Game Review: Star Wars KOTOR (An awesome old school RPG Experience)

The game that I am reviewing today is one of the most well known and well received Star Wars games released, it's called Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. This game was released back in July of 2003, developed by Bioware and then published by Lucasarts studio. It was originally released for the Xbox console, but then saw a PC release just a short few months later. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also known as Kotor for short, also happened to be the very first Star Wars game that broke into the RPG genre of gaming. And, I just have to say it now, Bioware did not let us down with this title. I was 15 at the time I first played this game, and it left a huge impression on me and gave me a bar to set for RPG games in the future. Star Wars Kotor without a doubt tells the most well known and well received narrative in the expanded universe of Star wars as a whole, and is still to this day a great game to play.I have to boot it up and play through it at least once if not more times a year at this point, and I still haven't got tired of it. 

The story is based around what has transpired between two characters known as Darth Malak, as well as his master Darth Revan. Darth Malak has unleashed his sith army against the republic and jedi, filled with malice and determination to wipe them out from existence and rule the galaxy (This aspect of the story isn't the most interesting part however, and is somewhat of a cookie cutter for Sith villains at this point. The real interesting parts are all of the smaller sections of the story that make it a whole.). The version I will be reviewing today is the PC version available on Steam. I'm going to try and keep this review as spoiler free as much as I can, in case anyone reading this hasn't played the game for some reason. But, I really have to say this, if you haven't played this game before I truly feel bad for you because you're truly missing out on some wonderful Star Wars Lore as well as an excellent RPG!  

The game starts off with what you would expect from an RPG game. We're shown a menu where we can then start on creating our character. You can do this by editing how they look and choosing what basic starter class you want to play throughout the game. You get a few difference choices of pre-rendered races and face options for each race, as well as the choice of if you want to be a male or female character. After deciding on those options, you then get to choose what class you'd like to play as. The game gives you 3 different options to pick from.  

The classes that we are given to pick from are soldiers, scoundrels, and the last but not least is the scout class. You can probably infer what strengths each class has, but I'll list them for anyone who isn't familiar with RPG games. The soldier class is the brute strength class of the game which relies upon the constitution, strength, and dexterity attributes. The scoundrel class is more of brains over brawn style class, because this class is for people who are wanting a quick witted character who still has good reflexes. It mainly relies on the dexterity, intelligence, and charisma points for the most part. The final class which is available for our choosing is the scout class. This class is basically right in between the other two in terms of how the play style is. It's pretty much the jack of all trades class, focusing on dexterity, intelligence and wisdom. 

Later on in the game you'll get the choice of 3 different jedi classes to pick from once you reach a certain area in the game. Each of these classes sport similar attributes as the first 3, however, one of them leans more towards force powers for combat (Jedi Sentinels), another towards raw combat power via lightsaber (Jedi Guardians), and the other is more of a messenger of peace style character that would rather use word over combat (Jedi Counselor). Each of these works well with a corresponding starter class, and really makes you pick a path to follow within the game. You can of course mix and match your playstyle, but at times this can leave you with a mediocre character who is just slightly strong enough to do tasks while also having a lot of useless skill points. 

So, after you've selected what starter class you want to play as, you can finally begin the game. The game starts with our character inside a locked room on board the Endar Spire, a republic ship which has come under attack by the sith forces under Malak. It's quite outmatched and shown pretty quickly that your forces are losing the battle. You are quickly introduced to the controls of the game through a comically doomed grunt named Trask Ulgo, who'm thankfully guides the player through the UI while the battle commences on. I honestly thought this bit was kind of hilarious, as the guide throws up death flags within moments of speaking to him. 

After parting ways with the corpse of your guide, you make your way through the ship and find a route which leads you into some escape pods alongside your new surviving companion, Carth Onasi. You depart the ship right before it's shown to be entirely decimated, and proceed to crash land onto the nearby Sith occupied planet named Taris. You end up incapacitated from the crash, and later wake up inside of an abandoned apartment building located in the upper city section of the planet alongside Carth who has dragged you there. After a brief explanation from him on what happened to both of you while you were knocked out, you can finally start getting into the meat of the game. 

As you travel along in the game, you will find yourself discovering a pretty decent amount of different planets to explore within the game. These planets range from such places as the wookie home world of Kashyyyk, Dantooine which is home of the largest Jedi enclave, a decaying Sith planet which contains an academy for training soldiers and dark jedi as well as some other mysterious secrets, as well as plenty of other places and locations to check out as well. I'll not delve too much into talking about all of these locations, as I really think it takes away a small part of the experience for anyone who's playing it for the first time. 

As you play along with the story, you'll find that there are plenty of unexpected twists and turns that happen, as well as bountiful amounts of interesting and entertaining backstory for each and every companion which you pick up along the way. The choices and interactions that happen with your companion characters leave plenty of room for a customizable storyline experience, even with the story having a linear path to follow. It's one thing that I really like about the game, because your choices truly have an impact on what you'll get with the ending of the game. This game without a doubt will keep you immersed, entertained, and fascinated all at the same time. It's one of the reasons why I keep going back to play it, because a lot of games these days can't say they do the same. 

Speaking of the companion characters, I honestly have to say that they're something that really helps make the game such a fun expereince. It just wouldn't be the same at all without these side characters, and you'd find yourself bored and having a much harder time without them by your side. Sometimes, a very bland and boring quest will get spiced up a bit thanks to the banter or arguments your companions will have with one another or you yourself at times. Some of the characters are just so damn entertaining, it's hard not to love them even if they're against your choice at that moment. I don't think you'll love every character you pick up along the way, but there are a few which I believe you'll have a problem not finding hilariously awesome, or at the very least endearing depending what style of gameplay you're going with. 

Now, let's get into the gameplay itself of Kotor. One really neat feature in this game is the light/grey/dark alignment system. This system is actually important in this game and can change quite a few things about your playthrough experience unlike a lot of modern RPG games. Some of the things that you'll notice change along with your alignment are things like your characters appearance changing, as well as the way the companion characters interact with you including their opinion and trust in you, and even your stats will change in a few ways. Not to mention the changes in your choices and dialogue if you're going dark instead of light or grey. This is one of the best things about the Kotor series, because a majority of games even to this day will use a similar good/bad system, though probably 95 percent of the time it's meaningless and just either lets you be a jerk or a goodie two shoes with no change to your gameplay, interactions, stats or even the ending of the game for the most part.  

And, I know this is somethings that doesn't matter to everyone with video games, but I feel it's worth mentioning that the soundtrack for this game is beyond excellent. There are some truly breathtaking scores of music within the game that set the tone perfectly for what is happening. Each piece of the soundtrack starts exactly when it should, and you get a nice little victory fanfaresque jingle after each battle is finished. There is no break in the music at any point either, it will fade in and out depending on what is happening in the game and change accordingly. I honestly believe it does just as good of a job if not slightly better of a job than the movies do with utilizing their musical scores. 

Besides the great soundtrack in the game, it also has some good voice acting for most of the characters. I personally think it was done pretty well for it's time considering it came out in the early 2000's, and does better job than a fair amount of games which have been released even recently. Each characters lines are read and acted out by some very talented voice actors, who have helped make the game as good as it is. There are a pretty large variety of voices used throughout, and you very rarely will find reused actors as you make your way from planet to planet. Now, I do have to say it occasionally does happen which is why I said very rarely. I think my only issue with the dialogue is that while not in direct conversations, some of the AI will occasionally say dialogue that isn't appropriate to their situation. I'm not sure I can really blame this on the voice actors themselves at all, but I think the lines could have been utilized a bit better. Overall, I was quite impressed with the voice acting though. 

The combat system is also another interesting aspect of the game, though it can be chaotic at times. I personally believe it's aged quite well and still provides entertaining combat thanks to how it was designed. The combat system is like a combination of turn based combat with Dungeons and Dragons mixed in. Though, it definitely doesn't emphasize on the turn based style since enemies will continue to attack you if you don't retaliate back. The skills, attributes and feats system really brings the Dungeons and Dragons vibe as well with how it's included in combat. If you're not really looking for challenging battles and customizing your combat experience, there is a recommended stats button you can click though if you're more worried and focused on the story. This will allot your points for attributes and pick skills and feats to be unlocked for your character. I personally think if you do this though you're missing a big part of making your character the way you want them to be, and would say to just give it a try. 

Now, while combat is just plain unavoidable at some points of the game, another feature that I love within Kotor is how the game leaves you many options to get through your gameplays. If you focus on charisma and speech, there are a lot of scenarios where you can just talk your way out of combat in a multitude of ways. You can talk your enemies into fighting amongst themselves, smooth things out and make friends with people, or change enemies minds into attacking others for you. There are other attributes which allow you can sneak, set traps, and just all kinds of things so you don't have to go guns blazing into battle every time. But, even if you don't go this route and want the normal combat experience, the game never gets to be too hard so long as you're willing to grind a bit and don't change the combat setting to a harder difficulty. This isn't to say it's easy, but it's definitely not going to drive you insane like Cuphead or Dark Souls would. 

Now, I mentioned before that the combat of the game can be kinda chaotic. What I meant from that was that the combat can range from feeling easy and boring with no effort requires, to scrambling around mashing buttons and freaking out because you're about to be team wiped all of a sudden. The majority of the characters in the game only have a small number of feats and skills that they can activate which thankfully makes it pretty easy to manage them. An issue that you may notice, however, is that sometimes it can be a pain to switch in between your characters during combat to manage everything. I know a few times I wasn't paying close enough attention and would notice a character getting close to death and then switch to the wrong companion making me feel more anxious about trying to keep them all alive and kicking. 

Something else that can be irritating if you're not careful is that if you move in the midst of an attack on an enemy it cancels it out, making you have to redo your attack and costing you precious time/health. Not only can this be lethal to your characters if you're not careful, but it is just outright clunky feeling at times. However, most of the time it's easy to just leave your characters on auto pilot during combat. You can do this by pausing to que up which attacks you want to do with what character and then unpausing to continue until you need to heal or choose your next set of attacks again. However, there were plenty of times where I thought I had set up a group of attacks only to realize my characters were doing whatever they felt like since I hadn't chosen for them which led to me taking a lot of hits. As I sad, the combat can become chaotic at times. 

Now, there are times where you'll just get some bad luck that brings you to the brink of death. This can be anything from a poorly thrown grenade or explosive, to just getting bad rolls constantly while trying to make your attacks. The bad rolls can really ruin a plan, as there were many times I would get bad rolls in a situation where I clearly had the odds in my favor yet ended up having a team wipe and had to reload a save. This is from the D&D integrated system and really shows it's tabletop influences. I personally like the hectic aspect of this, as it will keep you on your toes and make sure you pay attention to what is actually going on. Though I can't there wasn't times where I was grumbling out of frustration. 

Now, the combat in this game is by no means a perfect system. Some parts of it are just straight up annoying, and could really have used some tweaking. One such example is the AI pathing to the enemy, which will take you into bizarre routes when they're right in front of you and can lead to you receiving extra damage for no good reason. Most of the time, I personally just controlled the character until I was up and in the enemies face to avoid that as much as possible. This is another reason why you should keep a careful on your characters during combat so they're not running in small circles getting stabbed. 

Another part of the gameplay that isn't perfect and tends to be bothersome is the fact that there's no way real way to track your quests or find the locations you need to get to for your missions on the map. While you do at least get clear directions for what to do for your active missions at least, I really think it'd save a lot of time and frustration at trying to find your target. I don't find this to be a super terrible thing overall that will ruin your entertainment from the game, but it can be a bit frustrating at times for someone on their first playthrough especially. 

While not being a direct part of the combat or missions, something else that got annoying in the game for me while I was playing was the inventory system being disorganized, with no option to quickly search or sort through your items. I really wish this was one thing that could have been fixed in a patch or update, as it gets to be annoying when you're trying to check and see if you have a specific item or number of items that you need for upcoming missions/battles. 

Maybe an issue that only I find to be a problem or at least annoying is the part of the game where you finally get to choose which jedi class you want to be. This is a mandatory requirement of the game, and there is no way to get past doing it. And, I mean, why would you? Being a Jedi is something people dream about, and it is certainly fun. However, the way it's set up in this game can be a bit frustrating since there is a level cap of 20 to the game. Now, why is this frustrating? Say you hit level 13-14 before you get to this part of the game, which is entirely possible. This only leaves you 6-7 levels to level up and pick abilities for your Jedi classes. So, in a way you have to balance out how much exp you're earning for the first few parts of the game if you want to maximize your Jedi abilities. It also could possibly make some of your stat choices useless, depending on what you've done and chosen. Which is why I say you shouldn't mix and match your play styles. 

The final things that I'll touch on that which could be viewed in a negative light is the graphics. Now, considering when this game came out most of the graphics have held up quite well over time. The issue comes in when we're talking about the cutscenes and pause screens. Almost all of the time the cuteness are ridiculously small, due to the games widescreen resolution. Some of the map designs could use some work as well, at least to make things more interesting to check out and look at. I think the graphics can and should get a pass from everyone though, as at least the actual gameplay graphics look pretty decent still, and I don't think you should expect anything revolutionary from something over 15 years old almost at this point. 

Overall, despite the flaws that this game has Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is still hands down one of my favorite RPG games and probably one of the best Star Wars games to ever be released. The complex decisions of mortality combined with an engaging and emotional narrative that is told in a wonderful, unique way really leaves a special place in your heart for it by the time you get to the end. The game has aged a bit, but it's still an entertaining and perfect example of what an RPG experience should be, even after 15 years of it being released. I would easily recommend this game for anyone interested in either Star Wars or RPG's, and can say you'll more than likely enjoy your experience. 

Thanks for checking out my review! Hope you've enjoyed it!