As someone who recently completed Dark Forces 2 for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it, I was looking forward to what I had hoped would be an expansion that built on the fast-paced, run-and-gun gameplay that had me hooked on the base game. However, while the satisfying gunplay remains intact, many of the frankly baffling design choices by the developers make this game a chore to play.

In terms of the combat, it's one of the only aspects of the game I have virtually no issues with, primarily because it was mostly unchanged from the solid foundation set by Dark Forces 2; however, the new weapons are somewhat of a mixed bag. The scoped stormtrooper rifle is a welcome addition to the weapon sandbox, allowing the player to accurately pick off more dangerous enemies from a safe distance. The carbonite gun feels like a gimmick weapon due to its abysmal range, low ammo capacity, and how long it takes to freeze enemies. However, I will admit it was quite satisfying to freeze some of the tougher enemies and shatter them with a single punch. I never even bothered to use the seeker rail charges due to how rare they were and because the regular charges were far more plentiful and got the job done just fine. And the new pistol... I seriously have no idea how it's different from the Bryar pistol, and given how ineffective the Bryar pistol is in comparison to the stormtrooper rifle, I felt it was overall a worthless addition to the game.

The most egregious component of the game for me was the objectives, which were often inconspicuous and occasionally downright misleading. As a specific example, there was one part of the game where I was at the entrance to a large room filled with lightning and a corridor running through the room. However, the corridor had fallen and was too low to pass through. Would you:
A. Search the area for a switch to turn off the electricity in the room and run across the top of the corridor?
B. Use something like force pull to raise the corridor to allow you to safely pass through the room?
C. Run straight into the lightning-filled room without any sort of protection?
After trying options A and B for about 15 minutes or so, I eventually said "screw it" and ran right into the room, only to realize the lightning was purely visual and I could pass safely through without being electrocuted. When they aren't outright nonsensical, the means of progression are more often than not easily overlooked, such as a vent being hidden underneath an elevator or having to use force persuasion on a statue (seriously, what sense does that make?) These kinds of obscure passages would be perfectly fine if they were reserved for secret areas, but when the player is required to stop what feels like every 15 minutes to find how to progress, it feels like the game is doing everything in its power to stop the player from having fun. This problem is further compounded by the inclusion of mandatory backtracking at several points in the game, which will lead to many instances of scouring an apparent dead-end only to realize you had to revisit a previous area the entire time.

This wasn't ultimately what made me quit playing, however. That distinction belongs to a particular section of the game in which all of the player's ranged weapons are disabled. Fair enough, I enjoyed using the lightsaber due to its satisfying impact and respectable damage. However, the developers decided it would be a good idea to force the player to fight an enemy that damages the player when they get too close while simultaneously forcing the player to get close in order to do damage. The only other way I could find online to damage this enemy was to use force destruction, an ability which I didn't have. I tried simply running past this enemy, only to find out that it would pursue me throughout the rest of the level. While I could technically complete the previous mission again and put points into force destruction, my patience with this game has worn too thin for me to even bother booting it up again.

Despite having some memorable moments (the prison break was actually creatively executed and relatively straightforward) and retaining the frantically fun gunplay of its base game, Mysteries of the Sith collapses under the weight of a variety of baffling design choices. If you haven't played Dark Forces 2, I'd highly recommend getting that instead. However, if you do decide to get this game, I'd actually recommend playing with a walkthrough handy (something I wouldn't normally recommend for a game) rather than experiencing the sheer drudgery of scouring each labyrinthine level for whatever inconspicuous objective you overlooked.

It's a fantastic game, but this shameless release has some huge compatability issues. Don't expect to play without installing a battery of unofficial patches. If it's not going to run on a modern computer, they shouldn't sell it.

Having played both Star Wars: Dark Forces and Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, I felt obligated and ready to fully play through this expansion prior to starting up Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. I have to say, given how much of a hardcore Star Wars fan I am, even I struggled to finish this game. Don't get me wrong - bits of it are enjoyable, but it suffers from the same clunky mechanics, gameplay and graphics as its main counterpart, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. But unlike the main game, the storyline is extremely boring and lacks a central unifying force. Stuff just happens. The main game was a race for Kyle to stop Jerec and his union of Dark Jedi from unleashing the Valley of the Jedi - but in here, you more or less go from planet to planet helping the Rebel Alliance quick with a series of tasks. But it all feels jumbled and confusing. Unlike the previous games, I found myself questioning numerous times what the goal of the mission was. "Why is my character here? How does this relate to what I was doing before? Etc.".
I must also add, the final act of the game is very frustrating and will require religious saving after every enemy kill, simply because the mechanics behind Lightsaber combat are that bad.
The game is not entirely without charm, as we do get to enjoy a SW experience from the point of view of Mara Jade, a fan-favorite among old EU fans, but it is a shame they didn't give her a game with a stronger, more engaging storyline. I would probably never have the urge to play this again, having finished it.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is an expansion to the excellent Dark Forces II and features Kyle Katarn once again and a new player character in the shape of a certain Mara Jade, another favourite character of mine. Can the expansion match the great base game? This is what I think of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith.

It is with a very heavy heart that I write my first negative review, made worse by the fact that it is an expansion to a game I loved. Mysteries of the Sith, or MotS as I shall refer to it was perhaps one of the biggest disappointments I can remember having. Dark Forces II was by no means perfect but MotS just frustrated me to no end. The levels and some of the ways to progress forward were bordering on illogical at times, and it just fell flat. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the game, despite hearing that the last two levels were the best ones. I got to the tenth level of the fourteen level game but could play no more as I was simply not enjoying myself and I kept putting it off or turning off every twenty minutes. A shame.

The story is as bare bones as you could get. It is five years after Kyle Katarn's defeat of Jerec and his Dark Jedi and he has taken on an apprentice; Mara Jade. As I said above, Mara Jade is a favourite of mine but not even she, or Kyle for that matter, could make me enjoy this game. The Imperial Remnant attack the New Republic outpost they are in and the first few levels you control Kyle as he beats back the assault through what I felt was a weak start. Afterward, Kyle takes off to investigate ancient Sith ruins and you switch to Mara, who then runs errands for the New Republic and a Hutt crime lord. Yup, you read that right. I never made it this far but the last two levels are in the Sith ruins where Kyle went.

Gameplay is much the same as Dark Forces II, with a few additions to your arsenal and some new Force powers to unlock and use. However, the level design is certainly not to the same standard. Dark Forces was tricky to navigate at times, Dark Forces II was more linear and and was better for it with just a few places where you were unsure to go. In MotS, it was a regular occurrence. I lost count of the number of times I struggled to find the way forward only to have to do something illogical to progress. And don't even get me started on the grates. If you hit a dead end in this game, backtrack and look in every dark corner and you'll likely find the way forward in the form of a grate that you can slice open with the lightsaber for no reason. It's level design gone mad. Dark Forces II had this too but no where near as much, and it was obvious when you needed to do it. Horrible.

Gone are the FMV cutscenes that were cheesy and camp, but they were infinitely better than in-game cutscenes at the time. MotS is proof of that. The in-game cutscenes here weren't great, looking every bit a game from the 90's. It simply wasn't as good as the FMV from Dark Forces II, or even Dark Forces. The characters were poorly developed and they didn't really go anywhere in this story. When Kyle Katarn and Mara Jade can't liven up a game you've gone wrong somewhere. Very disappointing.

There are some positives. The new Force powers were nice to use and some of the level design was great, too often let down by poorly designed sections that frustrated me. Additionally armaments like the new sniper scope to attach to the Imperial Blaster were excellent and very useful in taking down tricky opponents from distance. You also get to play as Mara Jade! If that isn't a positive I don't know what is. Soundtrack as always was excellent, as it is in every Star Wars game.

Overall, I can't in good faith recommend this game. I couldn't enjoy large parts of it, and many times I felt like repeatedly banging my head off a wall. I couldn't even bear to finish it, which isn't like me but I didn't want to force myself to play something I ultimately didn't enjoy. The weakest entry in the series, a massive disappointment after loving the first two so much and a game I don't think I'll play again. Maybe give this one a miss.

While the game itself is good and the story is good i sadly have to put "not recommend" due to the game constantly crashing, can play about 2 missions and then suddenly when i throw a granade or shoot a bullet the game freezes and just shuts down.
It has happend on W10,W11,W7

The game itself, I enjoy. Cool level designs that encourage exploration, good weapons, fun story, etc. If you've played any of the other Jedi Knight games you know what you're getting into. From what I've seen this definitely the weakest link in the Jedi Knight series but not by much.

This particular release, however, I can not recommend.
To be honest the release is trash. Music is missing, thing won't even run properly or at all without having to find a bunch of fixes. Literally asks for a CD if you don't have a CD drive so you'll at least need a virtual drive. The epitome of lazyness. I've heard people defend it because it's "old", but if it's old, the proper thing to do is not re-release it at all or provide fixes (which obviously exist if you search the forums here) to make it playable on modern hardware that purchasers are going to play on. In short, that fine print in the system requirements is there for a reason and you would do wise to take it seriously.

If you're willing to jump through hoops in order to play this game, get it, but get it on sale. If you want a game you can just install and play, look for something else.

-Quick Review-
This has been the worst Star Wars game I’ve played so far. Of course, there’s always a loyal fanbase willing to take the steps to mod the game to improve the gameplay, and that’s the route to go to make Mysteries of the Sith playable… (and if you want to get the game, you definitely should go that direction) but I’m not reviewing Mysteries of the Sith: the Mod. I’m reviewing the game I installed by default on steam and boy do I have stuff to say about this game… but before we do that.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is a story driven (toggle-able) first or third person shooter developed by LucasArts and released in 1998. You play as Kyle Katarn for the first four level then the rest of the game you play as Mara Jade. It’s part of the Jedi Knight Series, but that requires a reminder of the order of these games because the names don’t make any sense. First Game was “Dark Forces”, then “Dark Forces II”, next we have the expansion-game we’re reviewing now: “Mysteries of the Sith”, then there was “Jedi Outcast”, and lastly, we had “Jedi Academy”.

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/0tQR61ezMcE

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: There’s not much to say about the story in Mysteries of the Sith. There’s a short Cutscene before and after you finish the level. Calling this an “expansion” is fair because there’s less here than in any of the other Jedi Knight Games. The game starts out with Kyle Katarn training his apprentice Mara Jade. The first few levels are played as our boy Kyle when suddenly a New Republic base gets attacked by the Empire.
After the first few levels are finished Kyle says it’s time for them to part ways because he’s discovered a Sith Temple on Dromund Kaas. You play the rest of the game as Mara Jade assisting the New Republic, you’ll deal with a Hutt and some Pirates until eventually Mara learns they’ve lost contact with Kyle on Dromund Kaas and she goes there to find him.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388036900

Gameplay: I’ve gone on the record to describe the basic gameplay experience for Mysteries of the Sith as “Run through the level until you hit a dead end… then backtrack all the way to the beginning trying to find the one small hole/vent/door. Then you do it all over again, play until you hit a dead end backtrack until you find the stupid secret tunnel which lets you move on to the rest of the game.
The combat is broken up with your choice of Lightsaber, Blaster, Force Powers, and thermal detonators. You can toggle the camera between first- and third-person view. I played mostly in first person with lightsaber combat because occasionally Mara would deflect incoming damage, and I’ll take every advantage I can get. However, there were sections where all enemies were dramatically out of my range, and then I turned to Ye ‘ol Blaster Rifle to scratch those hard-to-get-itches.
You also have the typical Jedi Knight / Dark Forces UI with the Red Health and Green Shield Icon in the bottom left of the screen, and Ammo and available Force power in the bottom right of the screen.
I only played the single player of Mysteries of the Sith, short of experimenting with character customizations and loading into a multiplayer level by myself. There aren’t any bots you can add to the multiplayer either, so you’re just wandering around by yourself.
But it’s worth noting that there is Multiplayer, and you can set up your avatar and lightsaber color. If you wanted to, you could set up a LAN game, you could probably play online too… but the network provider options are “Serial Connection”, “Modem Connection”, or “Internet TCP/IP Connection” for DirectPlay. First: I don’t have any friends who want to play this game, which we couldn’t get from playing any of the Star Wars Battlefront games. Second: IP connections are pretty hit or miss, I’m sure I’d need to troubleshoot and download something or do port forwarding to play online.
However, just note there *IS* multiplayer, there are still people online who join communities for the Jedi Knight Games and would likely play with you if you joined those communities.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3390519116

Conclusion: Apparently, when it first came out the reception for Mysteries of the Sith was generally positive, with many people saying there was room for improvement. Even now you can see the pretty standard divide between people who like Mysteries of the Sith and those that don’t; part of the blame might fall on the port available on Steam for the poor condition I found Mysteries of the Sith, but this was my least favorite game in the Jedi Knight Series.
As always you can do the work to fix the game up to make it much more functional, attractive looking, and more playable. With my review, I’m coming from the perspective of an un-modded basic installation of Mysteries of the Sith.
If you’re already a fan of the game, go ahead and grab it on a sale and fix it up with mods. For anyone else interested in playing Mysteries of the Sith, brace yourself for what you’re about to get into. I could recommend any of the other Jedi Knight Games pretty easily, but not this one. I fought my way through this game looking forward to being done with it every step of the way.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this series, but this particular incarnation was flat out unplayable. Maybe it was the revamp, but it DEFINITELY includes the controls (default settings are what a pirate walrus would use, everything inverted and at 100,000 sensitivity) as something that's a huge deterrent.

The story? I'll never know! There's no HUD and no guiding principle, you just have to visit every room until you get it right and hope you saved, or you're dead. I love the general story of these games, but the gameplay is well...unplayable.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss 8 bucks goodbye.

EDIT: You look for Kyle and this game has literally nothing to do with the Sith. You're pretty much killing Hutt thugs the entire game.

Running Win10 64Bit on a modern PC (i7 Skylake, GTX1080) this game does not launch out of the box,
no surprise here.
However when fiddligng around with compat modes and turning on direct play the only thing
I can see is a dialog box asking for a CD.
Here is a thing: Its 2017, I don't hav an optical drive anymore and I never recieved a CD bying this game either.
This should have been fixed from the get go. Instead this was sold in a bundle hoping noone will complain cause other stuff works ...

HOT TAKE

All I am going to say is that the reviews you have read highlighting how boring the story is are completely accurate. The new weapons are horrible and the final kicker for me was the level design. MY GOD. The worst level design. Ever. Don't get me wrong, DFII didn't give any guidance either - it was just here you are and off you go! But Mysteries of the Sith is not intuitive in it's level design at all. This makes it really difficult to even begin knowing where to head on certain missions and this coupled with the cheap mechanics makes for an infuriating grind of a game.

If you haven't, play Dark Forces II instead....its a masterpiece.

PROS:

+ A playable Mara Jade
+ Some improved textures from the games that came before it.
+ Strong starting level which sets the tone.

CONS:

- Boring story
- Horribly designed levels
- No live action cutscenes (like in DFII)
- No light or dark ending choice (like in DFII)

FINAL COMMENTS

After playing through Dark Forces II properly in 2021 (and still loving it), I really wanted to like this game as much as I did the last. Got 2 missions out from the finale and just couldn't take it anymore. The only reason I have more time logged in this game than DFII is due to the horrid design and mechanics mentioned.

NOTES

In regards to the compatibility issues people have been having....I ran this via Steam version (obvs) with no issues on Windows 10. No need for patches or fixes here. The only thing is that the Steam overlay does not work in-game so there is no chat or screenshots.