I played and loved the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so I was looking forward to the sequel. I was cautious, though, since the game was going to be developed by a different company than the original, and my cautiousness was both right and somewhat unfounded.
Gameplay/Story – I'll start of with the most disappointing part of the game that I found. This is the part I was worried about most. The story in the original was pure genius and will probably go down as one of the best stories in a game ever. The story in the sequel just leaves you reaching. While it is not terrible, it seams stale and somewhat wreckless. There is no one point in the story that grabs and surprises you. Everything is easily predictable. On top of that there aren't any real characters that stand out as likeable. More often than not you'll just want to kill some of the characters that you party with, but you can't because they are there for the entire game. Enough with the bad and now onto the good.
The actual gameplay was pretty close to what it should have been. I'll make two quick complaints and then get on to the good stuff. The game was far too easy. The whole way through the game until the last 20 minutes I was never in any danger of dying. The main character also had it too easy using the force. You could heal yourself or use force storm about 15 times in a row and still have over half your force points left. That is something that should be, if they would have made the force powers harder to use then the game would probably have been much harder and more enjoyable.
Like I said, on to the good stuff. Using the engine that Bioware made for the original made the game pretty fail proof. All of the key features that made the original great are still included and in some ways improved. The dark side/light side path is still there, but it is slightly better this time around. Before when you gained light side or dark side points you would gain them and only you. Now you have an influence system over the other characters in your party. You gain or lose influence with the conversations you have with them. The more influence you have over them meant the more likely they will gain dark side points when you gain them and vice versa. However, to gain influence with most characters all you will have to do is go through the same conversation with each character over and over again. I also couldn't seem to get more than two or three different conversations from each party member. In the original each party member would have a conversation with you would lead to new information each time you talked to them on a different world or on the Ebon Hawk when changing worlds.
The combat system is pretty much the same with some minor differences that are pretty nice. You'll select your attacks the same way that you did before, there are no changes there. This time however you will learn different Jedi forms. Depending on which one you choose to use at the time will allow you to do things like block blaster fire at better rate or block better and so on. There is also the addition of attack modes for each character that you are working with while wandering around a world. What is so nice about this is you can tell them to be aggressive or stand back. This really helps keep them from running through a mine field and getting killed real quick which was one of my gripes in the original.
Another small gripe I had with this game was that it seemed like they threw too many characters at you and stuck them all in your party. You didn't have a real chance to get to know or like any of your party mates. There will be a couple characters you use all of the time, but the rest you will rarely use after the initial time they join your party.
One of the major complaints in the original was that the leveling up stopped at level twenty. That has been changed this time and I ended up on level twenty-eight by the time I finished the game. This is both nice to see and take advantage of and it also kind of makes the game too easy. With more levels allowed you get to see what more of the force powers actually do and useful they can be. In the original you would have to build up a certain few force powers that were very important and would run out of levels before you would get any chance to see what the others could do. In this game you will get a chance to see what the majority of the force powers can do. The problem that this brings, though, is that you become too powerful for the enemies you'll face and in turn will never come in danger of dying.
One last complaint. I noticed some major slowdown at times when fighting more than five enemies at once. It happened about three different times during the game, but all in all it wasn't that big of a deal.
Graphics – The graphics have only seen a minor upgrade from the original, but that isn't bad. The worlds don't look much improved, but where the real improvement is seen is with the people. They look more realistic this time around. There still is the problem with the lack of different faces for NPC characters. You'll see about twenty guys in the game with the same face just like in the original. Combat does look more fluid in this one than the original which is nice to see. The textures are done almost perfectly and there seems to be no problem with the draw distance being noticeable at all.
Sound – The voice acting is done almost perfectly. Each character sounds like they have there own personality just from the voice. The great job, that you saw in the in the original, of implementing the languages of all the different species is still used and used perfectly. The voice for some of the NPC characters will be a little repetitive, but it's nothing too bad. The music is still just as great as ever. The music keeps up with the aura of the Star Wars universe.
Replay Factor – While the game is a thirty hour play you will play through the game at least twice and maybe more. You'll want to beat the game on the light side and dark side. Right there is two times through. Plus, you may want to play through the game over and over again just for the experience.
Bonus – Learning some back story. In the original you played through the entire game without knowing much of your past. In this game you learn a lot about your past and get to know who you really are. Also, you even learn about some of the stuff that you wanted to know in the original.
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