Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review

 The force can do terrible things to a mind

Ever a creature given to totally inane and wanton flights of fancy, just last week I was enveloped by the inexplicable and singular desire once more to play through Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic in it's entirety; something I haven't done since before the inception of this blog. Only this time I wanted to do it with the finest that the community had to offer, dripping with the best of the best mods that the game could boast- until I found out that some of the big one's are totally incompatible with one another, so then I had to pick and choose. At it's core, however, I was still playing the KOTOR game which I fell in love with all those years ago and crowned highly on my list of favourite games ever. Do I stand by that designation, even today? Does the game still stand up enough to warrant the renewed interest around it in the light of the Knights of the Old Republic Remake, and have my recent gaming experiences at all reshaped how I look at KOTOR? Let's discuss.

'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' was a title from the Bioware golden age set within the Star Wars universe and coinciding with a series of Dark Horse comics set in an era of the Star Wars mythos still totally unexplored by Film or TV. If you've never had a chance to read the Knights of the Old Republic comic series, I would definitely recommend it, as even amidst the pretty decent quality Dark Horse Star Wars run, that collection in particular stands out as absolute gems. (I remember being helplessly hooked to the series back when I was a kid.) Released in 2003, KOTOR was a RPG that benefitted from Bioware's work with the exceptionally well-received Baldur's Gate games, as Bioware found a way to translate the Third Edition of D&D into a Star Wars game just as they had done with Baldur's Gate and Second Edition D&D. Of course, for your average Star Wars fan, the origin and basis of the mechanics was perfunctory, all we cared about was that this was a Star Wars RPG and it played good.

Using a D20 combat system linked with your typical attributes-stat-sheet set-up, KOTOR is built for real-time, round based, combat encounters with a limited number of feats and force abilities available at the player's discretion to add strategy and moment-to-moment decision making. The effectiveness of these powers, the likelihood of scoring hits, and the activation of crits, are all decided on behind-the-scenes dice rolls further influenced with bonuses granted from the stat sheet. When I first played this game I stumbled into it's systems having no idea what a D20 system was, and came away no more elucidated, yet incredibly I finished the title on the hardest difficulty with a character I can only assume was horribly sub-optimal; which is to say that the systems Bioware established here are decently complex if you want to get into them, but accommodating enough for an actual child to work them. I can attest to that from personal experience.

Coming back to the game after having learned of CRPGs and beaten the considerably more difficult Baldur's Gate games, I can appreciate the slight layers of complexity that allow for a decent amount of flexibility and distinct player builds. I won't lie to you and say there's a crazy amount of build variety on display here, even the six classes (three Jedi, three non-Jedi) are only really sliding scales from 'high mana user' to 'low mana user', or 'heavy weapons guy' to 'small arms man'. But that ankle-deep complexity works in the game's favour, as it gives you more time to focus on the act of playing the game rather than the interim moments of reading ability sheets and deciding how to approach each encounter. You won't have any truly taxing fights that challenge the limits of your creativity and resourcefulness, but you will spend a lot more time in the thick of combat and exploring the Star Wars Galaxy. 

Speaking of, KOTOR delivers us a version of the Star Wars universe that we had never before seen in any of the movies. An era set thousands of years before the prequels, wherein the Republic was not yet the de facto government of the universe, and crimson-saber wielding Dark Jedi could be expected in the hundreds as they spawned from a Dark Side fuelled Sith Empire. This is a Galaxy both familiar and unfamiliar, with technologies comparable to the Star Wars we love, but with a medieval twist that grants a more fantastical and mythical taste to the narrative. You have protocol and astromech droids looking decidedly more alien, newly designed fleets of Republic and Sith battle ships that adhere to the impractical-but-shapely philosophy of normal Star Wars starships and a more 'honorbound Knight' twist to how force wielders dress that I find instantly evocative and iconic. KOTOR looks the part of a Star Wars Era flawlessly, no doubt helped by the work Dark Horse did on shaping the world in their stellar comics. 

KOTOR tells the story of the return of the Sith Empire heralded by the legendary Jedi war hero Darth Revan and now succeeded by his traitorous former apprentice Darth Malak. You play a lowly Republic contractor inexplicably thrust into the middle of this conflict only to slowly discover that you might have more a role to play in this war than you'd ever of guessed. The narrative of this game is widely praised as one of it's greatest aspects, and it is for such good reason. Bioware's writers perfectly played off the beloved 'farmer to hero' trope that Star Wars lives and dies for and twisted it into grander, evolving beast with one of the greatest rugpulls in gaming. These writers took Star Wars, imbued it with another genre (swords and sorcery) and created a darkly majestic storyline that KOTOR fans still giddily discuss to this day; all over fifteen years before 'The Mandalorian' launched. If only this story could have served as the bar for narrative writing in the Star Wars universe going forth, we wouldn't still be having discussion about whether or not Star Wars has the depth for intelligent stories. (It does, and KOTOR is a masterful dip into the very crest of that lake.) 

One who has played any games from this studio before will likely be able to guess the structure of the game. After an introduction world you are set free on several planets, most of which are iconic in the source material, and you must engage complete questlines on each planet in order to serve the greater plot, which in this case is tracking the location of some mysterious powerful weapon called 'The Star Forge' which is giving the Sith Empire a domineering edge in the war for the galaxy. Each planet gives us a self-contained story delving into the state of the universe from this corner, one touches on a once cloistered ocean world now turned in a fulcrum point for the entire war thanks to it's exclusive production of the healing substance 'Kolto', another tells of the struggles of the tribal Wookies of Kashyyyk against slavery, all present the player with choices and consequences for how they want to shape the Galaxy they are saving. Now admittedly, these are choices in the very black and white 'Light Side', 'Dark Side' variety (for the most part. There are a couple of morality stunters packaged in there too.) but they still provided the freedom to be the Jedi that you want to be, a hallmark of great Bioware design.

As a Bioware RPG, you can expect a lionshare of the writing weight to be placed on characters and their interactions with the player, both as members of your party and people you meet in the frontiers, that is just the Bioware way. But even recognising that high Bioware standard, I have to admit that KOTOR in particular does a simply marvellous job characterising even the individuals you brush past for a single quest line over the whole story. Characterisation in the writing is so good that there are some standout characters you'd love to stick around more, and whom make me rue the fact that KOTOR is one of the only RPGs of it's type not to feature an end-slate 'where are they now' slideshow during the credits. Of course, this expands to most of the companions too, who are all classics for their contributions. (Even if I think that from a gameplay standpoint, there's a couple too many companions for them all to have unique talents and you're probably going to end up ignoring at least two for the entire game.)

I must say, however, that whilst many of the characters are personable and likeable, from the headstrong Jedi prodigy Bastila Shan to the scrappy Twi'lek rascal Mission Vao, (and the lovably blood-thirsty assassin-Driod HK-47, of course.) I don't think most of these characters boast incredible depth to them or anything. Which is fine, they serve the purpose that they need to well enough and aren't cardboard cutouts because Bioware simply would never write 2 dimensional characters like that, but in terms of character writing I don't think Bioware placed the bulk of their efforts in these people. Which unfortunately means that for the characters who aren't immediately ingratiating, such as the annoyingly testy Carth Onasi and the conceptually exciting but physically bland Canderous Ordo, it can be a chore to hang around them long enough to learn what their character growth journey shapes up as. (I know people out there like Canderous but I can't help it: I find his war stories incurably boring.) 

What I love about KOTOR is the way it takes a fresh period of Star Wars history and makes it yours, to explore, to redeem, to corrupt, to adventure within; and it does so in the familiar pattern that Star Wars fans love. We have our own team of ragtag adventures that smuggle across an iconic disc-like ship and who are thrust into an exciting journey to stop a galactic tyrant. It's like a full Star Wars film just for you, and I buzz for that sort of personal attention. Of course, I also adore the way it takes that step that not all RPGs do, and gives the player their own spot of purpose within the world so that events we're shaping feel like they have consequence to us! They were clever about it too, obfuscating the connection with typical 'nobody from nowhere' set-up that we come to expect from our RPGs nowadays, only to flip the script in the final act; I love watching the big scene where it gets revealed every- time!

In contrast, my griping points about KOTOR are few and utterly unrelated to the narrative which I think is actually one of the best that the Star Wars universe has ever enjoyed. I think that the force powers lack in choice, not that I'm wanting for a D&D sized spell book but there could be more goodies to look forward to in the last five levels of levelling beyond just upgrading some powers to auto-win CC variants. I dislike the lack of fast travel points outside of the ability to transit back to the Ebon Hawk, which in itself can only be done in certain arbitrary locations. Pazaak is fun, but about as deep as a pond once you realise it's a modified version of Blackjack with all the special features removed. And I despise the enemy spam in the final level, along with the tedious 'unique mechanic' of the final boss fight, but then I have an entire blog ranting about my thoughts on Bioware final level enemy spam, so I don't need to go into any more details on that here.

I think KOTOR shows us how an absolute icon, legend of a game can be a lean and tight experience with great ideas behind it, rather than being some bloated 100 hour adventure that's dripping with endless sidequests and extra routes and stupidly large dungeons. It actually surprised me several times how quick and sweet some of KOTOR's dungeon areas were and how much more I enjoyed them because of that, rather than having to endure a total slog through identical corridors like some more contemporary RPGs prefer. (I love you, 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker', but you have a problem.) When I finished KOTOR, I had a 42 hour save file; and that's only because of a huge 10 hour-long mod which I installed and played through on top of the base game; (Which is the reason for the robes I'm wearing in some of these screenshots) a thirty hour game can be a legend too.

None of which is too say that KOTOR is a totally polished experience, because beyond some levelling short-comings, this game has bugs, some of which are pretty bad. One I've seen consistently, as in every time I've ever played, is the bug in which character questlines (all of whom require a notoriously fiddly approach event to trigger) just don't start, or how Mission's entire plotline will break if you open an empty room in a key plot area before her quest is started. I have never managed to play every companion quest line in a single playthrough, and in fact only finished Juhani's, and thus did them all, in this most recent playthrough that I did for the review. Also, it took hours of fiddling to learn how to get this game working on 1080p, betraying the need for some sort of basic update patch that this game has been wanting for over a decade now. I don't know who the licence holder is for this game these days, but they've got to show this game some love. It's a classic!

In summary, Knights of the Old Republic is a revered and worthy gem of Bioware's glory days that excites and impresses today just as it did back in 2003. A classic that might show it's age on a technical front, but effortlessly holds its fun factor even against the titles of today. It's plot is iconic and involving in all of the best ways, and it's characters have just that right level of heart to latch onto yours quicker than you'd expect. It's gameplay systems are robust, if a little bare, and the size of the game is neat enough to be experienced in a a much more sensible timeframe than most modern RPGs demand. With all this taken to account, it hardly takes any deliberation at all to say that 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' is worthy of an A Grade and an express recommendation because classics like this deserve to be played more. Whatsmore, you really should give this game the time of day before the PS5 Remake turns it into an action-based Souls-like in the near future. (They literally said 'God of War' and 'Nioh 2' are inspirations. What the heck does that even mean for a party-based Stat-sheet roleplayer?)