Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review

The story of Knights of the Old Republic dates back to roughly 4000 years before the Star Wars saga that we all know and love. The game opens by giving you the opportunity for you to create your own character.

This character will be able to be changed and altered at various points as you progress through the game giving you the ability to make your character fit perfectly with your own personal style of game play.

One of the dominating factors of this game is the influence of “the Force” over the game. Every task you do whether it’s taking a side, choosing to kill or choosing to spare someone has an effect on your balance with the force. The force points are of course allocated by whether your action was that of someone pure and peaceful with the light side of the force or corrupted and devious with the dark side of the force.

Now the part of the game that concerned most, intrigued the rest and determines how well done the game truly is. Is it Star Wars or is it just another RPG with flying ships and weird looking residents. Well you can put you queries to rest because the world of Knights of the old republic has captured the essence of the star wars galaxy perfectly, from the multiple different creatures to the odd looking landscapes and vast galaxy of planets. Everything that makes Star wars, Star wars is in this game.

The game offers a wide range of different weapons from the typical blaster rifle wielded by the average troop to raising yourself to the status of a master by force with your duel Lightsabers, yes you read it correctly.
KOTOR presents an entirely new and unique way of combating those who oppose you which combines the action packed head to head battle of an action title with the strategic, tactical fighting of a turn based role playing game.

You battle your opponents in real time allowing you to both choose your approach and obviously provides more freedom while in battle, however when you actually engage an enemy your attacks and combos are not performed by the pushing of certain buttons but are unlocked prior to the battle as you level up and must be queued up as to be performed in battle.

So whether you prefer the tactical approach with the choice of correct party members, the offensive approach with opponents falling beneath your saber or even the slightly more original approach with the force choking of infidels who get in your way from across the room, there’s always a fun option.

So you can comfortably be sure that with this game, when you hear the words “It’s a trap!” you’ll be ready…

KOTOR boasts a brilliant and intuitive storyline with twist and turns throughout this is sure to keep you interested. Opening the game as a simple recruit you soon learn that you happen to have a strong connection to the force, with some interesting happenings to follow your path soon becomes your own.

The sheer amount of possibilities that are put before you as you spread throughout the game kept me engaged for hours at end. The side quest are actually interesting, a rare characteristics in most RPGs, the main quest or storyline of the game grips from the beginning and manages to keep you involved and frantically throttling that huge controller.

The plot is both in-detail enough to keep you satisfied and give the game a backbone but doesn’t flood you with information that you wouldn’t want to know about you best friend.

The graphics here are quite a characteristic of this game. The effort clearly went into the landscaping; the recreation of the Star Wars Universe here is simply astonishing. Though the long grass of certain planets may seem a bit too “2D” for your liking the water effects and the remarkable scorching heat as you cross the heated deserts of Tatooine will have you staring into the sun for hours.

However as I mentioned most of the time and effort here has clearly gone into the scenery as if you check the game carefully there are clearly just a select few faces, changed slightly for each race yet still few different faces.
It’s not just there that KOTOR is loyal to the source material – all the races in the game have been taken from the memorable characters from the movies. I must have slain roughly fifty Greedos in the aid of a further twenty Chewies – if you remember them, they’re probably in this game.

I did notice that the specific weapons, as in those gifted to the key characters, were highly detailed. The difference between the averages blasters you find lying around compared to Carth’s Pistol or Calo Nord’s twin blasters is impressive to say the least.

Knights of the old republic offers everything you could really ask for from a game of this unique, intuitive style. The game flows extremely well and as you progress though the plot may thicken, the freedom shall expand. An example of this said freedom would be the immense amount of dialogue and conversations that take place during the course of the game.

The games dialogue is done almost completely with written text accompanied by voice, this is to aid the idea of creating a personalized and unique character to you as under the text you are given multiple different ways to respond to whatever has been said to or asked of you.

The different choices determine whether you gain points on the dark or light side of the force or remain on a neutral path through the conversation, your reply can also gain you enemies or friends, often both. The AI in the game is very good, the other members of your party move, fight and converse in their own individual styles, each adapting to both how much you know about them and what armor and weaponry you equip them with.

All in all this is honestly an incredible piece of work, there is much attention to detail from the correct inhabitants of planets to the realistic battle that will make you feel as though you have the midichlorion count of Anakin Skywalker pulsing through your veins. In this game, you experience the real Star Wars Galaxy.