Review: Play it, meatbag!
With the impending release of "Star Wars: The Old Republic" fast approaching, I decided to go back and play through a game I had touched on, but never completed when it originally came out. Now, more than 8 years after its release how does the original XBOX release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic hold up?
Surprisingly well as it turns out.
Star Wars: KOTOR is a D20 based RPG set in the Star Wars expanded universe several thousand years before the movies that swept the world take place. The Jedi and the galactic republic are entangled in a loosing war with the every growing Sith Armada led by the menacing Darth Malak. The D20 system will be familiar to anyone who has played a game of Dungeons and Dragons before. As they level up, characters gain and assign points in several key skill areas such as persuasion and repair and take combat feats which outline their combat abilities. Weapons are varied and interesting and range from futuristic swords to laser blasters and rifles and (of course) eventually lightsabers. The d20 system makes combat a pseudo-real time affair, with the player issuing orders to his party in the form of an action queue. As the player becomes familiar with the system, the turn based underlyings become readily apparent as characters take momentary pauses between actions. While this breaks the illusion of fluid combat, it does allow the player more control and opportunity to pause the combat and issue orders. Those familiar with similar D20 systems, I would encourage to play through the game on the "Hard" difficulty.
Combat however makes up surprisingly little of the game. The majority of the game centers around exploration and dialogue. While this may not sound like an incredibly exciting proposition, the people over at Bioware are masters at the craft of world building. Planets have varied and interesting environments with differing populations that each seem to have their own standard RPG problems that only a protagonist can solve. As you meet the inhabitants of this universe, you will become very drawn in to the completely realized world that Bioware has created. Your comrades on your adventure are incredibly detailed in their history, personalities and abilities. They will interact with you (and eachother) in some legitimately surprising and entertaining ways throughout the 40 odd hours the adventure should take the player to complete.
The story is fantastic and I would encourage anyone who hasn't had the main plot twist already spoiled for them to stay clear of any online walkthroughs that aren't specifically advertised as spoiler-free. Needless to say, there are twists, there are turns, and there are moral choices- although there is little room for moral ambiguity. Your character for the most part will either be a paragon of justice, or as I chose to become, one of the most terrible people the galaxy will ever know.
While KoTOR no longer shares the cutting edge presentation of modern games, it manages to hold up quite impressively. The soundtrack stands the test of time especially well. All of the familiar Star Wars musical themes are here, from the opening scrawl, to the imperial march, to the ending credits. From the Alien languages, to the lasers to the distinctive "whooosh" of a swinging lightsaber and the "shhhhhnk" sound of one being sheathed, Bioware and Lucas Arts nail the idea of placing the player in this universe. The fact that every line of dialogue is recorded and performed by a talented host of voice actors doesn't hurt either, although by the end you will have heard the same couple of voices over and over again feebly trying to disguise themselves. They also cheat a bit by having alien dialogue consist mostly of 4-5 different sound cues of aliens talking that they just switch in and out, but it's hardly noticeable unless you pay close attention. Visually, it does the job, although by today's standards the models and animation all seem a bit stiff and the lip-syncing can sometimes be distractingly bad.
As for other areas that aren't quite up to snuff? I was playing the X-BOX version of the game on the X-BOX 360 so my experience might have been isolated, but I experienced a re-occurring audio-bug where all of the sound effects would cut out entirely leaving only the background music still audible. This could only be fixed by rebooting the console. Additionally, during heated battles with several lightsabers/grenades etc... the frame rate would plunge dramatically to the point where I would just have to set down the controller and hope for the best.
Additionally, the requirements of the genre and experience can sometimes lead to some classic video-game cliches. Nothing breaks my immersion like being told to go investigate the mysterious tomb the Jedi Council wants me to check out only to find it lies all of 50 yards away from their enclave and is protected by a few trivial pursuit questions and minor enemies they presumably could have just waved away.
I digress. Any complaints I have with the experience are niggling at best. If you enjoy a deep, immersive RPG, with a great story and even better characters; I can highly recommend Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
