Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

I saw TotalBiscuit streaming Jedi Academy for his esports team's sponsor deal with GOG.com. I thought it looked quite fun and wanted to play the game myself. Thus I bought the Jedi Knight bundle, although not from GOG but from Steam as it was cheaper there.

The bundle came with five games, of which three have been made in the 90s. I decided to skip them – over 15 years is bit too high an age for games like them – and started playing Jedi Academy, thinking it was the first of the two games left.

However, while looking up something, I noticed Academy was actually the last of the two. I guess they dropped the number from Jedi Knight since Kyle Katarn is no longer the protagonist in Jedi Academy (though he does appear in the game). And so I instead launched Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast to play it first.

Very typically to a Star Wars game (in my experience, anyway), Jedi Outcast starts you off with no lightsaber. Kyle was apparently a jedi in the previous games but has abandoned the Force in this one. Thus you are stuck with blasters until Kyle comes back to his senses.

In my opinion, Star Wars makes a poor setting for a shooter. The reasons for that being the lame sounds the guns have and how inaccurate they generally are. In addition to that, Outcast also has obnoxious autoaim. I found it impossible to hit a strafing enemy as the reticle kept jumping on the target and thus every shot kept missing.

After a while, the feature started to annoy me so much that I had to look for an option to turn it off. And there actually was one. Though it has a downside as well, as came apparent later on – turning the autoaim off also completely removes the reticle when in third person. It is not that big of an issue as one tends to use only the lightsaber in third person.

However, the reticle would still be helpful when aiming lightsaber throw. The reticle also changes into a hand icon when moved over an object that can be moved with Force. Couple times I probably would have found the correct route quicker if the third person reticle had been enabled.

Jedi Outcast is from the time when game maps were large (and low on detail). There usually is only one way to progress and often that way is hidden behind something. For few maps I took the time to find the paths myself but it got tedious as the game progressed and I eventually started looking for a walkthrough immediately after I got stuck somewhere.

The game gets quite a bit more enjoyable once you get your lightsaber and force powers. I mostly stopped using the guns after that. I did pull out the sniper rifle every once in a while to kill distant enemies, though. Learning earlier that it can be zoomed would have helped. And even better would have been to know it can be charged for that one-shot kill. I think I was already in Yavin Swamps when I finally learned the latter.

Enemies on the other hand were quite good with the sniper rifle, mostly because the shots cannot be reflected. That made Nar Shaddaa, the first mission after regaining Force powers, quite annoying. Unfortunately the sniper rifle is not as good against enemy Force users as they dodge the shots.

The lightsaber makes most enemies (at least in small numbers) harmless. As it should be. Too bad the game then introduces foes with lightsabers. I am certain there is finesse to the lightsaber combat but I did not bother learning the special moves (not in Jedi Outcast at least). I simply flailed the saber at enemies, which resulted sometimes in easier and sometimes more difficult fights. The final boss was surprisingly easy. however. Many of the earlier lightsaber enemies had been considerably harder, to the point I started skipping enemies by running past them.

Kyle has access to both light and dark side powers. I kept upgrading the light side ones since I thought there might be some consequences for picking the typically dark side ones. But apparently Kyle Katarn does not give two shits about the sides as nothing bad happened once I had to start upgrading the dark side powers due to already having all the light side ones.

While the music of Episodes IV to VI is sweet, it gets old having to listen to the same tunes repeatedly in Jedi Outcast that does not have original music at all. Also, I was somewhat surprised Luke Skywalker was not voiced by Mark Hamill who is known to have done video game voice-acting.