supersaiyan23's Full Review: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic for Windows
I have always been a big fan of Star Wars and everyone, no matter who you are, has always wanted to have their own lightsaber...come on you know you did! Anyways, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic gives you a chance to be that Jedi you always wanted to be and also gives you the power to choose who you will fight for, the light side or the dark side. First a little background information.
Star Wars: KOTOR is a role-playing game based on the Star Wars series. It doesn't really fall in with the movies at all, although the game does borrow some of the same themes from the films. There are some similarities here and there, swoop racing instead of pod racing, escaping from the Sith battleship is just like the Millenium Falcon escaping the 1st deathstar, just to name a few. Basically you start out as a human character. You can either be male or female and you can choose between a scoundrel(thief like character, good with security and stealth), scout(well rounded) or soldier(strong and good with weapons). You can also use the in depth character creation setup to change your face and adjust your attributes. Attributes will play a significant role in how strong your character becomes, how well rounded they are and what types of weapons they will be able to effectively use.
After you get your character setup you are thrown right into the heat of battle. You begin on the side of the Republic and have to escape your ship which is under attack from a Sith battle fleet. This stage serves as a tutorial, as it walks you through how to interact with other characters, find and equip items, interact with your environment and most importantly, introduces you to the battle system. After you get through this first stage you crash land on the planet Taris, where our story begins.
I will try not to spoil too many of the details, but here is a short version of the story. Basically there were two Sith Lords, Revan and Malak, who the Jedi and republic were trying to capture/kill. A young Jedi name Bastila has a special force power called Battle Meditation which the Jedi used to engage the Sith Fleet. Bastila succeeds in finding the sith lord Revan and engages him in battle. She emerges victorious but the republic is attacked by the sith fleet and the crew of Bastila's ship(including you) is forced to abandon ship and head for the planet Taris. You awake in Taris with your fellow soldier Carth Onasi and from here you must figure out how to find Bastila and escape the Sith blockade, meanwhile avoiding the Sith and the dark grip of Darth Malak.
Leveling Up
Ok, we've already covered character creation so now I will go over the weapons, items and skills that you can use in the game. When you first start out you are limited in terms of your weapon choices and skills but you will quickly find items and gain experience. Star Wars: KOTOR is an RPG so you level up as you gain experience. After each level a small L will appear in your characters icon and you simply click on your character to level up. You can either auto-level(computer decides the best way to build you up) or level up manually.
Each level you will be presented with one of 4 different options. Attributes, Skills, Feats and Powers(Jedi class characters). Attributes are permanent and allow you to gain bonuses in certain areas. For example, an increase in your strength attribute gives you an attack bonus with melee weapons(lightsabers, vibroblades) while an increase in dexterity will give you an accuracy and damage bonus with blaster type weapons and grenades. This gives you the ability to build your character in specific areas. Skills are ratings that effect how your character interacts with the environment. There are several different areas that you can add skill points to, for example, the security point value will determine what types of locks you can open while demolitions determines whether or not you can disarm certain mines. This again allows you to be pretty flexible when deciding your character's strengths and weaknesses.
Feats allow your character to perform different actions when they are enabled. For example, you can train your character to be able to fight with two melee weapons(two lightsabers or a dual bladed lightsaber) or you can train them in different type blaster attacks or give them bonuses when using certain weapons. New levels of each feat become available as you level up. Finally you have powers. Powers are for Jedi class characters. Powers allows you to select certain Jedi Powers that you can use to your advantage. There are both light and dark side powers. How much force each costs to use depends on your side rating. Throughout the game you will make choices in certain situations which effect your overall side rating. If you make choices that are harmful to others or only looking out for yourself you will gain dark side points whereas if you help out a lot of people you gain light side points. You can still use Light side powers if you are primarily dark side and vice versa, but the closer the power is to your rating, the less force it takes to activate. There are some pretty cool force powers like force whirlwind and throw lightsaber and you can also heal and cure yourself and your allies with other force powers. Light side powers are primarily supportive powers for you and your allies while dark side powers are strong attack powers that can inflict massive amounts of damage and confuse your enemy.
The only complaint I have with the leveling system in Star Wars: KOTOR is that you level up way to fast. You max out at level 20 and you will be right around level 7-8 after you clear the first planet. This makes the game pretty easy towards the later stages because you will max out before you reach the end of the game. This is also another reason you have to be careful when deciding how to spend your attribute and skill points and when choosing your feats and powers because you only get to use so many of them.
Weapons and Items
Throughout the game you will find different weapons and items that each character can use. Some items(such as Jedi weapons and robes) can only be used by certain characters. There are also limitations on what type of armor each character can wear. For example, Jedi Knights cannot where heavy battle armor that soldiers wear because it would limit their movement. There are a ton of items in Star Wars: KOTOR, but to be honest there are a lot you will not use and some that are downright useless. You find items in storage lockers and at shops/merchants throughout the game. You can also find items after a battle if there are any remains laying around. Remains appear depending on your awareness rating and you can search them for any items. This is where you will find a lot of unique items and things you can sell.
The weapons you find will either be melee or ranged. Melee weapons are things like Vibroswords, shock batons, lightsabers and dual bladed lightsabers. Some require two hands while others only require one. The same can be said for blasters. You can either go two handed with blaster pistols or lug around a 2 handed blaster rifle. Damage effects and the effectiveness of each weapon depend on the character and what their attributes are. For example, characters with higher dexterity are better suited for blasters whereas a character with a high strength rating gets bonuses in the melee area.
Now for that lightsaber...lol. Lightsabers can be one of the most effective weapons if you choose to go the melee route. They can be incredibly powerful if you have a solid strength rating and equip the proper feats(2 handed weapon mastery, flurry attack, etc.) early on. Lightsabers are also unique because you can upgrade them. You will find crystals throughout the game that you can use to change the color and attributes of the saber blade. These can give very significant bonuses to both damage and accuracy.
Besides weapons you will also find armor and items that you can equip on your character such as energy shields and head gear. These can add helpful attribute bonuses or give you bonuses to skill areas. Shields are helpful for when you get in a fire fight or have to battle with Dark Jedi. Certain items can only be used by certain characters. Weapons and armor can also be upgraded. Throughout the game you will find items that say "Upgradable" in the item window. You can make these items stronger and more effective in battle and they will often become the most used items in the game.
The only problem I had with the items in the game is that there are way to many and a lot of them are worthless. Grenades come in handy early on, but once you advance far enough in the game you don't even need them. A lot of the early weapons you find are also fairly useless and you end up using the same weapon through out the game. Even the light sabers can only be upgraded to a certain point and once you max those out they can get pretty boring.
Game Play, Sounds and Graphics
Overall the game play in Star Wars: KOTOR is very good. You think an RPG of this magnitude would have complicated controls but it does not. You can use the keyboard to navigate or the mouse. I prefer the mouse. You can move simply by holding down the right mouse button and clicking the left button. Moving the mouse will move your point of view and change your direction. The control system is very smooth and you will primarily use the mouse with this game.
The battle system is one of the neat aspects of this game. Battles employ turn based combat very similar to Dungeons and Dragons. When you go in to battle the game pauses itself which is nice because it lets you set up your plan of attack. With this feature you can choose who you want to attack and with which attack ability you want to attack them with. Rather than have a hack and slash type system, combat is turned based. Damage is based on certain behind the scenes dice rolls for attacks and saving throws vs. certain attacks. Your attribute and feats will also play into your success in battle as well as which items you have equipped. You can pause and un-pause the game at any time during a battle which is nice because after you defeat one enemy you can plan out your attack on the next. You can also use this feature to set up your support character attacks or just let them do their own thing. You can also create or use scripts for your other characters so that you do not have to program them for every battle. Scripts will enable them to attack on their own with out taking commands from you, but I still like to plan out all my battles manually.
This game is very flexible in what it allows you to do. There are a total of 9 different support characters you can have to accompany you on your journey. Who joins you is largely based on the decisions you make during the game. For example, there are certain characters you will meet that will fight you and then you will have a chance to talk to them and if you say the right/wrong thing they will either join you or you kill them, thus making them unavailable throughout the game. To be honest, 9 extra characters is too many, especially since you can only bring 2 with you when you are exploring/fighting/doing missions. I have played the game through 3 times and have yet to use some of the characters at all. The neat thing about the support characters is that it allows you to play other Jedi, as a Wookie or as a droid.
KOTOR is also pretty flexible in what it allows you to do while you are playing the game. The first stage and planet are pretty much set in stone, but after that you have a lot of freedom in where you can go and what you can do. You have your own space ship so you can fly to several different locations at first. Each planet you travel to has a broad variety of side quests that you can do depending on who you talk to, who is in your party and how you interact with certain people on the planet or other planets. Some side quests involve you finding items on another planet and then returning with it for a reward or to help someone. This creates almost endless possibilities for how you go through the game because you can accomplish your objectives in almost any order. I usually go to the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine first so that I can under go Jedi training right off the bat. This makes your character quite a bit stronger and lets you use jedi weapons and powers from that point on out.
The sound and graphics are very well done in this game. The lightsabers sound just like they do in the movies. Blasters have that same cheesy sound from the original Star Wars and the game is very authentic in terms of accurate Star Wars sounds. The voice acting is very well done and each character has their own voice acting, except yours for some reason. Some of the voices will annoy you a ton in the game, like the wookies and the droids, but for the most part the voice acting is very well done. Depending on your computer the graphics will either be so-so or amazing. My 3D card is not very capable so I had to turn the graphics way down so the game would not lag. The graphics aren't that great when you have them turned down, but if you have the game on a machine with a very advanced 3D card and a lot of memory they look awesome.
I actually play the game on my friend's computer because he has a good 3D card and the environments look very life like. Character detail could have been a little bit better. The details are pretty solid on each character but the in game situations are pretty similar to City of Heroes and the character detail in COH is done much better. All of the droids, aliens and ships hold true to their Star Wars counterparts. Overall the sound and graphics are very well done.
Overall
Overall I was very pleased with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I like how you have a lot of flexibility when playing the game. It is really cool how you can go to either the light or dark side depending on how you answer certain questions or treat people you meet on your journey. I also like how you can choose the order you go about accomplishing your goals in the game and how you can travel from planet to planet in whichever sequence you want. This really adds to the enjoyment of the game. The only gripes I had I think I mentioned in my review, but the only other thing I can think of is that the game is far too easy. You max out in levels well before you reach the final stages of the game and this makes the last parts of the game very repetitive and boring. Also the final boss battle is somewhat of a let down after playing the game for hours on end to get to the climax, but I won't spoil it.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this review. I think that anyone who is a fan of Star Wars or RPG games will enjoy this game. It is not that expensive anymore either. I purchased this game at EB Games for $19.99 and for the price you really get quite a bit in terms of a solid RPG game. As always, I welcome any comments or suggestions! Thanks for reading and May the Force be With You!
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