Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Xbox, 2004)

Unlike the first installment, I'm amazed at how easy it was this time around, save the last Boss battle (which is actually cake once you figure out the weakness). I'm happy to say that the characters are a little more diverse this time. If you read my last review on KotOR, you'd know that I had a problem with the rehashed character models. But that's not to say I didn't run into any of these clones, just less this time. And not to mention I could finally pick a Jedi with a beard!
Speaking of easy, I couldn't believe how ridiculously easy the enemies like Dark Jedi, Elite Sith and Bounty Hunters were. And ironically enough, the Boss's were even bigger push overs. Take Darth Nihilus, you know him as that scary masked guy on the box art, well right from the start he's portrayed as this unstoppable planet killer who gobbles up Jedi like fresh popcorn. Not so, if I spent 90 seconds on him that was a lot.

Another issue was the frame rate. It fluctuated more than the emotions of a pregnant woman in her 2nd trimester. This happend as more enemies cluttered the screen. On a number of occasions it got so bad my game literally turned into a slide show making it impossible to coordinate any attacks until some of the bad guys died off. This is a big "no-no" for console games, considering the hardware is built-in and not upgradeable like a PC. There were still a number of issues still not fully addressed from the previous game. One was the leveling up of light/dark force points, again if you fill the meter, that was pretty much it. There was no real incentive to keep on doing the good or bad you were doing, well there was a "light + con" bonus I got, but it was negligible.

Another pet pieve was the gratuitously awkward menu screens. It was such a chore sifting through it all. For example when you try to upgrade your characters equipment on the workbench, you couldn't tell who had what and which would best fit them next, all it showed was if it was equipped or not. You'd have to exit the workbench and go back through the character menu's, with their 11 different slots (It stopped being fun when I had 10 party members to work with). It was unnecessary trial and error BS I never want to do again. Remember the dumb swoop bike races? Their back, only now with moving obstacles...that explode! Yippie. This time I chose not to even bother. They also left out that pointless Ebon Hawk gun turret mini-game *mouths the words*-"Thank God!" And you know what, I think I had a better gaming experience because of it.

Lastly was the convoluted story integration from the previous KotOR. Through out the game your given scattered insight of our last character Revan which almost never fit the way we remembered him...uh...her. See, thats the problem. The developer couldn't make up their minds. At various points in the game Revan is referred to by many NPC's as a "she" and later again a "he". And if that wasn't bad enough, some NPC's commented on the things I never did on different worlds. Once I was told how Revan went into Adjunta Palls tomb on Korriban quelling the Jedi spirit for his sword. Thing is, I was never able to get into that Tomb for some reason, the door was always locked despite any of my characters security skills, I made many trips to Korriban right up til the end of the game trying to unlock it, no dice. Over all KotoR2 was a great game despite its flaws. As long as you're a fan of movie and game, you'll be happy.