KoToR 2: The Sith Lords

It took me around 30+ hours to beat it, and yada yada yada.

++ The Good ++ :
The influence options were good, but they didn't really lead anywhere. It was cool to see your party members going light side/dark side but I didn't see any effect it had on the game at all. And I could never gain enough influence to get any of my party totally LIGHT. Why? Because there weren't enough dialogue choices. The game kept the same dialouges from when that party member first joined your party and after you talked to them about everything, you can't gain influence unless you keep them in your party while questing and doing acts of good/bad.
Also, the influence options didn't do much except unlock more dialouge which is okay, but I wanted to unlock side quests, secret items, and other cool stuff. Note: Talking to Kreia and Visas did add some cool force powers and repairing T3 did add constitution and stuff. But adding constitution to T3 was virtually pointless to me since i never used him.

The music is very good. Most of the music was background rythmish (just like KoTor 1) but there were some great tracks and music themes in there. The last music played right before the ending was very, very good.

The moral choices were much, much better and actually opened up more avenues for the quests being different if you wanted to go light or dark. For example, in the first game, most dialogues had three choices: light side, neutral, or dark. It was obvious which choice was which, but in the second game, the game gets more in depth into all the situations and choices (such as Kreia clouding your judgement). It was much more interesting to have to make harder choices than just Light/Dark. And many of these choices had BIG effects on chunks of the story.

There were some very good cutscenes in the game, like the one where you finally confront all 3 jedi masters at the enclave and they want to cut off your connection from the force. That was pretty cool...

-- The Bad --:
The combat is still pretty boring. I didn't see it as a huge problem but it's still the same no strategy interface where you basically flurry/attack your enemy to death and then heal yourself over and over again. The only strategy I had to use was when fighting the bosses, and even then it was still too easy and you could beat them with basic strategies.

The one basic strategy I used was this: Double lightsabers with ub3r 1337 crystals and upragdes for 1337 damage, my upgraded armor for 1337 protection, master speed +2 attacks!!, and flurry For a total of +3 attacks!!. Using this strategy I could attack the enemy dude with a total of 4 attacks, each attack inflicting about 40-60 damage (100+ if you get a critical hit on an attack). This would just annihilate my enemies to extinction. And if I had 3+ enemies attacking me, I would use force lightning. It usually did 100+ damage to each target, or 50 if I was unlucky. By using this strategy I just cruised through the game...

The game was too easy. I played on normal difficulty and only a few times did I encounter a hard battle. The first hard battle I probably ever died in was in the wilderness of Telos, with Bao Dur. The only other times I died was I think in the poison cantina, and the sith academy at the end. I basically cruised through the game easily... (bragging??)

They needed more side-quests. And they needed backstory side-quests for all of your main characters. There wasn't enough stuff to do this time around. I played through the first game at least 3 times, each time discovering new quests I had never noticed previously. That was how opened-ended the first game was. There were some sidquests in the second game--I would say they had a good amount up from the beginning to Telos-to Nar Shadaa. But then after that, all the other planets had only several at most. And they needed interplanetary sidequests that sprawned the galaxy, requiring you to fly around all the planets to finish them.

The story was too rushed and you couldnt tell what was going on. It seemed like you were being hunted by these bad dudes, and randomly stumbled about a jedi academy, and then YOUR CHARACTER wants to find out while he's exiled but I didn't really care why. So then for some reason YOUR CHARACTER wants to find these Jedi Masters and kill your Sith pursuers. So you romp around the galaxy doing randomness and find the Jedi dudes but then they DIE!!! SPOLIERS!!11one! Then you learn that one of your party members was the SITH. They were using you to find the JEDI! (They never actually said this so I wasn't clear about it, and they never fully explained Kreia's original motives). Then for some reason YOUR CHARACTER wants to chase her down for another reason they never fully explained. Then you kill her and I guess the sith stop hunting you and you found out why you were exiled. What a weird story... doesn't make too much sense.

Once again the plastic dolls manuevering killed me!! All the characters in the game are like action figures with STATIC poses who just barely move their limbs and joints and talk to you in their own weird way.
There's too much dialogue! The game is boring when they keep talking and talking about stuff you don't care about. Either cut it down or explain it better so I'll be interested. And all the dialougue cutscenes are boring. They keep using the same 3 camera angles and it gets REALLY old staring at their faces the same way.
And, they needed more tie-ins to KoToR 1. The game talked about Revan and previous events, but not enough.

The enviroments were boring and repetitive, especially the sections on Peragus, Citadel Station, Telos, yeah. Most of the areas were just boring corridors or ripped from the first game. All of Peragus station was boring corridors with the occasional open space. Citadel Station was boring as well with their tiny corridors, and cantinas stolen from Taris. Nar Shadaa was a little different but still somewhat boring. Dxun was actually quite interesting though. Onderon was okay, but not that interesting. Korriban was... reused so I don't know what to say about that. Malachor V was too confusing because everything was gray and you couldn't tell the walls from the floor. So yeah, most of the enviroments were same old boring stuff. I guess they needed better art direction?

Your characters didn't develop enough. I never really used G0-T0, T3-M4, Mira, HK-47, or Mandalore that much. I just used Visas and Atton or Kreia most of the time. And ocasionally the handmaiden. I still didn't know my characters at the end of the game and that's probably my problem (for not influencing them enough) but also the game's problem for not creating enough side-quests for them.

I think that's enough complaining by me for now.

Wrap UP:

Kotor 2 could have been a great game if they had addressed the original gameplay issues in Kotor 1. They also needed to fix all the bugs, slow down the pace, add more cutscenes, explain the story better, get you more involved with your characters, and fix the ending.

Everbody said the ending sucked but it wasn't that bad. They just needed to elaborate on it and explain it more fully.
Like:
Before you go to Malachor V you talk to your party and everyone talks about Kreia (kind of like what happened in the first game when you found out you were Revan). After this you tell your party you're going to chase her to Malachor V and then you go do it. p.s. I didn't see the whole point of the Sith Academy on Malachor V. It was a bore from the start to the end. They could've just had you fight the Sith Corpse guy, then go into the final chamber. Instead they had me fighting random Sith for an hour.

And then at the end, instead of ending it by taking off into hyperspace, they change into a cutscene where you talk with your party and the game branches off into multiple endings perhaps.
You tell your party you have to go to the outer rim and then you can maybe choose some characters to come along/stay behind or something like that. Then the game ends by putting your party members back on some other planets and you fly away with the Ebon Hawk into unknown territories.

The end.

Kotor 2: 8.5/10. A good game that couldn't been so much better. Just like Kotor 1!