This game ages like fine wine. After my first playthrough, my opnion was that it had some cool new stuff but was ultimately inferior to KotOR 1 due to the limp ending.... but even then there were little things about the story that stuck with me longer than anything in 1. They nagged at me to think about them, puzzle them out, figure out what was actually happening.
Then I played it again. I noticed more, understood more. Kreia seemed just a bit less like a grumpy hag and I started to think “just maybe this babushka is onto something.”
I played the first game more, too. That feeling of change wasn’t really there. I had experienced the twist and seen what the game had to offer. Still great, but nothing changed.
Then the restored content mods entered the scene for the PC version and I got into those. It wasn't a huge difference but it was enough. Suddenly the ending wasn’t bad. It was certainly unpolished, but I started to think it was actually quite good. My own ability to reason had evolved at that point in my teen years. I could see much more of the philosophical nuance happening in the story and the political machinations ticking away in the background. I could see how the story was rooted in historical accounts of post-war realities like the lives of some Vietnam veterans after they returned home.
In the first game, the Mandalorian Wars were a footnote in the backstory. A good detail, but one that could be mostly ignored without changing the story much. In The Sith Lords it became impossible to ignore. It haunts everything and everyone.
This is a superb game and possibly one of the best pieces of writing in gaming period.
Unfortunately it's also made in a BioWare engine and uses D&D 3.5 based combat systems, so it's a technical timebomb sometimes with weird balancing.
But it’s worth it.
Then I played it again. I noticed more, understood more. Kreia seemed just a bit less like a grumpy hag and I started to think “just maybe this babushka is onto something.”
I played the first game more, too. That feeling of change wasn’t really there. I had experienced the twist and seen what the game had to offer. Still great, but nothing changed.
Then the restored content mods entered the scene for the PC version and I got into those. It wasn't a huge difference but it was enough. Suddenly the ending wasn’t bad. It was certainly unpolished, but I started to think it was actually quite good. My own ability to reason had evolved at that point in my teen years. I could see much more of the philosophical nuance happening in the story and the political machinations ticking away in the background. I could see how the story was rooted in historical accounts of post-war realities like the lives of some Vietnam veterans after they returned home.
In the first game, the Mandalorian Wars were a footnote in the backstory. A good detail, but one that could be mostly ignored without changing the story much. In The Sith Lords it became impossible to ignore. It haunts everything and everyone.
This is a superb game and possibly one of the best pieces of writing in gaming period.
Unfortunately it's also made in a BioWare engine and uses D&D 3.5 based combat systems, so it's a technical timebomb sometimes with weird balancing.
But it’s worth it.