In 2003, Bioware (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) and LucasArts (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) decided to make a Star Wars RPG. This news was received a bit skeptically, mostly because there were very few good Star Wars games out at the time (besides the SNES Star Wars games, brutal difficulty notwithstanding). However, once the game came out, it ended up getting 7 "Best of" awards from IGN, almost universal GOTY awards, and made enough money to fill a boat and warrant a sequel.
You begin the game by creating a character. You can choose a male or a female, choose from three classes, and choose from several portraits. The rest of the customization can be summed up as "make a D&D character sheet". While the aesthetic choices could be a bit more...varied, the rest of the customization more than makes up for it.
After this, the game starts with a starship under attack (cliche 1). Your character wakes up because of an explosion, then immediately afterwards, your roommate runs in, telling you to go find a Jedi named Bastila Shan (Jennifer Hale, who also does the voice of Samus Aran in the Metroid Prime games). You can tell him, basically, to go screw himself, but it doesn't matter, and the two of you go search for her. Eventually, after your roommate sacrifices himself (cliche 2), telling you to go on without him (cliche 3), you run into a pilot named Carth Onasi (Raphael Sbarge, who also did the voicework for Kaiden Alenko in Mass Effect). After the two of you leave in the last escape pod, the ship explodes (cliche 4). After crashing onto the planet of Taris, the two of you start looking for Bastila. And so does someone else...
Over the course of the game, you will visit Taris, Kashyykk (I think I spelled that right), Korriban, Tatooine, Dantooine, Manaan, and Rakata Prime. These are, in order, a city, a gigantic treehouse and jungle, a volcanic planet, a desert, a grassplain, an underwater metropolis, and a beach. As you can see, they really took their time developing these worlds and making each of them unique. What's more, each planet has creatures not seen elsewhere. For example, Tatooine has Sandpeople, Manaan has these fish-like creatures, Kashyykk has Wookies, etc. All in all, the environments are quite varied and will keep your interest.
The plot in this game, while it has its share of cliches, is still original enough to keep your interest, and is definitely deep enough to keep you wanting to keep playing, though the end is still kind of a WTF ending. A later twist, very nearly on the level of "Empire Strikes Back", will make you want to replay the game from a new perspective. There are also added props to making the story somewhat non-linear, in that there are multiple paths you can take to the end. Granted, no matter what the ending, the bad guy dies, but it's the journey, not the destination, that matters. The sidequests are also plentiful and varied enough to make you want to do them all. Some of these sidequests will take cliches and throw them on their head. Of course, you don't have to do all the sidequests, but they give you plenty of opportunities to be a complete jackass.
The voicework in this game can be summed up as "perfect". There is not a single voice in the game that does not fit the character. In particular, major props must be given to the voice actor of HK-47, Kristoffer Tabori. The character itself is very darkly comic, and that is only underlined by the skilled voice actor. That said, I found Mission Vao's voice to be grating, but I also found the character annoying, so it still fit. The music fits the game like a glove. It's ambient enough to not stand out, but it still flows well with the game, setting the mood.
Going hand-in-hand with the voice acting, the characters themselves are deep enough to hold your interest. Rather than being a case of "the gunner, the bitch" etc., here you have a person with a personal vendetta against the Sith due to being betrayed, a very conflicted Jedi, a street-smart Twi'lek, a Wookiee with a heart of gold, a mercenary who just wants to blow shit up, a droid that loves to see people, or as he refers to them, "meatbags", suffer, a lesbian half-cat Jedi, and finally, an old, cynical Jedi who is refreshingly not "the paragon of good" but rather "moral, but still laughs at other's stupidity". Each character has even more development that can only be gotten through your talking directly to them. What's more, your party members will occassionally chat with each other. For example, if you have Canderous, the aforementioned mercenary, and Bastila in your party, Canderous will insult her and the fallability of her beliefs, and she in turn will struggle to avoid getting emotional.
The battle system is one of the few problems I had with the game. It uses an active-time turn-based system, which works decently, but you never really feel like you are in any rush, since you can stack moves to use for later turns to buy you some time. Also, this kind of game would probably have benefitted more from a real time system.
The graphics, for the time, were astounding. However, five years has made a lot of progress in graphics, causing this game to now look somewhat archaic.
The morality meter was basically created with this game. Here, the morality meter makes an impact in gameplay. Unless you are high in Charisma, a light-side Jedi will want to avoid stuff like Force Choke, Force Lightning, and Fear, while dark-side Siths will try to avoid stuff like Force Heal and other such paladin-like abilities.
Overall, if you have a PC (which I know you do) or an Xbox, pick this up without any qualms. However, if you have a 360 and have already played Mass Effect, I would still recommend picking this up, seeing as it is quite obviously a good game and is backward compatible, but be warned that you will see very little that was not improved by Mass Effect.
Hmmm. Not wishing to cause offence, but you could definitely have padded the review with more words and less pictures. A game of KOTOR's length and caliber really needs a good number of paragraphs to cover all the necessary points. You didn't really mention the variety of worlds you visit, the different kinds of force powers available to you, the non-linear story, the fact that the characters and story actually have depth, HK-47...
A game like KOTOR can't really be summed up in a few sentences. If you were to do the review again, I'd suggest that you elaborate a lot more on the game's merits and shortcomings. We like long reviews here.
It was a good game, the only thing that I hated was the walking part. There were not running they were jumping in the air like little girls (I dont remember the correct word...).
Anarchemitis: KoTOR I think had too much walking and too many idle speeders. :/
isn't that the truth.
Great game though. Even though this review was a tad on the light side, it still reminded me that I have 2 awesome games sitting in my closet collecting dust.
KOTOR was definitely a diamond in the sea of turd that's plagued Star Wars games recently. The FPS stuff just never did it for me (outside of Dark Forces, which was AWESOME), and 99.9% of the racing games sucked as well. KOTOR is sort of the hybrid RPG/Action game that I always hoped would come out following the (fantastic) Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series. Kyle Katarn, where have you gone?
KOTOR is probably about the only recent Star Wars spin-off that I think deserves a movie (and not directed by crazy George Lucas). It definitely deserves a 'true' sequel, and not the garbage dished out that was KOTOR II.
KOTOR III s a long time coming, and I hope that Bioware does it, and does it right.
mitsoxfan: KOTOR was definitely a diamond in the sea of turd that's plagued Star Wars games recently. The FPS stuff just never did it for me (outside of Dark Forces, which was AWESOME), and 99.9% of the racing games sucked as well. KOTOR is sort of the hybrid RPG/Action game that I always hoped would come out following the (fantastic) Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series. Kyle Katarn, where have you gone?
KOTOR is probably about the only recent Star Wars spin-off that I think deserves a movie (and not directed by crazy George Lucas). It definitely deserves a 'true' sequel, and not the garbage dished out that was KOTOR II.
KOTOR III s a long time coming, and I hope that Bioware does it, and does it right.
Kyle Katarn has to be the coolest non movie Star Wars character. It would be nice to see him on a film.
I recently went back to replay this game... took out the KOTOR case.. opened it up... WTF?!? RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN?!?!?!? WTF?!? I NEVER EVEN OWNED THAT GAME. WHERE IS MY KOTOR DISC?!
That was a rude shock.
Long story short, I had to spend $15 bucks to get a used copy of KOTOR on amazon. On the plus side, I now have two cases.
nice review. Anyone who hasn't played this game should really do themselves a favor. The sequel isn't as bad as people online will tell you either.
UpInSmoke: I recently went back to replay this game... took out the KOTOR case.. opened it up... WTF?!? RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN?!?!?!? WTF?!? I NEVER EVEN OWNED THAT GAME. WHERE IS MY KOTOR DISC?!
That was a rude shock.
Long story short, I had to spend $15 bucks to get a used copy of KOTOR on amazon. On the plus side, I now have two cases.
nice review. Anyone who hasn't played this game should really do themselves a favor. The sequel isn't as bad as people online will tell you either.
Agreed. But they should hold off until that Restoration Mod gets released to avoid most of the disappointment. It's not bad, just incomplete.
UpInSmoke: I recently went back to replay this game... took out the KOTOR case.. opened it up... WTF?!? RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN?!?!?!? WTF?!? I NEVER EVEN OWNED THAT GAME. WHERE IS MY KOTOR DISC?!
That was a rude shock.
Long story short, I had to spend $15 bucks to get a used copy of KOTOR on amazon. On the plus side, I now have two cases.
nice review. Anyone who hasn't played this game should really do themselves a favor. The sequel isn't as bad as people online will tell you either.
Agreed. But they should hold off until that Restoration Mod gets released to avoid most of the disappointment. It's not bad, just incomplete.
KOTOR is probably about the only recent Star Wars spin-off that I think deserves a movie (and not directed by crazy George Lucas). It definitely deserves a 'true' sequel, and not the garbage dished out that was KOTOR II.
KOTOR III s a long time coming, and I hope that Bioware does it, and does it right.
Actually, KOTOR II was a game that was rushed, It could had been 40 times better but the game got out incomplete. Heard from somewhere that Bioware will retake the project (this is a rumor)
I hope they will take time to perfect the game instead of doing it fast like they did
KOTOR is probably about the only recent Star Wars spin-off that I think deserves a movie (and not directed by crazy George Lucas). It definitely deserves a 'true' sequel, and not the garbage dished out that was KOTOR II.
KOTOR III s a long time coming, and I hope that Bioware does it, and does it right.
Actually, KOTOR II was a game that was rushed, It could had been 40 times better but the game got out incomplete. Heard from somewhere that Bioware will retake the project (this is a rumor)
I hope they will take time to perfect the game instead of doing it fast like they did
To be fair, it was rushed because LucasArts demanded them to finish the game several months ahead of schedule. It wasn't Obsidian's fault.
Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
Break: Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
You are correct. The battle system does exactly what it's meant to do. It's really a matter of personal preference. The writer obviously prefers real time combat. I feel differently. This is an RPG, after all. I happen to feel that the combat in Mass Effect was a big step backwards from the KOTOR games.
Break: Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
...I said I never felt rushed. Funny thing about reviews....they are subjective. In other words, you may disagree with me. I think turn-based systems have their place, but not in KOTOR or similar games. You obviously feel differently.
Break: Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
...I said I never felt rushed. Funny thing about reviews....they are subjective. In other words, you may disagree with me. I think turn-based systems have their place, but not in KOTOR or similar games. You obviously feel differently.
what would you have preferred to see? I think the turn based combat brought a level of strategic depth to the battles that was sorely missed in Mass Effect. I think that real time combat in KOTOR would almost certainly have devolved into light-saber button-mashing hell.
ok well to be truthful i never finished knights of the old republic but i did buy it and get about an hour into the story mode (thats an hour excluding the few days of dialoogue) and i was running around a sewer with some green bitch and a wookie when my xbox fried and when i got it back the harddrive had been formated so i went about half an hour in and gave up bc it sucks! and maybe thats just me because i hate plot and cant go a few days without killing something (mostly locust and grunts) but i hated it! there are hundreds of hours of dialogue and the controls are point and click because then it fights for you and the wepons are bad and half the time you miss or it gives you half credit and all there is is alot of wandering around and you can get stuck where you atomaticly die and it bounces you back a few seconds to where you still automaticly die! maybe im just the kind of idiot who hates plot and good storytelling but that cant be because i like zelda ocarine of time (for the most part)
lemonade man: ok well to be truthful i never finished knights of the old republic but i did buy it and get about an hour into the story mode (thats an hour excluding the few days of dialoogue) and i was running around a sewer with some green bitch and a wookie when my xbox fried and when i got it back the harddrive had been formated so i went about half an hour in and gave up bc it sucks! and maybe thats just me because i hate plot and cant go a few days without killing something (mostly locust and grunts) but i hated it! there are hundreds of hours of dialogue and the controls are point and click because then it fights for you and the wepons are bad and half the time you miss or it gives you half credit and all there is is alot of wandering around and you can get stuck where you atomaticly die and it bounces you back a few seconds to where you still automaticly die! maybe im just the kind of idiot who hates plot and good storytelling but that cant be because i like zelda ocarine of time (for the most part)
This makes about as much sense as complaining about the lack of explosions in a romantic comedy. You sound like someone who spends a lot of time on xbox live. I won't call you an idiot, but I will suggest that you refrain from buying any more games until you learn the differences between the various genres. Maybe that would help you manage your expectations a little bit more realistically.
Break: Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
...I said I never felt rushed. Funny thing about reviews....they are subjective. In other words, you may disagree with me. I think turn-based systems have their place, but not in KOTOR or similar games. You obviously feel differently.
what would you have preferred to see? I think the turn based combat brought a level of strategic depth to the battles that was sorely missed in Mass Effect. I think that real time combat in KOTOR would almost certainly have devolved into light-saber button-mashing hell.
Break: Your criticism of the battle system is silly. It's supposed to be turn-based. The hell with feeling rushed, there was a freeze button that let you cycle through your action palate, and an option to pause the game after every turn. It's a normal RPG, just smoother.
...I said I never felt rushed. Funny thing about reviews....they are subjective. In other words, you may disagree with me. I think turn-based systems have their place, but not in KOTOR or similar games. You obviously feel differently.
what would you have preferred to see? I think the turn based combat brought a level of strategic depth to the battles that was sorely missed in Mass Effect. I think that real time combat in KOTOR would almost certainly have devolved into light-saber button-mashing hell.
Let's not get into this, please.
That was your main criticism of the gameplay. You don't care to defend it whatsoever? Oh...Kay...
I shouldn't have to defend it. My opinion is that I believe that KOTOR would have benefitted more from a real-time system than the turn-based system in the game, because quite frankly, it would have been more realistic to me if they had you using Force powers and lightsabers and all that while the enemy was shooting you and readjusting your strategy as necessary, moving around and trying to flank the enemies and such, rather than mashing the X button, then going to make a sandwich. Now, I have defended my opinion. Shut up, and do not bring this up again.
thebobmaster: I shouldn't have to defend it. My opinion is that I believe that KOTOR would have benefitted more from a real-time system than the turn-based system in the game, because quite frankly, it would have been more realistic to me if they had you using Force powers and lightsabers and all that while the enemy was shooting you and readjusting your strategy as necessary, moving around and trying to flank the enemies and such, rather than mashing the X button, then going to make a sandwich. Now, I have defended my opinion. Shut up, and do not bring this up again.
You could've just said that you prefer real-time combat. No need to attack me. I don't think any control scheme is going to make lightsaber/laser/lightning-shooting-out-of-my fucking-hands based combat noticeably "more realistic", but then again I'm not a belligerent asshole throwing around dubious opinions like they were facts. Post your reviews on your refrigerator instead of on a message board if you don't want to defend your positions. For a quick lesson on why your opinion in this matter is worth less than dogshit, go spend 5 minutes playing any Star Wars action game ever released.
I liked your review and thought that i wouldn't mind reading your reviews again. Right up until...
Now, I have defended my opinion. Shut up, and do not bring this up again.
That point there, you review a game people will critique on it as that is essentially the reviewer business. Not willing to defend your points, don't review.
Anyway, the review itself. Actually did do the game justice, whilst i agree with whoever said that it needs fleshing out because of the games high calibur. I do find myself overly compelled to play Kotor again, sadly however i only posses KotorII and i don't really feel like playing the three day tutorial mission on that space station just to get to the first planet. Still, after reading the review i feel like there is a game missing from my collection.
The dialogue within the game was supreme and there was absoloutely nothing flawed about it in anyway what so ever. I simply ignored Mission Vao, annoying as she was Bioware didn't make her an overwhelmingly necessary part of the game and for that i was thankful.
The graphics are still great, of course you can look back from todays perspective and say that progress has weakend them somewhat but thats bound to happen so i feel the perspective is a little jaded. The graphics are great and with the unique atmospheres and asthetics of the worlds, Bioware truely put them to great use.
The battle system, the point which may well earn me a flogging with a stick but frankly i could care less. I liked it, it was a little relaxed at at times uneccesary. The ability to que 4 actions at a time never really hit it off with me. The only time i ever felt that i needed to use was when i threw in some healing for good measure and then left another attack to begin again. I only found myself queing attacks towards the end of the game, i'd offer an alternative if i could but i don't have one i could aptly name. The ai of your team was actually rather good, they would die on occassion yes however most of the time they proved to be stella in a pinch and provide adequate support, more than enough for you to finish off whatever was posing a "threat"
The only points about Kotor that niggles me was the fact that some of the powers became retardly overpowered, of course this is a temptation for developers as: A/ This is Starwars. B/ The use of the force is necessary throughout the game. C/ As the protagonist you're bound to be powerful at some point. Later on in the game, much later on, i found myself using one force power only to clear out rooms of my enemies so i could get through undisturbed to my final moments of game play. Whilst this made me feal completely badass and like Darth Vader reborn, i was hoping for more of a difficult end game than. Step 1: Walk into room Step 2: Superuberforcepower Step 3: ? Step 4: Profit. This never really seemed to apply to the lightside however, which focused mostly on healing, shields etc etc. I much preferred the lightside to playing the darkside, if only because i had to get my hands bloody once in a while. The irony of that isn't lost on me i can assure you.
The next point is the fact that the choice system, whilst reveloutionary at the time offered actually very little. Sure, we all laughed at our maginficence when we could force choke someone during dialogue or make them hand over their credits so we could spend them on some silly little minigame. But really, no great change was made to the overall running of the game until the end. You could turn your cohorts i believe to the darkside if you really wished but even then, little difference was made and so i felt like the whole system there was washed away beneath everything else.
Too my last point, the levels. I don't mean the actual planets, but the fact that your characters level really doesn't mean squat. Or at least in my experiance, i don't believe i got past lvl 23 before i found myself completing the game. Whether that means i rushed it or not i have no idea. I did a fair amount of side quests and whatnot but by that point i was whooping ass enough to achieve the endgame and i was pretty much empty on other things to do. Whilst such a design removes the need for labourious grind, i do feel the need to question it when some of my friends finished towards the 28 mark and i was only 23.
In 2003, Bioware (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights) and LucasArts (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) decided to make a Star Wars RPG. This news was received a bit skeptically, mostly because there were very few good Star Wars games out at the time (besides the SNES Star Wars games, brutal difficulty notwithstanding). However, once the game came out, it ended up getting 7 "Best of" awards from IGN, almost universal GOTY awards, and made enough money to fill a boat and warrant a sequel.
You begin the game by creating a character. You can choose a male or a female, choose from three classes, and choose from several portraits. The rest of the customization can be summed up as "make a D&D character sheet". While the aesthetic choices could be a bit more...varied, the rest of the customization more than makes up for it.
After this, the game starts with a starship under attack (cliche 1). Your character wakes up because of an explosion, then immediately afterwards, your roommate runs in, telling you to go find a Jedi named Bastila Shan (Jennifer Hale, who also does the voice of Samus Aran in the Metroid Prime games). You can tell him, basically, to go screw himself, but it doesn't matter, and the two of you go search for her. Eventually, after your roommate sacrifices himself (cliche 2), telling you to go on without him (cliche 3), you run into a pilot named Carth Onasi (Raphael Sbarge, who also did the voicework for Kaiden Alenko in Mass Effect). After the two of you leave in the last escape pod, the ship explodes (cliche 4). After crashing onto the planet of Taris, the two of you start looking for Bastila. And so does someone else...
Over the course of the game, you will visit Taris, Kashyykk (I think I spelled that right), Korriban, Tatooine, Dantooine, Manaan, and Rakata Prime. These are, in order, a city, a gigantic treehouse and jungle, a volcanic planet, a desert, a grassplain, an underwater metropolis, and a beach. As you can see, they really took their time developing these worlds and making each of them unique. What's more, each planet has creatures not seen elsewhere. For example, Tatooine has Sandpeople, Manaan has these fish-like creatures, Kashyykk has Wookies, etc. All in all, the environments are quite varied and will keep your interest.
The plot in this game, while it has its share of cliches, is still original enough to keep your interest, and is definitely deep enough to keep you wanting to keep playing, though the end is still kind of a WTF ending. A later twist, very nearly on the level of "Empire Strikes Back", will make you want to replay the game from a new perspective. There are also added props to making the story somewhat non-linear, in that there are multiple paths you can take to the end. Granted, no matter what the ending, the bad guy dies, but it's the journey, not the destination, that matters. The sidequests are also plentiful and varied enough to make you want to do them all. Some of these sidequests will take cliches and throw them on their head. Of course, you don't have to do all the sidequests, but they give you plenty of opportunities to be a complete jackass.
The voicework in this game can be summed up as "perfect". There is not a single voice in the game that does not fit the character. In particular, major props must be given to the voice actor of HK-47, Kristoffer Tabori. The character itself is very darkly comic, and that is only underlined by the skilled voice actor. That said, I found Mission Vao's voice to be grating, but I also found the character annoying, so it still fit. The music fits the game like a glove. It's ambient enough to not stand out, but it still flows well with the game, setting the mood.
Going hand-in-hand with the voice acting, the characters themselves are deep enough to hold your interest. Rather than being a case of "the gunner, the bitch" etc., here you have a person with a personal vendetta against the Sith due to being betrayed, a very conflicted Jedi, a street-smart Twi'lek, a Wookiee with a heart of gold, a mercenary who just wants to blow shit up, a droid that loves to see people, or as he refers to them, "meatbags", suffer, a lesbian half-cat Jedi, and finally, an old, cynical Jedi who is refreshingly not "the paragon of good" but rather "moral, but still laughs at other's stupidity". Each character has even more development that can only be gotten through your talking directly to them. What's more, your party members will occassionally chat with each other. For example, if you have Canderous, the aforementioned mercenary, and Bastila in your party, Canderous will insult her and the fallability of her beliefs, and she in turn will struggle to avoid getting emotional.
The battle system is one of the few problems I had with the game. It uses an active-time turn-based system, which works decently, but you never really feel like you are in any rush, since you can stack moves to use for later turns to buy you some time. Also, this kind of game would probably have benefitted more from a real time system.
The graphics, for the time, were astounding. However, five years has made a lot of progress in graphics, causing this game to now look somewhat archaic.
The morality meter was basically created with this game. Here, the morality meter makes an impact in gameplay. Unless you are high in Charisma, a light-side Jedi will want to avoid stuff like Force Choke, Force Lightning, and Fear, while dark-side Siths will try to avoid stuff like Force Heal and other such paladin-like abilities.
Overall, if you have a PC (which I know you do) or an Xbox, pick this up without any qualms. However, if you have a 360 and have already played Mass Effect, I would still recommend picking this up, seeing as it is quite obviously a good game and is backward compatible, but be warned that you will see very little that was not improved by Mass Effect.
