Star Wars seems like a distant memory at this point. With the new media of the franchise crashing and dying upon arrival, Darth KK chipping all goodness in the universe away from everything we hold dear and Disney showing no signs of stopping, we need to hold onto everything we love about this series. KOTOR is one of those things. This is one of those games that really put Bioware on the map... you know... before they destroyed the map with Anthem. But we're here to shower a great game of old with praise... and a tiny bit of criticism, so let's get to that.
Knights of the Old Republic is one of those games that does what it set out to do and it did so with such amazing style, that the franchise has been trying to replicate it ever since. It is not especially graphics savvy, it can chug like a wheezing geezer and there are glitches in just about every other level. How does it make up for this? With style, petite! KOTOR understood the assignment from page one and brought us into a story that we can literally shape for ourselves.
You can become basically anything in this game, even when you are being pushed to be a jedi, you can just stick to the guns and the swords. You start off as a normal soldier, which is a little strange in retrospect, but whatever. You're a normal Republic soldier who gets under attacked within your vessel with all of your Republic buddies but you're one the few survivors. You're sent on a mission to recover Bastilla, teaming up with some random dude who can shoot a blaster.
Doing any very important main quests takes a very long time. You are playing this game for around four to five hours, trying to find where Bastilla is, if you don't know what you're doing. Throughout the entire playthrough, the deeds your character does holds real weight. If you go to the dark side and decide you want to be a villain throughout the whole game, you really feel bad because of the things you need to do. Playing in the dark side mode is, by far, the most entertaining and also the most gutting experience this game has to offer.
Darth Malak is one of the better villains you face in the Star Wars universe. He is just evil and he wants to win and rule the Sith. He can't do that because your character exists. The lengths he goes to in order to kill you and Bastilla is really heart-wrenching, as it kills pretty much everyone you meet in the first chapter of the entire game, aside from your companions. He's threatening, powerful and he is quite the intimidating figure.
Your companions are also a huge factor in this game. Bastilla turns out to be the most important one, because of her battle meditations, but the rest of them really add a great spice to the game. Carth is the guy who helped you through the tutorial level and is your companion through Taris. The corrupted Jedi, Juhani the cat girl, had the most interesting backstory and also one of the more sympathetic. Mission and Zaalbar also bring about a good bit of light humor to the mix. All in all, even the droid brings about some character to the story.
Once you get your own lightsaber, the game becomes your oyster. You can either keep the single bladed lightsaber, take Bastilla's double blade, or fight with two lightsabers once you get another one. There are a TON of lightsabers in this game and there's an entire cave full of crystals with which to upgrade them and change the blade's color. Red, green, purple, yellow, they're all up for grabs and you're welcome to customize it to your liking. Becoming a jedi is one of the most enjoyable experiences. Even using the powers is a ton of fun, as they are very intuitive to use and there are a lot of useful abilities.
The worlds you visit are also a brilliant highlight for this game. For many Star Wars fans, it was the first time we have ever seen Kashyyk, the home of the Wookiees. After a big forested planet, you can make your way over to the sea planet where you need to meet and talk to/kill a giant primordial shark. Then, of all planets, you go to Tatooine! You go to all of these different planets in order to find Star Maps. These Star Maps lead you to a machine that can harness the power of the sun to create star fleets.
From befriending a Mandalorian, to solving a random murder mystery, you basically do a whole spectrum of different tasks and missions throughout your adventure. Sometimes, the daunting tasks can get a little monotonous. Sometimes, on repeated playthroughs, you can start remembering parts and missions that you didn't care for a great deal the first time. The Krate Dragon mission in the middle of the Tatooine desert, on top of the Tuskan Raiders you need to either kill or negotiate with, the schedule in this game is pretty full.
It's not perfect, obviously, and sometimes the soundbytes for the alien languages replay over and over again. That gets kind of annoying. Then there's the fact that when you try to do the speeder races on Tatooine, you pretty much cannot beat the final race. You either need to get that race absolutely perfect or you lose and need to constantly retry. Either way, it's just not worth it and you're better off moving on.
The greatest thing about this game is the fact that you can either help the good bandits on a planet, or help their enemies in killing them in order to get what you want. No matter how you go about accomplishing your mission, it's just a ton of fun to see how many ways you can do it and still come out on top. This guys for many facets of the game, including the final boss fight when you need to figure out how to depower him and take away his life support. There's a good way and a very bad way.
KOTOR came when games didn't really have that many great science fiction roleplaying games of great story and depth. There were some, sure, but Knights introduced a deeper story system, deeper characters and a very dynamic moral system that is fun to play around with. It's really just a shame that KOTOR II couldn't turn out this great. It was a good game in its own right, but it also had much larger, more glaring problems. So, until then, Nerph-herders!!!!
