I picked this game up when it first came out on PCs back in 2005. I remember playing it for about an hour or so before setting it down and forgetting about it. A few month’s back a good friend of mine mentioned on Talking Time that one of the restored content mods had just updated and that he was going to be picking the game up to play through it now that it’d been “fixed.” His comments not only reminded me I owned the game and had not yet played it, but also how much I enjoyed playing through the first game.
Anyway, that’s the boring story about how I got around to playing a game I bought eight years ago. KOTOR2 is a lot like its predecessor in that it puts the player in control of a force user in the Star Wars universe about 4000 or so years (I think?) before the events that take place in A New Hope. Except, because it is a sequel the creators felt everything had to be bigger and more of it. I don’t usually have a problem when designers want to provide more content but in this case, and this is a consistent problem with Obsidian, their reach often exceeds their grasp. Big plans, great ideas and an inability to follow through.
The story is KOTOR2 is an attempt an an epic sweeping space opera with entangled, complex characters and there are times when you can see hints of this but and you can almost, almost, be swept up into it and be carried away. Almost, instead you’re left shaking your head and asking, “What did that character just say?” and “Why do I care about this?” These questions are sadly left unanswered.
In it’s defense as a follower of the Dark Side of the Force I get to shoot lightning out of my fingers at my enemies. And being Sith, everyone is my enemy. This goes a long way in my book.