I was recently taken up with an urge to replay KOTOR (yet again) and while playing it I found myself thinking more about its sequel for some reason. The first time, and the last time, I had played through The Sith Lords I was overwhelmed with a sense of disappointment. Game play was too easy, the dialog options were often set in confusing orders, the interface took an aesthetic step back into the dark ages, the character customization took a leaping bound away from the tried and true D&D system, and the storyline was disjointed and hard to place into context. All that, and yet there I sat obsessing over this game.

Well, I pulled it out of mothballs and gave it another spin. It’s almost as bad as I had remembered. The only noticeable difference I found in changing the game difficulty was in the DC on various locks throughout the game. Dialog options appear out of order allowing you to ask people about things they haven’t told you, which is a real shame since so much of it is vital to placing the you in the game world and isn’t half bad. I got over the GUI change, since it was mostly superficial, but they committed an unforgivable sin when they moved the buff list from the icons displayed on the character pane to a thrice hidden section of the message logs. Breaking the D&D mold and allowing 50 levels full of feats and force powers certainly sounds like a good idea, but in practice it doesn’t work as there is no sense of completion because you can’t reach that level with the content provided. The storyline is likewise void of that sense of completion. It starts by ripping open the tidy end of KOTOR and robbing you of the satisfaction of having saved, or dominated, everything, then goes on to end in another open wound.

And yet, its not all THAT bad. Odd I know, but it has its charm. I was intrigued by the darker more cynical outlook on all the charity given as a light-sider. It was refreshing to see the 'hero' being chided for enabling self destructive actions. Aside from that, I have a soft spot for games with untapped potential. A lot of the problems in the game can be laid at the feet of those too eager to release an unfinished game, not all, but a lot. Because of the incomplete nature of the game, particularly certain dialog sections, knowing the story ahead of time makes the game make sense. While still a disappointment, the disappointment shifted from 'it was released,' to 'it was released before its time'.