Obsidian had a lot of excellent things planned prior and during the development of the game. They were planning on creating a story that surpasses the original, well-developed characters that would beat out the cast of Knights Of The Old Republic 1, and a big improvement over its predecessor. Sadly, the game just falls short due to an exorbitant deadline made by LucasArts to sell the game by Christmas of 2004.
Story (10/10 if the game was completed, but unfortunately, this one gets a 5): The game takes place five years after Knights Of The Old Republic 1. You play the role of a Jedi Knight that was a general in the Mandalorian Wars, and were exiled from the Jedi Order just because you followed Darth Revan during the Mandalorian Wars. You are hunted down by the Sith being labeled as "the last Jedi," and you are either pitted to the role of the savior of the Republic or the down-fall of the galaxy. The main focus of the game is to find out what the hell happened to Revan, why exactly you were exiled, and combat the current Sith threat or destroy the Jedi Order. The beginning and middle were strong enough, but the end just sucked monkeys' balls. The story is linear so the actions you took in KOTOR 1 is virtually non-existent due to the fact that the story goes: "No matter what the player did, Revan did this or that."
Republic is 95% destroyed: Check
Revan knew about the True Sith: Check
You're stuck with helping Revan: Check
No matter what you personally want to do, you're stuck in a pre-determined path. Example: Jedi Council dies even if you're light side. You're stuck looking for Revan after killing Kreia.
What's worse than this is that the characters were supposed to have a bigger impact on the story, but Obsidian wasn't able to put it in the game no thanks to the Christmas deadline and it did show when you were playing as Mira on the Light Side game in Malachor V. There are various links on the Internet that provide such evidence.
Gameplay 6/10: Pros: There was very little change in the gameplay so those of you that played KOTOR 1 will feel right at home. The additions that were made were the ability to create your own items, gaining and/or losing influence with party members so they could be either in the light or dark side of the Force, and you could make half of them Jedi Knights. There are lightsaber forms as well.
Cons: Creating the upgrade items (like a hair trigger and stuff like that) for customizable weapons is a pain in the ass especially since you're required to use every single skill. Things don't help that much especially with the randomized items. As for the influence system, you can pretty much be nice to almost everyone and get the maxed out on the Light Side alignment. On top of this, you will also get the feeling of incomplete background story from your allies. It was just too under-developed since the opportunities are limited if you were playing with favorite party members and rarely used the rest of the party members. On top of this, you can't make friends with every party member (therefore, if you want to play Mr./Ms. Light Side, gaining influence with Mandalore, G0-T0, and HK-47 goes right out the window). As for the lightsaber forms, you don't know if you're making a difference at all in the battle and have to rely on statistics for this. For those of you that like to power-lvl, you're S.O.L. in that department. There is very limited wildlife which was blamed more on a programming rush. If you cleared out an entire room of wildlife on a planet like Dxun, that's it. They're not going to respawn. The only way you can power-lvl is to exploit the Infinite Hssiss glitch which may screw up your game badly.
Worst of all, Obsidian never had the chance to beta-test the game and the game has frame-rate problems, a huge number of glitches, which varies from hard-drive to hard-drive (those with the Thompson drives have the worst-case scenarios), and sidequests that are impossible to complete period. Such quests are the Telos Fuel Source, TSF Two Criminals, Dantooine Redemption, etc.
Character development: Atton Rand, Bounty Hunter Mira, assassin droid HK-47, Mandalore, Visas Marr, and Kreia were the only well-developed characters that Obsidian had time to work on. T3-M4 undergoes a personality change, but ends up being an exact clone of R2-D2. Unfortunately, some of the other characters pretty much fall flat on their faces. Handmaiden is too shallow and feels too Gothic, Hanharr is a wookie that whines about his life-debt to Mira, G0-T0 is the cheap version of "The Architect" from the Matrix franchise, Bao-Dur ends up being the big casualty since you barely get any background story from him besides "I just want to repair things, general."
Unfortunately, you don't care about the villains at all in this game. Darth Nihilus is a parasite waiting to get squashed by you, and Darth Sion is a bad guy that just tries too hard to imitate Vin Diesel. The worst thing of all is you don't get to relive your romance sub-plots at all. Again, emphasis is LucasArts is to blame for not giving Obsidian time to develop the characters well.
Sound: 9/10: The voice-acting was great, but I had problems with the soundtrack. The soundtrack just felt too "creepy" to be Star Wars. I only liked the Ebon Hawk music, that's pretty much it.
Verdict: Avoid the game at all costs and sign petitions so that Obsidian might get a second-chance on re-making this game. It may not physically possible now, but it would be nice to dream about it. Unfortunately, LucasArts probably has lost future investments no thanks to this mess.
Story (10/10 if the game was completed, but unfortunately, this one gets a 5): The game takes place five years after Knights Of The Old Republic 1. You play the role of a Jedi Knight that was a general in the Mandalorian Wars, and were exiled from the Jedi Order just because you followed Darth Revan during the Mandalorian Wars. You are hunted down by the Sith being labeled as "the last Jedi," and you are either pitted to the role of the savior of the Republic or the down-fall of the galaxy. The main focus of the game is to find out what the hell happened to Revan, why exactly you were exiled, and combat the current Sith threat or destroy the Jedi Order. The beginning and middle were strong enough, but the end just sucked monkeys' balls. The story is linear so the actions you took in KOTOR 1 is virtually non-existent due to the fact that the story goes: "No matter what the player did, Revan did this or that."
Republic is 95% destroyed: Check
Revan knew about the True Sith: Check
You're stuck with helping Revan: Check
No matter what you personally want to do, you're stuck in a pre-determined path. Example: Jedi Council dies even if you're light side. You're stuck looking for Revan after killing Kreia.
What's worse than this is that the characters were supposed to have a bigger impact on the story, but Obsidian wasn't able to put it in the game no thanks to the Christmas deadline and it did show when you were playing as Mira on the Light Side game in Malachor V. There are various links on the Internet that provide such evidence.
Gameplay 6/10: Pros: There was very little change in the gameplay so those of you that played KOTOR 1 will feel right at home. The additions that were made were the ability to create your own items, gaining and/or losing influence with party members so they could be either in the light or dark side of the Force, and you could make half of them Jedi Knights. There are lightsaber forms as well.
Cons: Creating the upgrade items (like a hair trigger and stuff like that) for customizable weapons is a pain in the ass especially since you're required to use every single skill. Things don't help that much especially with the randomized items. As for the influence system, you can pretty much be nice to almost everyone and get the maxed out on the Light Side alignment. On top of this, you will also get the feeling of incomplete background story from your allies. It was just too under-developed since the opportunities are limited if you were playing with favorite party members and rarely used the rest of the party members. On top of this, you can't make friends with every party member (therefore, if you want to play Mr./Ms. Light Side, gaining influence with Mandalore, G0-T0, and HK-47 goes right out the window). As for the lightsaber forms, you don't know if you're making a difference at all in the battle and have to rely on statistics for this. For those of you that like to power-lvl, you're S.O.L. in that department. There is very limited wildlife which was blamed more on a programming rush. If you cleared out an entire room of wildlife on a planet like Dxun, that's it. They're not going to respawn. The only way you can power-lvl is to exploit the Infinite Hssiss glitch which may screw up your game badly.
Worst of all, Obsidian never had the chance to beta-test the game and the game has frame-rate problems, a huge number of glitches, which varies from hard-drive to hard-drive (those with the Thompson drives have the worst-case scenarios), and sidequests that are impossible to complete period. Such quests are the Telos Fuel Source, TSF Two Criminals, Dantooine Redemption, etc.
Character development: Atton Rand, Bounty Hunter Mira, assassin droid HK-47, Mandalore, Visas Marr, and Kreia were the only well-developed characters that Obsidian had time to work on. T3-M4 undergoes a personality change, but ends up being an exact clone of R2-D2. Unfortunately, some of the other characters pretty much fall flat on their faces. Handmaiden is too shallow and feels too Gothic, Hanharr is a wookie that whines about his life-debt to Mira, G0-T0 is the cheap version of "The Architect" from the Matrix franchise, Bao-Dur ends up being the big casualty since you barely get any background story from him besides "I just want to repair things, general."
Unfortunately, you don't care about the villains at all in this game. Darth Nihilus is a parasite waiting to get squashed by you, and Darth Sion is a bad guy that just tries too hard to imitate Vin Diesel. The worst thing of all is you don't get to relive your romance sub-plots at all. Again, emphasis is LucasArts is to blame for not giving Obsidian time to develop the characters well.
Sound: 9/10: The voice-acting was great, but I had problems with the soundtrack. The soundtrack just felt too "creepy" to be Star Wars. I only liked the Ebon Hawk music, that's pretty much it.
Verdict: Avoid the game at all costs and sign petitions so that Obsidian might get a second-chance on re-making this game. It may not physically possible now, but it would be nice to dream about it. Unfortunately, LucasArts probably has lost future investments no thanks to this mess.