Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

Having finally played and finished this game, I think this is probably one of the best Star Wars stories that's been done. Coming off the heels of Andor (Watch it if you haven't, it's incredible), I've been looking for something that really feels Star Wars. This game gets it right.

While the plot is a little basic at times, it's the care for the world and the characters that really let this game shine. There's a ton of possibilities for customization and ways to play, but at the same time, the game does show its age pretty significantly at times. Playing on PC, I experienced an incredible amount of bugs, glitches, crashes, and even save wipes at times. Additionally, there are some segments that are really slow and tedious, which could honestly have just been removed entirely.

I wish Grouvee would allow half stars, because I think this is a 4 1/2 star game, but not a 5-star. It's just a little too dated for me graphically (Some of the stuff was still incredible regardless), and there were some game-breaking issues while playing it. All in all, this was a great story, fun game, cool moments, and an all-around good time. RIP BioWare, maybe one day we'll get cool games like this again.

Well...another one bites the dust. Another game I loved dearly at one point replayed recently that I feel didn't hold up.

I haven't played this since high school and I am sad to report that I did not love this game. It went from 5 stars (what I rated just on memory from 20 years ago) down to 3, for me. When I started it I was in love. It just felt so good. I loved the ambience of Taris, those Star Wars sights and sounds felt great. But the game sort of leveled off and never rose again for me.

I have to say, part of the reason I replayed this was because I watched a video where a guy rated 90+ RPGs and gave KotOR a grade of C. It rustled my jimmies for sure, but I decided to test those feelings and, unfortunately, I agree with his feelings on the game.

I don't want to get too far into why I didn't love it, but I'll just say the combat is very rudimentary, way too simple for the amount of it there is. The exact same can be said for the story and characters. The story, from the large to small scale, is very simple. Too simple for the volume of story there is. NPCs will blather on and on, and I felt like my time was being wasted because they had very little while using so many words.

Man, this is a bummer and a shock. A couple weeks ago I would have ranked this one the best games of all time. The same thing happened when I replayed Final Fantasy IX. 5 star in high school, not so much now.

I kind of want to replay KotOR 2 (I played that more recently, though still 12 or 13 years ago), but I don't want to sit through another one of these just yet.

A truly unmissable vid if you love Star Wars. Noah hitting it out the park again.

I knew vaguely about The Hero's Journey of course, but I had no idea that so much of Star Wars was just lifted wholesale from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces from 1949. The same Freud and Jung-influenced monomyth idea that the abominable Jordan Peterson is obsessed with is the foundation of everything Jedi, Sith, and plot. That it directly explains aspects like Jedi not being permitted to love is so darn interesting - if also disturbing in how it's influenced by his rampant sexism.

This effectively positions The Last Jedi and KOTOR 2 as much needed cultural critiques of Campbell. All the more reason to love them.

Although, to give it its due, I was surprised at how intelligently implemented the monomyth is in KOTOR 1. Both games really understood Star Wars at its sketchy source.

Might read The Hero With a Thousand Faces before playing KOTOR 2 again. I haven't played it since release and knowing exactly what it's subverting would be mighty interesting.

Had a really weird bug with KotOR this time. Which honestly kind of describes my playthrough. This time I spawned in as a full darkside man with no name, a weird face, 0 feats, 0 powers, and 1 hp. The game shortly crashed thereafter. I had tried to go back to the Shadowlands to see if I could fix my bug from last time but I went in solo because I thought the enemies would respawn. Turns out there's a Forcefield and I needed the companion you get on Kashyyyk to unlock the forcefield again. I decided to load my autosave instead of running back and the game done went and did a bad thing. I didn't take a picture but it was super weird. This will probably be the last update before I finish the game so review incoming likely tomorrow.

Edit: nevermind the game crashed AGAIN when I just traveled to Korriban. Good Lord this is buggier than a game from that other studio that starts with B. I guess that's what I get for playing on Xbox and not PC

Well this is certainly going to be an experience. Due to a glitch, I kind of just have to leave a companion on a planet for the rest of the game. More detailed spoilers for Kashyyyk follow Zalbaar had to stay on Kashyyyk because I guess I killed the ritual beast before I was supposed to? The blade for Bacca's sword didn't drop when I killed the Terentatek so I have two options. Either reload an earlier save and try again, kill Freyyar, or just leave. I'm playing a fairly neutral-dark side leaning character, kind of a Jotaro Kujo. Asshole and usually takes the good path, even if he has to bash a couple heads. So killing Freyyar is out of the question because that helps Czerka, the enemy. I'm not reloading because I quite frankly don't care about Zalbaar or Kashyyyk or the Droid attack on the Wookies. Especially not on my 5th playthrough. So I'm just peacing out. I'm not sure if it's because I'm playing the Xbox version on Xbone Backwards Compatibility this time around instead of the PC version, because I can't be arsed with making it run with no issues on my laptop or if I have just had good luck in the past but I've been running into so many more glitches in this playthrough.

On the plus side I've discovered how amazing the dark side powers are. One of them, Plague, has a DC of 100, meaning it literally can't be saved against. It drains all attributes by TWELVE points over twelve seconds. Ungodly. Especially now that I understand how D&D works. It's obscene.

1 out of 4 main star map planets done, on to Tatooine. Hopefully I can pick up some power converters at Toshi Station.