Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

Review - Easy for you to say...

For me, a good RPG has to have all of the usual elements; plot, characters, level rewards, a plethora of items to collect. But for it to truly stand out it must be able to suck me into its world and make me completely forget the other life that I normally lead. Bodily functions and the lives of other people should become nothing more than blips on the periphery, things to be attended to at six in the morning when your vision has become terminally blurred. And without fail, this hook will be baited with a juicy morsel of a story. You'll gently take a nibble to see what it's like and then before you know it you have been reeled right in and can feel the last gasps of your other life drain from you on the bottom of that boat called RPG addiction.

KOTOR 2 has all of these elements by the bucket. Set a few years after the events of the first game, KOTOR 2 tells the story of the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War. If you haven't played the first game don't worry, as KOTOR 2 regularly takes the opportunity to offer the player as much history and back-story as they care to digest. Much of it is told through optional dialogue with NPCs, so old-timers won't have to sit through hours of unnecessary exposition. Veterans will be pleased to hear that both the Ebon Hawk and HK-47 make a return. The rest of the characters are all new and make up for an impressively wide spectrum of personality types. Many of the PCs you pick up along the way show definite antagonism towards others in your crew and the inter-character banter helps to not only cement their individualities but can also spur the player along a course of action that they may not have otherwise chosen. For example, one prissy Jedi's remarks and attitude very nearly made me decide to abandon my quest for the light by cutting that uppity Jedi down to size.

The writing in KOTOR 2 is of a uniformly excellent standard, so instances where you can feel yourself being influenced by the unwinding plot are many. The writers have crafted a superb story that envelops players, making them feel part of the universe. Both the light and dark side routes can be easily taken and there's enough subtlety to allow for a neutral style of play to be a viable choice. Your personal feelings towards characters will have a subconscious affect on the way you play the game. When you combine this with some laugh out loud humour and philosophically stimulating ruminations I can easily say that KOTOR 2 is the best written RPG I've played in about five years. I think the true depth of the game would only become apparent if you were to play a second time round and choose some different options. A prospect that I am giving some serious thought to.

The voice acting that accompanies the dialogue is somewhat hit and miss. Almost all of the major characters earn themselves a voice actor of some talent yet a few are pitched all wrong. At times it was apparent that the script was being read blind, without the actor having a good grasp of how their dialogue would be combined with the work of the other voices. Apart from this and the occasional total mismatch, (uber warriors the Manadalorians are voiced in terrible approximations of Yorkshire and Australian accents) the voice acting complements the script so well that I often found myself letting the words play out rather then skip forward once I'd read the dialogue. There are nuances and inflections that the written word cannot get across so well, and as I've said many times, the writing talent at Obsidian practically commands the player's respect. It's no surprise that Obsidian is made up of developers who created what many - myself included - consider the best RPG of all time, Planescape: Torment. They have managed to create a plot and characters which give the player an incredible freedom of choice as to the type of gameplay experience that they want to have.