This is an expansion to Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight, but by modern standards, Mysteries of the Sith might be its own game. It features Kyle Katarn and Mara Jade. Unfortunately, neither it nor any of the following games got the novella or audio drama treatment of the original Dark Forces or Jedi Knight games.
Gameplay wise, it lost the actors and switched to the standard animation, very blocky by modern standards. But it does have a certain charm, and there is a Remastered mod available that improves it. The only issue with the mod is it loses subtitles, awkward during cut scenes with a Hutt and no translator.
Story wise it’s different from the other titles. Jan Ors is conspicuously absent, instead, Mara Jade is on scene. This is after Karrde made the Smuggler’s Alliance and started passing intel to the New Republic. Mara and Kyle are mutually training each other. So it starts out playing as Kyle, then he goes off following a lead and now Mara is the player character.
Story of Mysteries of the Sith
The Mysteries of the Sith story begins with the two sparring on Altyr 5 base when the Empire shows up. They are using an asteroid as a base and staging center and launching attacks from there. Mara Jade has taken up with Kyle Katarn, trying to reclaim skills she’s lost. They are sparring right before the attack. Kyle has to defend the base, get to an Imperial shuttle and get to that asteroid. Then he has to stop the main weapon and hit the base self-destruct. Naturally, he also has to escape.
Then Kyle returns to base, and lets Mara know he’s found some info (which we aren’t privy too playing the levels) on that imperial asteroid that shows they are interested in a world called Dromund Kaas. He goes to investigate.
It’s nice that in Mysteries of the Sith lore, Mara gets to give us a hint how Karrde’s organization (in this case, her) is connected loosely to the New Republic. She runs errands, starting with an attempt to negotiate with a Hutt (who makes it difficult because she’s “a Jedi” like the one who killed Jabba, and demands an errand for himself). Then there is guarding a Republic shipment that includes a Jedi holocron. This is kind of beneath her until the pirates attack!
Obviously, Mara cannot let them get away with this. So she stows away in a crate, and then moves her way through the pirate ship until she gets to the ship heading to Kaerobani’s Base, the villain who plans to keep the holocron as a trophy.
We find here some noghri are taking bodyguard jobs for criminals as well as the usual villains and have to steal back the holocron.
Finally, Mara gets concerned that Katarn hasn’t gotten back to her and goes to look for him on Dromund Kaas. You can’t call a game Mysteries of the Sith without some connection to Sith, like a creepy planet and Sith Temple. Not surprisingly, he’s in trouble. It’s Kyle after all and Jan isn’t there to save him, not that she would be an expert on dark side worlds and Sith temples anyhow. Mara has to find him, wading through a swamp corrupted by the Sith and find her way through a temple with some truly creepy dangers like Sith zombies.
Gameplay
This gameplay for Mysteries of the Sith is a challenging one with a lot of puzzles, jumping, force powers and tough enemies. You can drown, get blown up or even get shocked by zombies. It’s easy to get lost, and you do need secrets to get force powers. Fortunately, there are plenty of walkthroughs if one needs them.
Naturally, in Mysteries of the Sith, one has a lightsaber, as well as all the other weaponry we’ve had since the original Dark Forces to work with. To get stars to improve the powers, you need to find secrets on each level. (I won’t pretend I don’t use walkthrough’s for this, as I rarely remember without them. Sometimes I don’t find them all even with them!) One has the various force powers like jumping, speed, and sight. I’m always in a hurry for ‘healing’ to become available personally, as health kits can be rare.
Important things to remember
- Which Force powers you choose and level up MATTER. In one level they are all you have. In the final levels, they, your lightsaber and wits are all you have to rely on. And you can’t change your mind and reassign the stars once you’ve finalized the selection. As with Dark Forces Jedi Knight, finding secrets to earn those stars to put into force powers is important.
- On level 4 you are in a race at the end. Once you trigger that self-destruct, the countdown begins. So be sure you saved in a good spot. Since when you trigger it you’re underwater, you need to get to the exit, leap out, take out the troops, hit 2 switches on opposite sides of the room FAST or one will turn off again. Then leap back in the water, swim to the opening door fast before it closes again, up, and leap out and leap down the cliffs to the exit and hit 4 switches to lower a speeder. Don’t ask me why the troops are shooting at you rather than obeying the evacuation warning!
To be honest, this is why I’d never consider hard level. The darn thing is difficult enough on medium or even easy without the time being shortened yet more! - At Kaatrasi spaceport, sabotage the villain’s ship BEFORE you go in the cantina, which is up the stairs. If you don’t, he’ll just get to his ship and get away and you lose.
Bugs:
Sometimes if you die and go back to a quick save, there is a weird repetitive noise. So I had to go back to a regular save to get rid of it more than once.
Secret Level:
I’ve never played this or tried it. But apparently there is a secret TESB level. https://web.archive.org/web/20010210175215/http://www.lucasarts.com/products/sith/hiddenlevel.htm
The original graphics do have kind of a retro charm to me, but there are fan Remastered mods to improve them. I used the Remaster 3 with openjkdf2.
The only issues I found in this fun Mysteries of the Sith mod were the lack of subtitles (awkward as I don’t understand Hutt) and in the end, when battling Kyle, his lightsaber doesn’t show up even when he’s hitting you with it. I also felt the change to a sports bra looked too ‘earth like’ for Mara. Not that I care her midriff shows, it just looked too generic like it came out of a retail store on Earth as opposed to something exotic like, say, Aayla Secura wore.
My Overall Review of Mysteries of the Sith:
Story wise it left me wanting more, it had just enough to intrigue me greatly. It left me with questions about Mara and Kyle’s relationship. How did he end up helping her train? How did they end up close enough that Mara Jade can reach him in the end? There was so much potential here if it had gotten the same novella or audio drama treatment as its predecessors. I understand why a game wouldn’t have room to explore that. The ending was a challenging puzzle but it really drove home the good vs evil aspect and connections to the Star Wars movies.
I found Mysteries of the Sith lots of fun gamewise, even if I do have to look up the secret locations. And on the last area especially I do need a walkthrough as I have no desire to get lost in that temple forever! I never did discover (or maybe did and didn’t realize it) the infamous ‘carbonite gun’ mentioned online in various places as being in it.
Mysteries of the Sith Lore and Continuity
The story takes place about a year after Thrawn invaded. That puts it right around the time of the Clone Emperor and Dark Empire. This explains why neither Mara Jade (who as the Emperor’s Hand would’ve been involved somehow) or Kyle Katarn (as an agent) were there for the action. It also may explain why Dromund Kaas was of interest to the Empire at the time. The clone emperor and his dark side adepts would be interested in any Sith world that had possible use to them.
Mara apparently built a new lightsaber for this, as she is using a purple one instead of Anakin’s lightsaber, which was Luke’s gift to her.
It is mentioned in the books (ie the Thrawn duology, Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future) that the noghri have been forced to take odd jobs often as bodyguards. That explains why they are here on the wrong side.
Mara Jade does mention Karrde in this, suggesting if his people were so sloppy (as the pirates) he’d have had them shot.
The planet Dromund Kaas was introduced here. I was never clear on why the Empire was interested at this point in time, but you can see Dromund Kaas in full glory in Star Wars the Old Republic vanilla base game as the Imperial capital, it has Sith, monsters (different ones) and a creepy Sith temple (but not as creepy as this, in my opinion!). How ysalamiri or vornskry ended up there, in between, is never explained. It isn’t too hard to guess, though, that the Republic or the Jedi might’ve wanted to discourage force sensitives (or anyone else) from visiting lest they re-establish the Sith. So I’d suspect them of being responsible!
Sith Zombies have similar appearances in Jedi Quest The Final Showdown by Jude Watson
Swamp wampas are all new. But SWTOR also adds a new wampa species on the planet Rishi.
Where Jan Ors was during this is a mystery in itself. Unlike Kyle, Mara served the Emperor as his Hand up until the very end. So it’s not overly surprising that she may be reluctant to trust her and be uncomfortable with Kyle trusting her.
Behind the Scenes
Voice actors:
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/video-games/Star-Wars-Jedi-Knight-Mysteries-of-the-Sith/
Heidi Shannon was Mara’s voice actress, she also did her in Galactic Battlegrounds, as well as voices in Force Commander and The Phantom Menace
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0788289/
Rino Romano was the voice of Kyle Katarn
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164179/?ref_=tt_ch
Development
https://web.archive.org/web/20000306153207/http://www1.lucasarts.com:80/products/sith/sith_faq.htm
These 2 are highly recommended reading! Blogs by the Developer.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081120023451/https://blogs.starwars.com/RyanKaufman/3
https://web.archive.org/web/20071013202823/https://blogs.starwars.com/RyanKaufman/4
Walkthroughs.
There are lots of them but I usually go with LightningBoltForever on youtube.
Gameboomer has a decent walkthrough that I use, but sometimes they get the left and right confused.
