STAR WARS™: Knights of the Old Republic

This game takes advantage of the Star Wars mythos and leans into the expanded universe to tell an interesting story. The build depth is also a welcome addition, it's clear the RPG elements were taken seriously. The combat itself is quite dated and isn't exactly pleasing to engage in, however. Traversal is also a bit boring. If you're a more story focused gamer, this is a great title.

If you ahve every played any of the older bioware titles this to me is the one that really cemented the formula that they used for games like mass effect and dragon age. I feel that while baldurs gate 1 and 2 are stronger titles. This one is a bit easier to get into and the star wars setting worked well of the binary morality system that plays a major role in how you role play. If you have never played it give it a chance. It is not an action game and deals with many systems that if one is unfamiliar with can be confusing. Yet this game is just fun and never to challenging on normal difficulty. Also just a fun stars war story nothing to deep but a good adventure with a memberable party members.

The best Star Wars story game. No matter if canon or not. Some people complain about black or white morale, but at least in this game you can be a villain. In other Bioware games you are hero or anti-hero, nothing else.

Star wars KOTOR is a fantastic game demonstrating the early talents of bioware. It offers a great game to discover with a well written and interesting story and plot lines. Very in advance on its time, you can visit the places you want in whatever order you wish. However, you better get yourself well prepared with a good idea on you want to play, as this game doesn't easily forgive mistakes. Some planets can be more forgiving than others and you will need to carefully select you perks, feats and stats while leveling up. Otherwise you will probably get filtered at some point in the game. The story however, while with a basic premise, is well written with interesting characters and moral dilemnas you will have to ask yourself. It does go deeper into what each side truly represents for its followers although the sith are laughably evil in this game. You will have former sith jedis, mercenaries, evil corporatists and a whole lot of more to talk to. Many of the NPCs you can talk to have many lines of dialogues with its fair share of information. Why a 4 then ? Well you can have steep difficulty spikes in the game, the free roaming comes at the cost of you properly waging your chances, which not be an issue for the players accustomed to these games but I am somewhat of a neophite in the genre. So be careful of what you do, your actions are choices may be deceptively easy at times only to followed with a grueling battle. The final segment of the game is also insanely tough, at this point I will just believed that games from this period took too much inspiration from Halo CE and thought that a grueling battle with 100 enemies is good game design.

I wasn't a big fan of Star Wars until I first played this game. I watched the movies of course, but this game offered a fresh perspective on the setting, placing the story 3000 years before the movies. Basically, without giving out too much of the story: what if Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were the same person, Vader and Leia weren't related to each other and to him/her, and Leia was a Jedi? Also, there is a big reveal, which *isn't* about anyone being anyone's father. This game was perhaps the best (old) Bioware's RPG, a veritable crème de la crème, at least shoulder-to-shoulder with Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect. The similarities to those other games show through and through. You can play this game either as follower of the Light Side or Dark Side. Playing the game as LS is very satisfying. Unfortunately, one of the weaker points of this game is that if you go Dark Side, you will not be roleplaying as someone like the sinister, plotting Emperor Palpatine, but rather an unsophisticated brute. The actual DnD-like mechanics of the game aren't ideal, and there are a couple of "optimal builds" for a warrior, wizard and rogue archetype, but in my opinion that is secondary to story. If you are an RPG fan, and haven't already played KotOR, I recommend doing that!