Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review

With an upcoming remake on the horizon, what better time then now to revisit an old classic!

When people think of Star Wars, they don’t usually have turn-based RPG in their minds — well — not until 2003 at least. That’s when Lucasarts in collaboration with Bioware released Knights of the Old Republic (AKA KotOR): the first entry in an ongoing series still going today. A unique entry in the almost endless list of Star Wars games, yet it’s fresh for its take on the role-playing games genre as a whole.

Game Play

• Combat is good, making both melee and range just as viable. But, it’s in no way something to write home about. It can also be a bit repetitive.

• The most difficult setting can only cause problems in the early game. It’s much more forgiving later.

• While the combat AI is standard, it is easy to overcome by Kiting (hitting the enemy and running away before the enemy could get its’ turn.) Pathfinding, on the other hand, is another story. Sometimes, it can be more challenging than the major boss fights.

• Largely dependent on your character and skills.
• Many quests depend on choice of dialogue.
• While almost every companion has a proper quest that’s given after we spend enough time talking to them, in most cases, it doesn’t require the player to do much else than just talk to them.
• Companion dialogue sometimes proves to be more fascinating than anything given by the main quest.

• We can invest skill points in close-combat, ranged, or maybe even both.
• A lot of viable options for skill selection, depending on your playstyle.
• Skills like Stealth & Awareness are next to useless.
• Force powers offer a lot of combinations regardless of your character being good or evil.

Combat

While the story and dialogue does outshine the combat, there are plenty of things to talk about here. Combat in KotOR is in real-time, with a mix of turn-based RPG mechanics including a pause option that you can use anytime (also referred to as Real-Time with Pause, or RTwP.) The way you approach fights is up to you; in most of my playthroughs I tend to focus on melee, while my teammates are ranged. It’s important to invest your levels wisely since you don’t get to add too many feats to your character because of the level 20 cap or other unique features (but more on that under Classes.) KotOR also doesn’t shy away from letting you be a gunslinger Jedi, with your companions close ranged, while you gun your enemies down from a distance.

Classes

In it’s well balanced character creation, you get to pick a human male or female with the option of three classes, each with their own unique flavors. You can pick Soldier if you want to go all in for melee combat, but don’t want to waste much time on other skills, Scout if you want to experience most of the game, but don’t mind a bit of challenge, or Scoundrel for the experienced players. Later in the game you get to choose three different Jedi classes, that corresponds similarly to the classes mentioned before: Guardian, Sentinel and Consular. Of course, no matter which class you’ve picked in the beginning, you’re free to choose whichever Jedi class you want.

Dialogue

We’re finally getting into the nitty-gritty! The dialogue lives up to its RPG expectations: it’s well-written, it lets us experience, and it’s fully voice-acted. It’s worth to mention that this game came out before the era of dialogue wheels. You’ll see entire sentences instead of only specific adverbs or coloured texts, where the game is hinting at you which option will get you good guy points. The persuade skill is almost essential to fully experience the game. Many of the NPCs have the option to persuade them regarding quests, or to get small bonuses; this opens new opportunities to the player. Like with every other aspect of the game, it’s not without its small faults. The dialogue tends to feel very black & white; it’s a bit of a nitpick, but the game will put us in situations where we have the option to ignore the bad guys, yet there are options that would clearly label us as psychos while it punishes us for it. My only real criticism would be that the companion side-quests are rather narrow; you can spam through the entire dialogue tree, and will get to the same conclusion.

This and many other issues did eventually get ironed out in the sequel, but that is for another time.

Alignment

Another unique feature of KotOR lies in its alignment system. It issues alignment points depending on our moral choices which can be light or dark, each playing an important role in the gameplay. For example, choosing either extreme will get us bonuses in our stats, and force powers closest to the alignment of our choice will cost less points. This doesn’t come without a trade off: while we may want to be the Paragon of Justice, we cannot use dark side powers without using a big chunk of our force points.

Skills & Items

There are  many skills to choose from; you can become a hacker, or put points into healing more efficiently. This of course isn’t necessary to complete the game, but it makes getting there easier. Items let us heal our characters or give them temporary buffs. The most important skills are the class specific feats. These can go from a unique attack that lets you jump on your enemy, performing a surprise attack, or immunity to certain stun effects.

The Force

From buffs to outright offensive powers, there are many options to choose from. We can utilize our powers to compliment our combat capabilities through buffs, or we can go on full offensive, whichever play style we like better. There are over 44 force powers to choose from, so there are plenty of combos to work with!

Genre

Story

• An exciting adventure to save the galaxy.
• Good pacing.
• One of the better twists in videogame history.
• Sometimes the quests are a tad generic at best.

• Easy to pick up, thanks to the well-written dialogue. It’s brief, and gives enough material for us to get immersed to this alien world.
• The companions are a lot of fun. They all have something to add to every unique quest and event, while giving away extra lore moments.

• Well written dialog, with plenty of alternatives to choose from.
• Playing both light and dark sides is a lot of fun.
• Some of the later dark side dialogue isn’t as well thought out as the rest.

• Two endings, both satisfying.
• The only real choice that matters which ending you’ll trigger is determined on the last planet.

• Memorable characters, Jolee Bindo, Canderous Ordo, and HK-47 could easily have their own spin-offs, as there is so much material to work with.

The story takes place roughly 4000 years before the events of the Star Wars movies. We find ourselves in the middle of a galactic conflict between the Republic and the Sith. We must aid the Jedi against Darth Malak’s Sith empire and discover the mystery of his seemingly endless forces.

The best part of KotOR is its storytelling. The game is quite adventures with its tone and goals that we’re very easily hooked once we accept the game’s crude visual nature. If I had to point to one reason I regard the story as good, it is it’s replay ability; there’s just so many ways we can combine our story and game play, that it’s always a joy to try to find something new. For my recent Dark playthrough, I was always going for the evil responses, and I managed to find dialogue I’ve never heard before in my 19 years of replaying this game, which is quite something!  We as the sole entity decide on which side the galaxy will end up on, and it does feel like we can leave an impact on it. From the various NPCs, you get exactly as much information about the world as you want to get.  You end up getting a lot of insight to the world itself. At least half of your companions will be veterans of the previous conflict that took place not so long before. Some of these companion quests end up being comical with how much they intertwine with the main quest.

“Oh, you’re looking for your missing brother? I’ve heard he’s held up at this camp. How convenient, that’s my next destination!”

Strangely enough, everything can be linked back to a particular Dark Lord known as Revan, who was defeated at the hands of Bastila, the prodigy Jedi, and the last hope of the Republic. What exactly took place during the Mandalorian wars? Could anything else be traced back to that? That is for the player to discover.

Visuals

• KotOR 1 aged a lot in the visuals, yet some of its designs still manage to shine through.
• Many of the NPCs will use the same heads with different looking clothing.
• Bystanders look awful; they are extremely pixelated up-close.
• Some environments still look stunning, especially the gorgeous underwater section.

• Levels are easy to navigate and well designed.
• Very few filler areas. Maps are utilized to their maximum.
• A lot of rooms are just copies of each other.

Being a game from 2003, it was to be expected that for the time it was released you had to make compromises for the quality; but, with today’s expectations, it is difficult to turn a blind eye over these issues.

The overall design is great, and most of the models do follow it; the problem comes from when they repeat the same heads for different NPCs. There are maybe 5-6 heads in the rotation with different bodies to make it less obvious, but once you notice it, you just can’t ignore it. Still, it is worth to mention the architecture design stands the test of time. The metropolis of Taris, the lush green plains of Dantooine, and the barren wasteland of Korriban remain as excellent environments to explore.

Another issue is the resolution. Even with the unofficial patches to allow widescreen options, it’s only through mods that you can make the UI to be sized properly on 1080p.

Audio

• Excellent soundtrack from Jeremy Soule; one of the high points of the game!

• The overall sound design is great, but some sound effects cut off before they should.

• Amazing voice talent. Always a pleasure to listen to.

Voice acting

Most of the work went into this, so it’s only fair to point out how great it is. Every character is fully voice-acted, even some of the droids! (One is quite possibly also the best characters in the game.)  A lot of well known actors, too. Sometimes, I try to count how many I can recognize from the voice alone. Memorable performances, except maybe our character, since he or she will only say a few lines at most.

Sound & Music

The sound design is spot on. The environments vary, and each and every one of them have a fitting soundscape and music to compliment it. Speaking of music, Jeremy Soule nailed the soundtrack. He uses a style we’re quite familiar from the Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, but with a taste of Star Wars to create one of the best Star Wars soundtracks. A bit far from the ones of John Williams’ score for the movies, but a welcome addition to the franchise.

Replay Value

• Plenty of reasons to replay the game: both light and dark sides offer a new perspective of the same story. There are many ways to experience the game, be it combat, the interactions with your companions, or just uncovering all the quests.

KotOR offers a lot of replayability through its variety of classes to choose from,  and different styles of gameplay to focus on. All of them are viable as much as the other with the right amount of decisions. The true beauty of the game is really how much content there is to discover. It’s near impossible to experience the game with only one playthrough, and really, you shouldn’t. The game is just as much fun as a Jedi or a Gunslinger with force powers.

As for difficulty settings, even on the lowest option you’ll be tested, especially by the end of the game. Your level up choices will either help you through the game, or bite you in the back, while still giving you a fair challenge.

Conclusion

Overall Knights of the Old Republic is a game I can wholeheartedly recommend even after almost two decades; it proves to be an enjoyable experience for old and new fans of Star Wars and RPGs alike.

Extra: BUGS and how to properly run this game on modern hardware

I must address the elephant in the room, which is the compatibility on PC. Unfortunately, the game is a bit notorious for that thanks to its age. But do not worry…there are ways to come over them! I must mention, however, that this will include a lot of third-party software, since official support to this version of the game is non-existent.

Widescreen fix

First of all, a short and precise video demonstrating how to make the game run in 1080p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed-spCv76D8 this also helps a lot of graphical plugins to run correctly.

Being stuck

A lot of times after combat your character simply freezes in one place, and your movement keys won’t do anything. You can get over this by switching to your companion, or saving and loading your save state. But a more convenient way is turning on v-sync. I’m not 100% sure about this, but seemingly the game is so fast on modern hardware it glitches out and locks you out from the movement controls. (You can see a lot of shenanigans related to this when you spectate the river on Dantooine; the current will be ridiculously FAST.)

Turning on V-sync

Another bug is the software V-sync; it’s terrible. At least on AMD, I have no idea how it runs on Nvidia hardware. But on my AMD machine, it downright quits the game after the loading screen. To get over this issue, you’ll need to turn it off in the settings, and along with that, turn off force effects and grass (Yes, GRASS.) Why? Modern AMD GPUs simply can’t render these objects, so you’ll have transparent glitchy fields.

After all these changes you’re ready to enjoy Knights of the Old Republic on a modern PC!

This was the criteria I used to break down and weigh each of the categories of analysis. This pie chart represents the denominators.

• Genre Expectations
• Game Play
• Story
• Visuals
• Audio
• Replay Value