STAR WARS™: Knights of the Old Republic

The game is definitely one that everyone should experience. Great story that will keep you entertained throughout. The execution however is really frustrating and feels like a reworking of the mechanics could improve the experience so much. First of all, the game is buggy. Very buggy. As soon as you reach an area with grass, there is a visual glitch that will also crash the game constantly. You need to edit the games ini file to disable grass to stop that. Then you will frequently lose the ability to control your character. Changing characters can help, but until you transition, that first character just can't be controlled. Turning on VSync helped with that, but it still happens at time. All that aside, there will still be times when your keyboard stops responding or sound stops, which require reloads, and you'll need to save constantly as the game still crashes every 15 minutes or so. As for mechanics, you'll be frequently stuck trying to walk past character or through doorways, as the hitboxes are massive. You can give your allies guns to use, but they will still frequently insist on running up to enemies to shoot them in melee range. Controls, especially in combat are just awful. Any kind of combat tactics beyond just hitting stuff is an absolute headache. Forget controlling the rest of your squad as they won't even listen most of the time. Then there's the character creation stuff that you really need to know ahead of time, such as all of your weapon specialisation, and armour proficiencies become useless by halfway through the game (hope you weren't investing in those), you're also going to lose access to most of your skills (hope you weren't making a high int scoundrel to cover all of that as you are now only getting one skill point per level). Yet even with all that, it's still a great game and well worth playing through. It just could be made so much better with a modern update.

Still one of the best star wars stories and RPGs of all time, only reason I took a star off is the game seems to crash an awful lot. Enough restarts usually gets it going though.

This game has probably one of the best stories in the history of the series. It's right there with the best of the movies and definitely deserves to be canon. It takes place thousands of years before the movies, but it is so well written that it seems to explain a lot of what you see in those movies. It, along with the classic movies, is one of the stories you shouldn't miss. The role playing game system really seems to successfully emulate tabletop gaming, complete with dice rolls and classic tabletop rules, while at the same time blending in action and moving at a rapid pace. You start by rolling up a character, then you enter the world of Star Wars seamlessly. Every decision you make, from what to focus on when rolling up your character to how you play your part affects the rest of the world and the game. Would you like to be a Jedi savior and do wonderful things in the name of the Light Side? Your actions will move you in the proper direction. If you are nice and try to save people, you will go to the light side. Would you like to be a dark Jedi? (Note: Dark Jedi are not called Sith in this world, as the Sith are something else entirely. Play the game and you'll see what they are.) Do as much damage as you can, kill enemies you can choose to spare, and do as many dark deeds as you can, and you will go to the Dark Side. The other characters you meet in the game all seem alive, and they all have believable motives to do what they do. You will learn to care about some and hate others, but they will definitely seem real. The game may make you laugh, cry, jump in fear, and fall out of your chair in surprise. If you want your own piece of the Star Wars Universe, or if you want to remember the feeling of playing Star Wars paper-and-pencil role playing games until the wee hours of the morning, this game is just what you need.

Sure when I was growing up I knew and played some Diablo and Sacred and they were the favourites in the computer cafés. The kids in class all talked about their heroes, their builds and all the usual ramblings that we all know of. I picked KOTOR when it came out, but somehow a couple of hours in I wasn't convinced that I liked RPGs, so I sticked to my comfort zone playing RTS games. It wasn't till a couple of years ago that I completed it for the first time and I was amazed by it. Absolutely stunning characters, great dialogues, great flexibility and last but not least one of the best Star Wars tales and PC games ever made.

This game transcends the Star Wars movies. This is the finest work of any digital Star Wars media. The pinnacle.