Almost a great game, badly spoiled by poor QA, tedious story and almost complete lack of control over companions actions
User Rating: 6.2 | Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords PC
I am reviewing this having only got about 10 hours into the game so I have not experienced the problems of truncated plot due to Lucas Arts desperation to maximise the pre-Christmas X-Box profits. Indeed things also have the capacity to improve. What I have seen however is a potentially great game spoiled by poor QA, some VERY tedious storylines and a very poor control interface for directing your companions actions (i.e. it doesn't work). QA - I have a fast, well specced machine with no extraneous software, dlls etc by nature of the fact that it is just used for games. It runs problematic 1st person shooters like a dream where other machines crash. So how come a game like this which makes limited demands on the graphics card etc seems to black out so often? Usually it has to be said, at the end of the rather nasty low-res video interludes, but also just at random. Aside from stability issues, there has clearly also been limited QA on issues such as dialogue loops, where conversations end up going in circles because the links haven't all been checked properly. Storylines - firstly is it my imagination or is this game a LOT more linear than KOTOR1? Are back stories of ones companions a lot less complex? Are there far fewer side plots and missions? It certainly feels like it - indeed what it feels like is that for the bulk of the game s far I have spent most of it running down featureless corridors hitting a series of pretty similar bad guys. Have just arrived on the planet's surface and....lo!....I seem to running in paths that are curiously defined almost as if I'm in corridors (i.e. no options) fighting a series of similar looking bad guys. Control - this is possibly my biggest gripe. The on screen tools to control your companions actions SIMPLY DO NOT WORK. I know this has been raised by other reviewers but really, its bloody frustrating. Whatever you do, as soon as they see an enemy off they go. They don't use skills intelligently, don't heal, rush straight through minefields, all in their desperate and (as it turns out) often unstoppable urge to kill everything they can see. Just tried quietly killing a creature and then sneaking round a large group of mercenaries - fat chance. My crew transitioned seamlessly from attacking this creature with silent (but less effective) weapons, to running straight towards said heavily armed mercenaries. I tried to recall them, I tried to tell them to be stationary. None of it WORKS. So no surprises, without the planning required to take out a group like this they were killed off. Turned the game off in disgust because I know that really the only solution will be to hack and slash my way through another group of bloody mercenaries. So - I suspect that this is another in a long line of dumbed-down, money grabbing sequels - could have a been a lot better. 
