I have very fond memories of playing the first game in this series, the original Knights of the Old Republic back in my first year of Queen's University almost....10 years ago now. Man, I'm old.
It was a fantastic action RPG set in the Star Wars universe roughly 4000 years before the original films. But not much changed in those 4000 years because most things are by and large the same. You controlled a character who the force was with, so to speak and would go through the game accumulating experience, levelling up and choosing new force powers to develop or strengthen as well as new abilities traits. So you can do the usual multi-varied approach to most situations like talking (which is this time aided by force persuasion), stealthing or shooting (and lightsabreing). Except for the later games in the Jedi Knight series it offered what I feel to be one of the most authentic and immersive Star Wars universe experiences that you could possibly imagine. Every detail and line of dialogue and piece of grime on old rust bucket ship just feels like genuine old school Star Wars and it's great to be able to run around in that world chopping shit up with a lightsabre. Naturally, you meet a lot of characters along the way and some of them come with you for the ride. This gives you an opportunity to develop other types of characters such as gunslingers or support characters and also gives you people to talk to about stuff and many opportunities for the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this." to pop up.
I often thought this was a precursor to the Mass Effect series because before I had played those games, everything that was described about them to me sounded like a direct copy or further development of the systems in place in Knights of the Old Republic and now having played all of those that initial suspicion was confirmed. The dialogue systems in particular share a great deal in common and KOTOR's dialogue trees seemed to pave the way for Mass Effect's dialogue wheels.
It may seem odd at this point that all I have done is explain what the original game is like, but the reason for that is simply this: barring plot, locations and characters, the sequel is almost identical. The engine is the same, licensed out to Obsidian by Bioware to make this game. The weapons are the same, the levelling system is the same, the dialogue system is the same. Pretty much everything is the same and that's not all the surprising seeing as this came out barely a year after the original in what seems like was probably just an attempt to cash in on the critical acclaim of the original. And while that may sound bad initially, when it's a rehashing of a game that good, it's not a bad thing at all. Immediately after I started playing it, old memories came flooding back to me and I was soon greatly enjoying being back in the swing of being a Jedi in training.
The only one minor complaint I'd have about this one is that the story is less epic than the original and by the end, I was having a bit of trouble following it to be honest. But you can't have it all. It's still a fantastic game and a very worthy sequel to another awesome game. Some reviews were not so kind to it, but I could not find any reason for this at all because the only minus point it has compared to the original is the aforementioned rehashing. And that due to it's rushed release schedule, a lot of content had to be cut and quite a few bugs were left in it. But it developed such a following that a fan made mod was developed to fix these bugs and add back in the majority of the cut content. Check it out here.. And go play this game while you're at it. And the original too. Because they're both great.
