Summary: Entertaining! Amusing story and dialogue, logical puzzles, highly recommended. For a Point-n-Click game from the 90s, this one actually does not hurt you to play. And I'm not just talking about Sierra's punishment of death for exploration in adventure games. I'm referring to the controls. Read the manual and the controls quickly become smooth and intuitive, unlike many of the same decade and genre, which are clunky and lack simple, user-friendly keyboard shortcuts or require far too many clicks for a single action. With FOTAQ, I never found the controls to be too awkward or difficult. As for the puzzles, they were never illogical or too difficult to figure out, as long as you play the way these games are meant to be played, by looking at everything, talking to everyone, etc. I finished without needing to look for a walkthrough. It just comes down to how well you pay attention to what's being said. The main drawback is the backtracking, which today would be excessive but compared to similar games of its time, isn't all that bad. It's more of a mild headache than a nightmare, and the many positive qualities of the game will keep you interested enough to continue to the end. I did not encounter any bugs during my only playthrough. Very few typos. If you look at this game as being the parody it is, you will enjoy it. There's noticeable dedication put into many reactions for things you attempt to do, including those you know wouldn't successfully advance the game, such as when you try to use the "pick up" action on a girl. Fluent English speakers will especially appreciate the various wordplay and innuendo interspersed within. The writing can be quite funny at times. Having never played FOTAQ before, I thought I'd give it a try. Definitely worthwhile! You do need a certain degree of patience with this genre, and since it is rather lengthy, I do not recommend it for those with short attention spans. However, it does have MANY save slots available.
Having played it a lot in my adolescent/teen years, I purchased GOG's version for nostalgia. I have to say it didn't age that well. The campaigns remain interesting, and they should reward you with the nostalgia fix you seek. However, even with a significant number of varied skirmish maps, the gameplay seems repetitive and gets boring somewhat quickly. The AI is predictable, and the number of different units/buildings is quite limited. There are noticeable QoL issues, such as inability to queue units, poor unit pathing (VERY poor at times), no way to know from your HUD if a worker is idle, and a lack of tooltips that could provide insight into behind-the-scenes damage bonuses. I've played other RTS games (released just a few years after Warcraft II) that correct all these issues. This port seems quite good. I did not suffer a single crash at any point (Win10 64bit, 1920x1080 res). Occasionally the music during briefings forgets to play, but other than that I haven't noticed a single bug. I did not mod it, and I did not play multiplayer, but I expect it can be more interesting/enjoyable if you choose to do either of those things. If you are only interested in single player, however, don't expect it to be as good as you remember. I purchased it at 20% off and it was still way overpriced (although I've no doubt that's due to Blizzard and not GOG's fault). It's probably only worth about 20% of its regular price, at best. I actually have the original box with the price sticker on it and it's virtually the same price now as it was 25 years ago. Just a lot less fun.
Firstly, it DOES work on Windows 10, which I'll explain below my review. KOTOR is a classic you've no doubt heard of before, if you haven't had the opportunity to play. But "classic" doesn't even begin to do it justice. This game has so much effort put into its creation, and you can see that quite easily while playing. The replay value is very high, and you simply don't get this many hours of enjoyment from a single playthrough from very many games, especially not anymore. I played it as a teen when it came out, and it has aged magnificently. Controls are still intuitive and not clunky like many games of its time. Graphics are great, as far as I'm concerned. The overall quality of this game is unmatched, to this day. There's no reason you shouldn't play it. Unless you hate games with a story. As for its compatibility with modern systems: I purchased it from GOG about 1 year ago, and I had difficulty getting the resolution to work on my new laptop. Upon running, it only opened the menu screen in a tiny window. (Not an issue with the operating system, but rather with a newer screen resolution.) I contacted GOG Support and we tried countless things to get it to run in 1920x1080. The support team is fantastic, and they will do everything they can to help you get a game working on your machine. Ultimately, the fix was surprisingly simple: We forced the resolution I desired by opening up the configuration file (swkotor.ini) and adding under "Graphics Options" the following two lines (adjust to your own resolution if different): Width=1920 Height=1080 Then save. Then run the game. This fix may not work for everyone, but if your machine is on the newer side and you have a newer resolution for full screen, chances are you will have some sort of compatibility issue with old games that GOG worked on before these newer systems were even built. Don't get mad, just contact Support or do your own research and try to resolve your issue before giving up and demanding a refund.
