Customer Reviews
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
If you want an adventure/action game with a lot of fun features and mini-games, this is the game for you!
I absolutly loved this game. Even though I am not a huge Star Wars fan, I understood this game very well. It was very fun for me, being the first game I had for my Xbox.
Some of the great features about this game:
- Characters are widely spread throughout the worlds (10) so you have a great choice of who you can play with
- There are many weapons and attacks that are special to this game; the weapons are great
- The controls for this game are very well thought out; I can manuver my player around the worlds and have an easy time doing it
- The mini-games are very cool and exciting; you have a lot of fun doing them
- The worlds are somewhat familiar, but most are either new or revised
- Selection of characters is huge; your favorite Star Wars character is bound to be in this game
- Even more cool things...
Overall, this is the best action/adventure game that I have ever owned, thus played. It is very exciting with a wide range of items, weapons, characters, etc.
You will love this game if you buy it. BUY IT NOW!!!
From someone who didn't care for RPGs
First off, I'll admit that I'm not a fan of RPGs. I'd tried my luck with things like Final Fantasy only to become quickly disappointed within an hour or two. So on a whim, I picked KOTOR up and... wow. Within the first few minutes, I was hooked. I loved it. The ability to suck you in is pretty good despite having some downtime during certain parts of the game. The ability to customize your character to your liking is also good. Weapons, sides of the forces, clothing, etc make it all worthwhile. I highly recommend it for anyone that's wanting to get into RPGs without wasting their money on a Final Fantasy game.
Pretty good, but not great
I only picked up Bioware's Star Wars-based RPG "Knights of the Old Republic" recently, a few years after its release, soon after I finished Bioware's more recent game "Jade Empire". As soon as I started playing KOTOR, I was thinking "Jeez, it's just a turn-based Jade Empire". The games are indeed quite similar, from the choice of "good" or "evil" paths which affect your character's moral rating, to accumulating a diverse group of companions (only one or two of whom you can have with you at one time), to a surprising late-game plot twist. Both games contain standard adventure-style RPG fare: you explore a variety of environments and cities, converse with many NPCs by choosing from different conversation options, complete quests which earn you experience points, and work your way up to killing the Big Boss at the end.
The combat in KOTOR is turn-based, which means you can pause at any time to issue new orders to your characters, and then unpause to watch the fight unfold in seemingly-real-time. I was a bit disappointed in the melee implementation -- if you're giving up the excitement of real-time combat, the turn-based fighting should have lots of tactical depth. I would pause to take the occasional healing potion or use the a buff if the opponent was tough, but aside from casting spells (i.e. using Jedi powers, in this setting) there's not much to do but watch your guys fight. Similarly, I expect a role-playing game to have a rich set of items and equipment, requiring painful trade-off decisions at times, but KOTOR didn't impress me in this regard. Once your character becomes a Jedi early in the game there is no reason to switch from your light saber(s), and the buffed goodies in the shops were too expensive for a most of the game, and then weren't worthwhile upgrades by the time I was able to afford them. Overall KOTOR felt simplified, which was probably the intent of the developers in order to reach a large audience, but left me a bit disappointed.
Half the reason to get this game is because it's set in the Star Wars universe, and it does try to present a Star-Wars-y look and feel. I thought the characters and animations looked great -- the Wookies, droids, uniformed Sith and green aliens were all reminiscent of the movies, and the blaster and light saber animations were excellent. The sound was also top-notch -- the clash and whoosh of sabers was just right. I liked the voice acting too -- every NPC spoke, often in alien tongues, which sounded pretty good although it didn't take long before the alien language sound bites started to recycle. My only complaint about the setting was with the background environments -- the cities had a curvy futuristic design but still looked pretty generic, and there were no ways to interact with the environment besides opening doors and crates.
On the plus side, KOTOR includes an optional blackjack-esque card game called Pazaak which you can play against NPCs to try and win money, which I enjoyed as a break from the regular game. On the minus side, occasionally when flying between planets you're forced into a mini-game where you have to shoot down TIE fighters from your ship's gun turret, which should be exciting but isn't.
Although I've mostly just complained about "Knights of the Old Republic", I still had no doubt while playing that I would take the time to complete it, and I'm considering playing again on the harder level to see if it improves with more challenge (and to try the dark side jedi powers). The story is pretty good, there are lots of side quests and occasions to talk to your companions, and the middle of the game is very non-linear: you can hop to different planets doing different things -- there are even a few multi-planet quests. Despite being underwhelmed by things like the combat implementation, there were times when the game achieved that "epic" feel for me, and what could be more important in a Star Wars RPG than that?
