Star Wars Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith - 13/20 hours

I did not think very much of the end of this game. The holocron I was defending as of my last post turned out to be nothing and Kyle Katarn's mysterious business turned out to be discovering an ancient Sith temple and then suddenly going evil for no reason. It's something that's always bugged me about the less sophisticated "corrupted by power" stories - power is only attractive when it's the power to do something. And so, a misguided hero who seeks out power is doing so in order to accomplish their heroic goals. If they then find that, say, their incomparable battle skills, which served them so well in defeating the evil empire, are a more expedient way of getting their allies to "do the right thing" than the sometimes messy process of persuasion and democracy, then that is corruption. To be like Kyle Katarn and go from loyal Jedi holding a significant leadership position in the new Republic to cackling Sith madman bent on universal conquest doesn't make a damned bit of sense.


Oh well, nobody ever accused the Star Wars franchise of an abundance of subtlety.

It's funny but the back half of the game played out almost exactly as I expected. I got to the final level around hour 12 and had to activate the invincibility cheat for the last couple of levels because the enemies suddenly got very difficult. But don't worry, I didn't have an easy time of it. The last level alone was a huge maze which took me more than an hour to beat, even with the help of a walkthrough. In the end, I wound up wandering around for far too long because I didn't realize that certain murals were part of a puzzle. Mazes and I don't really mix.

My plan is to just start over and play the first part of the game until my time runs out. Mysteries of the Sith was a damned good value as an expansion pack, being just as long and complex as the base game and despite the story taking a random turn into a completely untelegraphed character betrayal, it was still recognizably a Star Wars story, and Star Wars stories are always fun - even when they're kind of crummy.