Previously - Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II

Everybody told me you haven’t seen SHIT yet ina, you’re playing Mysteries of the Sith? Saddle the fuck up girl cuz everything you thought was bad in Dark Forces II is way worse in that one. And you know something, they were all right. Everybody who said that to me was correct. Mysteries of the Sith basically is just a large scale double down on everything that sucks in the main game BUT on the other hand it is also a doubling down on the stuff that I think is COOL in that game. The stuff that I think is great in Dark Forces II, philosophically, is even stronger here.

Frankly, the fact that I played this expansion hot off the heels of it kept me in that Dark Forces II headspace insofar as like, yes, I recognize that the level design is more winding and oblique than ever before, and that it is entirely unreasonable to put doors where this game puts doors, and switches where it puts switches, and secrets where it puts secrets, and that some of these puzzle solutions are absolute nightmare shit, BUT. Y’know? But. However. I’m already there. I’m cruising right along from Dark Forces II ending with a bunch of this exact same horseshit, so I barely feel the escalation. I enter a truly meditative zone when I’m clicking on the walls and the floors and testing force powers and shit. I have been trained to think the way the developers think. The way they think is twisted. Evil. But I, too, am twisted and evil, and not just from being transgender this time. So I don’t feel the friction as much as I did in the main game.

It does feel a bit weird calling Dark Forces II the Main Game and Mysteries of the Sith the Expansion Pack because while it was shot out in less than a year and it IS an add-on to Dark Forces II, Mysteries is like, the same length and a NOTABLE technological leap over the Jedi Knight. So much SHIT can be on the screen now. So many EFFECTS. They have modeled spaceships flying around outside the windows, they have flashy real time zone transitions. It’s all the same engine and of course the lack of time and budget means we’re missing those completely rad FMV cutscenes in favor of much more gangly in-engine stuff, but there’s a lot of really impressive work done that’s clearly putting the Sith Engine as it exists in this game through its paces.

My favorite stuff this time, as last time, is when the game is asking you to consider yourself as if you were in a real place, some sort of ludonarrative...consonance? I guess? And that’s been escalated here. There’s a whole level where you’re just wandering around a city trying to track a guy down without attracting too much attention to yourself, no gunplay, and it mostly resembles something like a real city. There’s a bit where you’re captured and you spend some time locked in a jail cell and the game does ask you to just sit in that cell for a bit, and when you do get out your escape is legitimately harrowing compared to how powerful your characters feel throughout the entire rest of the game. Towards the end when you enter the requisite fucked up force zone things take a radical turn towards the lightsaber and force powers after a full game of not really needing those that much and not facing a single guy who could stand up to your melee attacks, and the puzzles abruptly switch from bad cold machine logic to bad weird intuition logic, as befits weird naturalistic jedi bullshit.

The thing that TRULY endears me to the game though is its star, Mara Jade, or rather, what her presence signals about the intentions of the developers in making this expansion. Mara Jade, if don’t know her because you are the kind of person for whom knowing about Mara Jade doesn’t help you with girls (aka you’re cisgender), was a big deal character in the pre-Disney Star Wars expanded universe, one of the PREMIERE OC Do Not Steals, alongside Kyle Katarn himself in the pantheon of embarrassing but also very unironically cool non-movie Star Wars guys. She was an imperial assassin who looked like Mary Jane from spider-man and I guess is named after her, and she had a cool lightsaber and knew palpatine personally and tried to kill luke skywalker but he convinces her to turn good and then they get married and she outlives chewbacca. One of the most important things about her though is her omnipresence. Her story was so fractured, so piecemeal, like sure most of everyone’s stories happened in novels but Mara Jade showed up in comics and video games and anywhere else they could shove her. Because she was fucking cool!!! And she is. But she is also a character who requires basically the deepest cut knowledge to have understanding of, if not interest in. Because Star Wars was a bunch of messy bullshit even in 1998. So the vibe I get here is that Lucasarts kind of knew, right? This One’s For The Sickos. Only some percentage of people who already bought the game are going to play this one so we’re going balls out, we’re gonna stick like a kind of important piece of Mara Jade’s character development at the time, where she asserts her will to become a real agent of compassion and nobility for the first time after shedding her assassin life, into the expansion to the sequel to a game about a heretofore completely unrelated guy. This One’s For The Sickos. That’s me though so it’s fine.

They do a great job, too. There is such a specific style of novel cover that Mysteries of the Sith completely captures. If you know the ones I’m talking about then you INSTANTLY know what I mean. The like snarky dialogue that’s not really funny at all. The precarious situations with really anticlimactic outs. The incredible, unearned melodrama that deflates emotional arcs. The way everything is swimming in shades of green and brown. The very specific orange, heavily outlined hue of Mara Jade’s lightsaber. This is that Michael Stackpole shit. That Timothy Zahn shit. This strain of atmosphere has been part of Dark Forces’ spirit from the beginning, but never has it been so perfectly or totally captured like it is here. It’s really something, but only if you have a lot of affection for this particular flavor of mid-to-bad 90s sci-fi.

There is, I suppose, also the fact that the story itself does blow huge ass. Completely barebones, entirely boring. Nothing happens, and the three or four plot beats we get are stretched dangerously thin. Starting the game as Kyle for a few levels before he goes to find some force thing on some planet that he acts like was mentioned in the game but I’m pretty sure wasn’t. Mara Jade dicks around A LOT doing odd jobs for the New Republic like making deals with crime bosses for supplies, getting betrayed by crime bosses, escaping and extorting crime bosses, I don’t fucking care man. You’re chasing one guy for like three levels. Then oh man Kyle’s been gone for a while better go check on him oh shit he’s evil oh wait no it’s cool Mara Jade asked him to stop and he did. Great.

It’s weird because this is like, a pivotal moment for both of these characters and it seems like they just kind of threw it together narratively. There’s very little weight to any of these events, very little fanfare to any victory or defeat, very little drama considering the stakes Mara Jade is weighing are two souls that ostensibly she is struggling very hard to retain both of against insurmountable odds. SO much care was put into the levels themselves that it stands out when the stories told within them are so lacking in that same vibrancy and feeling of passion.

I don’t mind it too much, though. The game is obviously doing a lot for me aesthetically, and as I’ve mentioned, my brain was completely broken for most of it so I glided through the expansion without a lot of trouble from the play itself. A pleasant way to spend a few evenings with famous cool girl Mara Jade and her faildad Kyle. I have to be honest I am looking forward to the next game being developed by people who have made shooters before though.

Next Time - Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Outcast

Tja, was kann ich dazu sagen? Bei diesem Spiel bin ich etwas zwiegespalten, ganz ähnlich der durchschnittlichen Steam-Bewertungen.

Zum einen hat dieser Stand-alone-DLC umfangreichere Level als das Hauptspiel, die ebenfalls eine weitreichende Palette an Schauplätzen haben, und außerdem hatte ich eine längere Gesamt-Spielzeit, zum anderen lag Letzteres eben vor allem am unglaublich verwinkelten und verwirrenden Leveldesign der einzelnen Karten.

Ich musste praktisch dauerhaft im Steam-Overlay einen Video-Walkthrough offen haben, weil ich mich in den späteren Levels alle paar Minuten entweder verlaufen habe oder nicht mehr weiterwusste. Die Lösung waren oft irgendwelche Schleichwege oder Mechaniken, die ich nie im Leben gesehen hätte und die allerhöchstens für Bonus-Bereiche geeignet schienen, anstatt für den Hauptweg.

Dazu waren die Zwischensequenzen und die Story lachhaft, ebenso der Endboss. Und durch das Gegnergespamme gegen Ende der Levels musste ich hinter jeder Ecke erstmal einen Quick Save machen.

Wenn das ginge, würde ich dem Spiel einen Daumen nach rechts geben, aber da es mich mit der Abwechslung und den vielen neuen Gegnern nicht völlig enttäuscht hat, tendiere ich wohl eher zu einer Faust, bei der der Daumen technisch gesehen nach oben zeigt.

Un buen juego de Star Wars que se mantiene fiel a la calidad presente en la saga de Jedi Knight, con un nivel de dificultad decente y unos acertijos que requerirán de nuestra mayor concentración y capacidad deductiva del entorno. Kyle Katarn y Mara Jade serán los protagonistas de una historia que servirá de base para muchos eventos futuros en esta porción del Universo Expandido de la gran saga creada hace mucho por George Lucas. Gran título con gráficas decentes para su época y grandes expectativas que cumplir, afortunadamente, las cumple con creces.

This is an annoying one. The inclusion of Mara Jade is great but that's kind of it.
I love Dark Forces II, and this did a lot of things wrong as an expansion.

For one Mara is far weaker than Kyle and you have very little in the way of force powers by the end, where we should have seen different things. The levels in Dark Forces II felt fine enough for me, but a lot of this game takes the piss with how silly the solutions are. The final levels also throw such retarded enemies at you it's rare you'll ever make it round a corner without save spamming.

That aside, the game is still enjoyable to play like DF2 and i liked a couple of bosses at the end so the core experience was still there. It's just been buried in a lot of shit.

“All-Around Frustrating Level Design”

Moving on to this title from “Dark Forces II”, I was somewhat hopeful that the confusing level geometry, poor pacing, weak shooting mechanics, or lackluster plot of that game would be improved on in this expansion. Unfortunately, none of these things were improved, and in many ways they experienced decreases in quality across the board.

This title starts off with a random encounter during Kyle Katarn’s training session with another Jedi Apprentice named Mara Jade. The plot is not really established here, but I wasn’t worried about that - I wanted to see if the shooting, difficulty, or level design was reworked to be more enjoyable and provide a better game flow. Unfortunately, pretty much nothing was changed from the previous title; good for those that enjoyed it, but terrible for myself due to my heavy dislike of that game. The first level was even more convoluted than the level that made me quit “Dark Forces II”, and the shooting felt just as poor as ever. It just felt like a lazy expansion to a game that might’ve been better in its day and age, but it just hasn’t aged well at all.

This one is more of a complement to “Dark Forces II”, but that doesn’t bode well for people who disliked that title. It sticks to complacency in many ways, and doesn’t try to change the formula (which I found personally to be greatly flawed) very much. I would Not Recommend this one for those who disliked the last title. It continues the poor shooting mechanics that plague the Jedi Knight/Dark Forces games, and a huge amount of jank stands in the way of enjoying it properly.

Final Verdict: 1/10 (Terrible)

Mysteries of the Sith is tedious to say the least. The game is much more obtuse than Dark Forces and Jedi Knight I ever were, I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for progression that turned out to be a random hole in the ceiling or a grate obscured under a platform. I really would not have beaten the game if not for two things: walkthroughs and cheats.

The game is quite a bit more difficult than the previous one, leaving the player fighting for every scrap of health and shields they can find, spending most of the time with low health and no shields. The beginning and end of the games are the worst parts in my opinion, with the middle levels being quite fun.

Story-wise there is not much to say, most of the story is just random Mara Jade adventures, which is pretty fun. This is the only game that stars Mara, and so it is great to see her personality. Kyle Katarn takes a back seat, only appearing at the beginning and end of the game. It does feel a bit irrelevant to the overall Dark Forces/Jedi Knight story, and you can really tell it is more of an expansion than a full-fledged sequel.

I don't know if I'd recommend playing it. I did not enjoy my time overall, I would say to just watch a compilation of the cutscenes and move on to Jedi Outcast if you are playing through the whole series like I am.

I actually enjoyed the story of this better than Dark Forces 2. Jan Mara is more like Kyle from the original Dark Forces, with her snarky attitude and chatter throughout the levels. Although there were no cutscenes like the original, the story and everything else played out more cohesively and was overall more interesting. Granted, I say this, thinking about middle section for the most part. Still a fun game after all these years, but I still have a few complaints about confusion of what to do or where to go that is just something that came with this era.

Infuriating, cryptic level design is the name of the game here, with some downright maddening levels towards the end where your guns are rendered useless and you have to fight some insanely difficult enemies with just your lightsaber. The story is also of questionable quality, since the actual "meat" of the plot only happens in the last hour or so of the game, and the rest of it is Kyle fighting stormtroopers and Mara going off to do a mission for Jabba's successor to secure supplies for the new republic. It gets three stars because it's more Dark Forces 2, however, because Dark Forces 2 is a great game.

7 months of development? 14 Levels? Oh no.

So, this is a direct expansion of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, which I gave a 2.5/5 due to horrible level design and some combat issues. Lo and behold, this expansion has even worse level design and combat issues!

Expect to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out the most random and incoherent puzzle, only to do it again a couple minutes later! And in between these incoherent puzzles are enemies that can tank much more shots than the first game, and will likely instantly land a shot on you upon seeing you, and are constantly hiding around corners!

So puzzles and general level design is absurdly confusing, combat is far more difficult and relentless than DFII, and enemies are placed oddly + frequently respawn. Hell, enemies even spawn directly behind you sometimes!

The ever so charming FMV cutscenes from DFII are gone, now just pretty bare bones in-game cutscenes, which all makes sense considering this was made in 7 months and on a much smaller budget. The story in general is worse. Only the intro and the ending are about the main story. The entire middle section of the game is just filler nonsense.

The aesthetics of the levels are also very boring and drab, at least DFII had interesting looking textures.

This game manages to have even worse level design and combat than DFII, all while dropping the ball on story. I didn't finish this game and just learned about the story separately through youtube and forums. The game just blows man.

If you disliked DFII at all, you'll hate Mysteries of the Sith.

(See all my Star Wars Rankings and reviews on my profile here, the list is titled "Star Wars Ranked.")

Given all the times I had to look up a walkthrough, even for the final boss, I wasn't sure whether this game was badly designed or I was just bad at it; now that I've seen others' reviews, I'm now thinking the former. The story's okay, even if it's unevenly paced and ignores Mara Jade's interesting backstory. But the level design and the overpowered enemies at the end... For the latter, the game practically punishes you for sticking with non-combative Light Side powers when you're forced to stick with your lightsaber for the rest of the game, even though the story's ultimately about trying to save someone from the Dark.

Pretty fun game, building off the base of Jedi Knight DF2. As such, the difficulty is pretty hard, since it expects you to have played the original. I think the cutscenes suffer as they are in engine and not FMV, and the level design is kind of all over the place. Some levels are really fun, but some also are very maze-like and have confusing layouts. Combat is really fun, and the latter part of the game is interesting. Definitely worth a play, though use the Remastered mod for a better looking experience.