Replay Value: Korriban's Inhumanity

One of the planets that you need to visit to get the Star Maps, which will lead to the final confrontation of Knights of the Old Republic is called Korriban (apparently, all the planets in the Star Wars universe need to have at least one letter pulling double duty).

This world is one of the homes of the Sith where a lot of their ancient leaders are buried. As the Sith are re-emerging in the galaxy and reclaiming their power, they establish an academy on the planet, getting new recruits and training them in the dark arts of the Sith while using them to also unearth the powerful artifacts there.

The game makes a nice, sometimes heavy handed, play on the different paths of the Light Side and the Dark Side through the way Dantooine and Korriban are portrayed.

BioWare also manages to build the chain of quests from the Sith Academy in a way that almost forces the player to act Sith-like. Basically, to get to the Star Map, you need to impress the leader of the academy and you can only do this by lying to him, killing some innocents and retrieving powerful Sith artifacts that can turn you to the Dark Side.

Acting like a Jedi, such as telling Uthar about Yuthura's plan to turn on him, gets you very little experience and limited plunder. BioWare manages to build a situation where being evil makes sense and provides more advantages to the players, which is quite the achievement in a genre where they always get the best stuff when they play the good characters.

The problem with Korriban and the Sith academy is that the evil here seems at times petty and unconvincing. They torment possible candidates at the entrance in a way that is more “Fight Club” than “Overlords of the Galaxy.” They allow one student to take out most of the others on his/her own rather than controlling the environment and creating competition that can show who is stronger with the Dark Side.

Apart from the Ulthar and Yuthura betrayal story, the Sith felt hollow in their evil, although a bit more convincing than the Light Side Jedi on Dantooine. Unfortunately, there's a hint that evil is just bullying and not too much into thinking.