STAR WARS™: Knights of the Old Republic

At this point I don't think there's much that can be added to Knights of the Old Republic that hasn't already been said. I originally played this game on the physical discs (It came on 4 CDs...) and played the hell out of it. Today I still play it, and now I can enjoy it DRM Free! The story of this game is among the best (beaten only by perhaps Knights of the Old Republic II) and this game was when Bioware was in its prime. Sure, the graphics themselves don't look as good as they did when this game was released, and to be fair, some of the actual gameplay elements are a little "outdated", but I would argue that everything else about this game is sheer excellence. For me, the combat still holds up to this day, the story is still excellent, and no other game is going to make you feel more like you are in the Star Wars universe than this one. This is a must own.

it kicks me out when i try to go back to the Hidden Beks post with the swoop bike part. Cannot advance. was fun up to then.

The story's alright, but if you don't like BioWare's kach'n'slash gameplay, you'll die of boredom before getting to know it.

Story - Decent. It's pretty standard "bad guy wants to rule the galaxy because reasons and you have to stop him" stuff. It's not at all clever or unique but it is well told and fits within the Star Wars universe nicely. The "twist" in the story is pretty much shoved in your face from the start and isn't at all surprising when it's finally revealed. Still, it's light years better than anything George Lucas did with the prequel trilogy. Characters - Really good. This is where Bioware shines. They've always managed to write interesting characters in their games and KOTOR is no exception. Sure the characters are a little flat, but they're still more interesting than the characters in 95% of games these days. I would have liked to see more depth to those characters but there's only so much you can do with a 40 hour story without seriously slowing down the action. Voice Acting - Mostly excellent. All of the English language voice acting is spot on and you'll probably recognize a few of the voices (Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid). The alien language voice acting is just mindless gobbledygook repeated ad nauseam and gets real old, real quick. Fortunately, you can advance the dialog as you read it so you don't have to listen to some character saying "chumbawumbabumby" to you for the thousandth time. Sound and Music - The sound effects are straight from the movies and sound just like you remember. There are some of the licensed music from the movies, most notably the Star Wars Fanfare, and the rest of original music is stylistically similar and fits in nicely. Gameplay - Average. It's basically a pausable, real-time combat system running Dungeons & Dragons rules. The character classes are pretty basic and definitely encourage specialization. Therein lies the problem. Once you specialize your characters and figure out a strategy for defeating enemies, the challenge of the game mostly goes away, more so once the Jedi are involved. The game never encourages, let alone forces, you to explore different methods. What works on one enemy will work on all enemies. And the Jedi classes are so overpowered that you'll probably never use any other characters once you have a few of them in your party. Although easy, it's still pretty fun. There isn't a problem in this universe that can't be solved with a lightsaber; that's both a good thing and a bad thing in this case. Pacing - Bad. This is where the game falls short. Why do you have to play through a quarter of the game before meeting your first Jedi? Why do you have to play through a full third of the game before becoming a Jedi yourself? Those are the questions that I'm asking myself while playing this game. Fact - In a universe where laser swords are a thing, regular swords are boring. Once your character does become a Jedi, things do get a bit more fun and the game opens up a bit. The openness is mostly an illusion though, as you can freely travel to four different worlds and complete mostly linear objectives at each one. But it does keep the story moving along at least. Then it's back to the linear progression through the final two areas of the game and your showdown with the big bad guy. In total, more than half the game just feels like a slow slog through busy work as you're trying to get to the fun. Graphics - Good. It's an old game but it still looks pretty decent. I don't really play games for the graphics, so as long as I can tell what things are supposed to be, it's good enough for me. There were a few areas of the game that I thought could really benefit from a better lighting engine for ambiance purposes. Also, no widescreen support! The game is old, but it's not that old, and widescreen televisions have been around since the late 1990's. Thankfully, there's a mod that fixes the widescreen issue. Other than those things, I have no issues with the graphics. Final thoughts - It's probably the best Star Wars themed game ever made and I don't see that title going to any other game any time soon. Even without the Star Wars license behind it, it's still a pretty good game and well worth your time and money. I do have issues with the pacing, it taking far to long to get to the fun part, but it never felt like a grind. Just slow. And although it's far more linear than it pretends to be, it uses that linearity to tell an interesting, if predictable and cliche, story. The characters (particularly the party characters), although somewhat flat, are fun and well acted. I only encountered a few bugs and all but one of those were just minor annoyances most likely related to the fact that I was using a mod to run the game in 1080p widescreen. Later Bioware games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect do everything that KOTOR does, only better. But this is still worth playing, especially for any Star Wars fan. Total game time - Just over 38 hours.

The strongest aspect of the game is unquestionably the characters and the excellent story. Although a Windows game it runs well on Linux inside WINE (if antialiasing is disabled, which causes white background). There are bugs which are not platform specific sadly. The most annoying is the fact that after most fight the actively selected character cannot move anymore. The only fix is saving then loading or switching to another character who is still not stuck.