally, the reuse of Korriban seemed rather unnecessary, since there wasn't much to be done there. There were also a few bone-headed gameplay decisions that really irked me. In KOTOR, you wound up using nothing but Force users because they were the most powerful. In an attempt to alleviate this, most of your characters can become Jedi, which was a decent idea that worked well. However, the designers also decided to have times where characters you might never use be your main characters, which means you're going to get your ass kicked if you neglect your characters. There's also the issue that after spending hours developing your characters, on the last world, you go solo the whole way through. As a result, you feel like you developed your characters for nothing. Granted, in KOTOR 1, you went solo the last 15-20 minutes of the game, but at least you had access to the rest of party for most of the game. Finally, we come to the game's most crippling issue, the story. KOTOR 1 had a fairly standard save-the-galaxy story, but with a few neat twists along the way. KOTOR 2 attempts to create a darker, and weirder story that makes no sense for the first quarter of the game. For the next 50% of the game, it begins to make sense, but then it all falls apart for the last quarter of the game. It really feels that the story was just not fully developed. I kept wondering what I was doing and why. There was no clear sense as to what the final objective was. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that there is no real ending to the game. The final cutscene shows the Ebon Hawk going into hyperspace and then the credits roll. You feel as though you've spent about 20 hours doing absolutely nothing. Much like the story, the characters don't feel well developed either. The game is roughly the same length as KOTOR 1, yet at the end of KOTOR 2, you feel like you've learned nothing about the rest of the characters in your party. This is a far cry from KOTOR 1 where you learned quite a bit about your characters, and each had their own sidequests. As a result, you're left wondering about the characters and their backgrounds, and you're left not really caring about them. As stated above, the gameplay is the game's only saving grace. The fact that the gameplay is essentially KOTOR 1's with a few extra bells and whistles probably explains the reason for that. However, the fact your character is even more overpowered than it was in KOTOR 1 makes it a bit repetitive after a certain point. Nonetheless, it is rather fun assaulting the palace of Onderon, because with Force Storm, you can kill eight enemies in one round without taking a scratch. To conclude, KOTOR 2 is not so much a bad game as it is an unfinished game. The elements were there for a great sequel (sans the boring environments) to KOTOR, but for whatever reason, the game was ripped from the womb and delivered to us prematurely. Perhaps KOTOR 3 will be made and be great, but until then, we can only hope.