History YMMV / JediKnightDarkForcesII

** Remotes, a.k.a. those little floating spherical drones used for lightsaber practice, serve as AttackDrones at the fuel station on Sulon. They're tiny and move around a lot, making them very difficult to hit. They also keep themselves well out of lightsaber range forcing you to shoot at them, which is very risky inside the fuel pipes - any stray blaster bolts will bounce around and eventually hit the fuel, causing explosions.

* PortingDisaster: The initial release of the game on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}. The original game and ''Mysteries of the Sith'' were basically thrown onto Steam with no fixes for their various limitations as Windows programs developed in 1997. Most players on modern systems were greeted with the games being unable to start or display correctly, the cutscenes and menus being shown in a window while gameplay was fullscreen, no background music (due to the game using CD audio for it) and the games crashing ''constantly'' during loading and menu screens, effectively making it impossible to even ''resume'' the paused gameplay without loading a savestate. Luckily, a patch for ''Jedi Knight'' dropped in mid 2016 made the menus and cutscenes run in fullscreen, fixed the crashes and restored the music (all of which had been already fixed in the Website/GOGDotCom version), with similar fixes for ''Mysteries of the Sith'' dropping a year later. The game can still have trouble running with hardware acceleration without the use of an external fan fix, but modern CPUs are powerful enough to run the game in software mode at high resolutions and frame rates without using the graphics card.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: The live-action cutscenes consist entirely of actors (and a few props, such as a bed) filmed against a greenscreen and superimposed onto ''very'' cheap and simple CGI scenes. While the videos are so heavily compressed that everything appears smooth and blurry anyway, it's still very noticeable, particularly when there's some object involved that's held by both a CGI character and an actor, such as Morgan's disk. When the CGI droid 8t88 holds it, it's very obviously a flat and simple-looking CGI model, but when Kyle later holds it it's a real prop with details and reflections. It's even more blatant when Kyle gets his lightsaber - a flat, diffuse CGI cylinder pops out of a CGI droid, followed by Kyle picking up a detailed, metallic lightsaber prop from offscreen.

** Levels 12-14, the three final levels in ''Mysteries of the Sith'', present a DifficultySpike so steep they make every other level in the ''whole series'' feel like cake in comparison, mainly because they take place within a Dark Force nexus that disables your guns entirely, forcing you to use your lightsaber, which is [[AwesomeButImpractical slow and clunky]]. Level 12 is not so extremely hard as it's extremely annoying - it's a BubblegloopSwamp infested with [[GoddamnedBats goddamned mailocs and dart-spitting plants]], and the occasional [[SavageWolves vornskrs]] are easily bypassed. But then you enter the [[TempleOfDoom Sith Temple]]. First and foremost, this is a Dark Side temple in more ways than one - it's so ''literally'' dark that your field light won't do you much good, meaning you have to use your Force Seeing a lot, which comes with some problematic side-effects. Force Seeing disables the lighting altogether making every surface equally lit, and since most rooms in the temple use the exact same flat stone texture, it's often very difficult to navigate despite being able to see in the dark. The temple is also full of {{Moon Logic Puzzle}}s, but what makes the spike really take off is the temple's inhabitants. The lightsaber-wielding Sith statues aren't too bad, but the others are major DemonicSpiders - the temple is teeming with the aforementioned vornskrs in every corner, and they later get joined by [[OurZombiesAreDifferent noghri]] who spam Force Lightning with perfect accuracy and take several hits to kill. It's no wonder [[spoiler:Kyle went insane]] in this place.

** The game is noticeably harder than the original ''Dark Forces''. Enemies are more intelligent, faster, more accurate, and deal more damage, your movement speed is slower so it's harder to avoid blaster bolts, ammo pickups are much more scarce (especially if you don't search for secrets), and levels are more complex and require significantly more platforming. ''Jedi Knight'' is more difficult on Normal than ''Dark Forces'' was on Hard.

** The game is noticeably harder than the original ''Dark Forces''. Enemies are more intelligent and difficult, more accurate, and deal more damage, your movement speed is slower so it's harder to avoid blaster bolts, ammo pickups are much more scarce (especially if you don't search for secrets), and levels are more complex and require significantly more platforming. ''Jedi Knight'' is more difficult on Normal than ''Dark Forces'' was on Hard.

** The game is noticeably harder than the original ''Dark Forces''. Enemies are more intelligent and difficult as well as more accurate (though they still miss a decent number of their shots), your movement speed is slower so it's harder to avoid blaster bolts, ammo pickups are much more scarce (especially if you don't search for secrets), and levels are more complex and require significantly more platforming. ''Jedi Knight'' is more difficult on Normal than ''Dark Forces'' was on Hard.

** The game is noticeably harder than the original ''Dark Forces''. Enemies are more intelligent and difficult, your movement speed is slower so it's harder to avoid blaster bolts, ammo pickups are much more scarce (especially if you don't search for secrets), and levels are more complex and require significantly more platforming. ''Jedi Knight'' is more difficult on Normal than ''Dark Forces'' was on Hard.

* SequelDifficultySpike: While most of the expansion pack is moderately challenging for someone who has beaten the original game, the difficulty rises ''sharply'' during the final three missions, which might very well be the toughest in the entire series. Aside from more demanding combat, the game features several puzzles, some of which appear to be taken right out of some of Creator/LucasArts' graphic adventure games, making it definitely harder in that regard than either of the two previous installments.

* PortingDisaster: The initial release of the game on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}. The original game and ''Mysteries of the Sith'' were basically thrown onto Steam with no fixes for their various limitations as Windows programs developed in 1997. Most players on modern systems were greeted with the games being unable to start or display correctly, the cutscenes and menus being shown in a window while gameplay was fullscreen, no background music (due to the game using CD audio for it) and the games crashing ''constantly'' during loading and menu screens, effectively making it impossible to even ''resume'' the paused gameplay without loading a savestate. Luckily, a patch for ''Jedi Knight'' dropped in mid 2016 made the menus and cutscenes run in fullscreen, fixed the crashes and restored the music (all of which had been already fixed in the Website/GOGDotCom version), with similar fixes for ''Mysteries of the Sith'' dropping a year later.

* ThatOneAttack: Force Grip when used by enemies. You can't dodge and it does a lot of damage. Thankfully boss battles do have health pick ups.

* OddlyNamedSequel: Even the developers themselves don't seem to agree on whether its ''Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II'' or ''Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight''.