While I played (and watched) through this game long before the Mandalorian came out, I can't help but mention how I think Star Wars has been at its best OUTSIDE of the movie series. The Mandalorian's episodic nature along with its space western themes breathed more life into the Star Wars planets than any of the political insanity of the movies. In a similar way, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic offers a more immersive experience into the Star Wars universe than the movies ever did.

Immersive Star Wars

KOTOR breathes life into Star Wars just like any other RPG unfolds a complex and robust world- by having NPCs crafted with interesting backstories and dialogue filled with lore. When chatting up Twi'lek in a bar, expect to learn more about racism in the Star Wars universe. When deciding to talk to the Tusken Raiders in a certain way, expect to learn some mind-blowing (though non-canon) history about Tatooine. When training to become a Jedi or a Sith, prepare to question the black and white nature of the dichotomy presented in the movies.

Tons of Choices

And, if it wasn't already obvious, this game is a true RPG, where your decisions can dramatically change how the story goes. I know there's at least the light side route and the dark side route, not sure if there's a neutral way. This will be determined by the multitude of choices you're given in dialogue throughout the game. There's some really evil stuff you can do in this game, and it's just so Star Wars. The writers of KOTOR literally threw the family-friendly guardrails out the window to give you some truly evil/dark-side options in this game. Look forward to seeing if you can resist them yourself as you progress.

The game is huge, with several robust side quests that shouldn't be missed, and many of them emotionally driven. These aren't just fetch quests. For example, early on in the game, there's a way to save a group of outcasts who have been inflicted with a deadly disease by helping to develop a medicine. But, you don't have to do anything for them if you don't want to.

Gameplay/Combat

In terms of gameplay, the game is like other real-time RPGs where you choose a weapon and then your character auto-attacks, subject to hit rates for every light saber swing or blaster shot. You can take advantage of pausing to set up a queue of actions, like using a medpac, shooting a blaster shot, then switching to another weapon, for example. Upon leveling up, you distribute your stats as you want.

I will say for newer gamers, the controls and "feel" of combat might feel dated, even if you are a big fan of other Bioware titles. I think it has to do with the overall speed of the character actions and graphical quality.

Story/Plot

Like I said, there are different paths to tread in this game. But, either way you'll get an amazing story. Like I said before, some of the smaller arcs and side quests have a lot of weight to them and don't feel superfluous. You will encounter several Star Wars species you're familiar with and get to learn a whole history about them. Sure some of the history isn't "canon" anymore, but a lot of it still hasn't been contradicted by Disney yet.

For those that don't care at all about Star Wars, this game STILL stands its ground. If you're intrigued, but don't really care for the Star Wars brand, it's still a really great RPG. And, again, it does Star Wars better than the movies, so it might even be a chance to forget why you don't care for Star Wars.

I just want to start this off by saying that I would give this 3.5/5 if I could.

Knights of the Old Republic is, unfortunately, a game that the more I play of it, the less I like it. This has been my 4th or 5th runthrough. At its core is an okay Star Wars story told in the form of an RPG. And not just any RPG, but a heavily modified d20 system. That's right, we've got Dungeons and Dragons in our Star Wars.

The game operates basically the same as D&D 3rd Edition. A d20 (20 sided dice) is "rolled" when the player or enemies make an attack or skill check, and that number is compared to the Defense rating of the enemy or the Difficulty Class of the skill check. If the number rolled is bigger, the attack or check succeeds. Damage is then "rolled" with a d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12. The Player's main 6 stats, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma all affect various facets of gameplay under the hood.

However, this being a video game, all of that stuff is done under the hood, just like any other video game RPG that does this style of gameplay. The familiar terms and variables to any D&D veteran most certainly lends itself to build making and strategizing, but the game is playable enough without prior knowledge of the d20 system that the player can really just do whatever they think is cool and not have any issues. Usually. More on that later.

Enough talk about Dungeons and Dragons let's actually talk about the game now. The game operates as a "Real Time With Pause" game, much like other games by Bioware, such as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and Dragon Age Origins. This means that while the game operates in seemingly real time, it is actually turn based, just all the turns happen at once. If that doesn't make sense, let me try to explain it further. You don't actually make attacks like you would in a real time game, like Diablo. You select the attack action and the game "rolls" the results for you in an imitation of Dungeons and Dragon's turn based round combat. However at the same time, the AI is also making its decisions attacking you and you companions, rolling for attacks and such, all in real time. But it still is operating in "rounds" like Dungeons and Dragons. It's actually kind of hard to explain it, but essentially it is taking all the turns so fast and with a certain amount of automation that it's basically real time. That's where the "with pause" aspect comes into play. You can pause the gameplay, survey the situation, and relay orders to you and your two companions. Overall this leads to a fairly passable combat system. It's certainly not engaging, but it is not frustrating. The most interesting thing in combat is the Force Powers. They allow the player to feel powerful, like a Sith Lord, Jedi Master, or something in between.

The story on the other hand, decidedly lacks that something in between. The story is fairly black and white, with few exceptions. Players must either kick puppies and be incredibly petty as a dark sider, or kiss up to everyone and preach pacifism in between the wholesale slaughter of the gameplay as a light sider. It is very much a story of extremes and there is not really a place for a neutral option, despite one of the companions the player can take with them being a Gray Jedi. Often times, there were moments where I was stuck between two dialogue options that either a 60s comic book villain would say or some generic Star Wars light side ham that my character wouldn't.

The companions are probably the most interesting characters, though some of them do lack depth, and almost feel as though they just had to have 9 because the graphic designer produced a companion select square and it had 9 spaces. For example, Juhani is such an afterthought in this game that she wasn't even included in an emergency crew meeting where even the utility droid had a say in events. She does have slightly more depth than the main villain or Zalbaar. The main villain is so one dimensional it's almost insulting to one dimensional characters everywhere to call him such. The token Wookie, Zalbaar, has about as much emotional depth as someone with a Chewbacca soundboard staring at you with dead blank eyes.

Which is an area where this game does not shine. While the areas and combat animations look very fine for a 2003 video game, the facial animations are quite not good, even for the time, in my opinion. The textures are often muddy on aliens as well. There are about a dozen models used for the hundreds of human characters in this game, not including unique ones, like your companions. The animation on the unique models is better but still not very good. Characters have no way of holstering weapons and will fling their weapons about wildly when speaking which just looks goofy and silly. Fortunately while I do decry the game's writing as lacking in subtlety, it does function well as a Star Wars story, so I managed to get over the goofy animations during dialogue. The soundtrack, done by Jeremy Soule manages to capture the spirit of John Williams's iconic film scores, if not exactly match it, which certainly helps the mood and immersion.

Based on all of these merits I would almost say that it's an instant classic from a kookier age of gaming. But unfortunately the game does have a few major issues and I have a personal major issue with it. The first major issue I have with the game is how god-awful the pacing is. The pacing is JRPG levels bad in the beginning. The tutorial planet, Taris, is by far the longest planet in the game. It's not even necessarily a bad planet, but it is a tutorial planet and it does not feel like you're really playing the game when you're on it, not the least of which is because you do not have any Jedi powers when you are on it. Which is fine, from a narrative standpoint. There's nothing wrong with that at all. But the issue with that is that you have to take 2 levels of a non-Jedi class, minimum, before you even land on this planet. And with this being Dungeons and Dragons, the level cap is 20. Those 2 or more levels you gain during the tutorial count against your level cap. This means that if you plan to spec into a Force Power heavy class like the Jedi Consular, you could potentially lose out on 8 out of 20 levels of Force Powers and Force Point growth. It's annoying as can be on replays, and each time I play Taris I find myself hating it more and more. I feel as though it restricts player agency, and is far too long for its own good. It does make sense narratively, but that doesn't make it enjoyable. The planet also features a lot of running back and forth between 4 different areas, all with their own sub areas, all separated by loading screens and restricted by fetch quests. After you leave the tutorial planet, you go to another tutorial planet, this time teaching you how to be a Jedi through much less running back and forth. A solid third of this game is tutorial planet. Even after the tutorial planets, the game still feels very tedious at times, involving long areas that the player has to run through and run back through. No planet is as tedious as the initial planet however. Oddly enough the planet I liked the most is one that features the second most amount of running back and forth. Manaan.

Manaan is the single planet that breaks the mold of rigid black and white. It's a planet that prides itself on neutrality, inhabited by the Selkath, a race of aquatic fish people. The main side quest involves a trial where the Republic individual is actually guilty. It invokes an interesting question of "Do I get this person off the hook, knowing it is the "wrong" thing to do, because it helps my side in the war? Or do I submit him to punishment, because it is right, even though it would hurt the war effort?" It's an interesting subtlety that is sorely lacking in the rest of the game. Every time I play the game I go to this planet expecting a tedious fetch quest planet, because I forget how the planet is the best written in the entire game.

My second major issue with this game ties to the pacing. It's not a hard game at all, and most players will probably not be using any of the stims to boost their stats, until the final area, where the game's difficulty spikes tremendously. It's a problem with a lot of early 2000s video games but it is incredibly frustrating nonetheless. A player with weaker builds or worse gear than I would have had a frustrating experience. Even then, I still had a frustrating experience with the difficulty spike. Even if the player is fairly optimized, if they don't have certain Force Powers or know certain strats, the boss fight will take forever and a half and be incredibly difficult. Which isn't bad in and of itself, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the game's laissez faire attitude.

My third issue, not super major, is how all the minigames suck. The turret gunner minigame which has a random chance of happening every time you leave a planet to go to a new one, is slow, clunky and unresponsive. The only decent thing is that the enemy ships have a gigantic hurtbox and blow up after one shot. Swoop racing is dumb and I hate it. That's really all the criticism I can give. Pazaak is... well... the computer is a cheating bastard I tell you!

A fourth issue is that the game is terribly buggy on Xbox backward compatibility. I am not going to deduct points, because the first few times I played this game was on PC and it did not suffer many if not all of the bugs I have gotten on Xbox. Like the autosave is just straight up broken and has corrupted on me more times than I can remember on Xbox. Quests have broken, soft locks have happened, none of these things have ever happened to me on PC. I guess what I mean to say is, don't play this on Xbox, if you have a PC made in the past decade you can run this game with a little bit of elbow grease.

My own personal issue is that KotOR2 ruins this game for me. More on that when I write my review for KotOR2.

TL;DR: KotOR is a good Star Wars game, it has story and characters. The pacing is a bit off and the writing is a bit childish and simplistic, but it definitely works for a Star Wars game. KotOR 2 with TSLRCM is better imo, but they both form 2 pieces to a whole. I love this game for what it is, but I have to be honest with myself.

It's May 4th, and so I figured I'd take this opportunity to review some of my favorite Star Wars games. I'm new to Grouvee, so the idea of writing a review for every game I've ever played is daunting, but I can at least write a couple for ones that have stayed with me over the years.

KOTOR. One of the greats. Groundbreaking in a lot of ways, in my mind it is the first example of Bioware settling into a formula that would carry them through the next few decades of games. I remember being absolutely enraptured by the High Republic setting, finally getting to see a thriving galaxy rich with force users and new but familiar lore.

At the time, the gameplay was fantastic. It certainly shows its age going back to it, but it still holds up quite well. I loved the loop of traveling to the different planets to find the star maps, dealing with each planet's conflicts along the way. Manaan was my favorite, even though I got hard locked into the time sensitive mission underwater that ended with me having to restart the whole game over again.

Despite that and Taris being an absolute slog, I still reflect back on this games fondly, and I have to respect it for being the prequel to one of my favorite games of all time.

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.

One of the great CRPG's

The gameplay is based on D&D rules, but all that occurs unseen by the player. Combat is turn based, so that you can issue orders to your party members and change them when needed

Your actions will guide whether you stray towards the light or dark side of the force. Virtually everyone who I have ever talked to about this game plays the game "straight" the first time around, basing their decisions on their own personal moral code. However, after that initial playthrough, everyone is eager to play the game as a dark side character, because it's just so much fun to be bad and truthfully the dark side powers are more thrilling

The first time you wield your lightsaber is amazing and there are a multitude of different colored crystals to be found throughout the game

The plot is worthy of any Star Wars film, book, or TV show. The writing is extremely strong and asks questions about the Jedi that have never been explored before. You might think differently about the Jedi after playing this game. In fact, the story supersedes so much of what Star Wars fans have gotten in other media. The game takes place thousands of years before Luke, Yoda, Vader. It's a period of the Star Wars universe which I wish was explored more often

The characters you will encounter are wonderful. Many Star Wars fans have been hoping for the day when some of them will appear in film or TV

You'll get to journey to so many planets of Star Wars lore like Tatooine and Kashyyyk

Many many hours of fun is to be had here and the game offers one of the all time great video game plot twists

In the past, I've struggled to give this game a fair chance on PC. It was kind of a pain to get running, and my console gamer hands struggled with the controls. At one point I installed some mods to help the experience, but then all the text and UI was teeny-tiny on my high-resolution display.

I was inspired to give it another try after finishing the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time, which I enjoyed quite a lot. This time around I played on Switch, which solved the setup and control problems I had before. It wasn't a flawless experience: The game crashed a handful of times, and there's a potentially game-breaking bug late in the game (search "kotor pillar bug switch" for details).

Anyway, I'm glad I got it all figured out because, surprise, KOTOR is really good! I enjoyed this game on a few different levels:

• In a lot of ways it feels like an early Mass Effect prototype, which was fascinating from a game design standpoint.
• The combat is fun. I know KOTOR came first, but playing it reminded me of a less chaotic Xenoblade Chronicles. And I don't have to aim a gun! Hooray!
• Once you can travel the galaxy, the game has a really nice rhythm of exploration, combat and story.
• My choices felt really consequential. Encounters, side quests, even the rewards for completing certain actions can vary based on the actions you take and the dialog paths you choose.
• The optional lore you can dive into is really fun! No idea if it's canon or not anymore, but I enjoyed it anyway.

I have a few minor complaints as a newcomer:

• The dialog can feel a bit forced at times. I think this is because your character is mostly silent, so the rest of the cast feels like they're just dumping on you to compensate. It probably doesn't help that the voice acting can be a little awkward and wooden, though I'm sure it was impressive for the time.
• The visuals haven't aged very well. Textures are low-resolution and blurry, models look a bit lumpy and polygonal (in an unintentional way), and the facial animations are kinda creepy (something about the paper-thin eyelids creeps me out). Also, a lot of the outfits you can equip are just plain ugly!
• The UI is super clunky, and you have to interact with it pretty often. In particular I found the act of finding documents or datapads and having to find them in my inventory to read them pretty tedious.

Nitpicks aside, I can totally see why this game is so highly regarded. I hope the eventual remake does it justice!