Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

A great video game worthy of the Star Wars title, Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR for short) brought us an RPG (Role-Playing Game) of astronomical proportions. It starts almost four thousand years before the events portrayed in the movies, when the threat of the Sith is more obvious. In fact, there is a apparently invincible Sith armada trying to destroy the Old Republic, led by the Dark Lord Malak.

This game starts with a traditional text crawl, and then the traditional space scene. In this scene, we watch as a Republic ship is being attacked by a Sith fleet. The main character (that's you) is a passenger and crew member aboard this Republic cruiser. As soon as this scene ends you are thrust into the action as you attempt to defend your vessel.

But it will not be so, and you soon find yourself crash landing on a Sith-occupied planet called Taris. Now you must meet up with with other party members and find a ship, while avoiding the detection of the Sith Guards. It will not be easy, and you must risk your life many a time to escape this planet. But what path will you take? Do you aid the Undercity Villagers and help them find what they believe to be the "Promised Land", or do you sell their only hope to the local merchant? Do you give money to a man with a bounty on his head or do you kill him and collect the bounty yourself? In this game it is your choice, and each action affects your affiliation with the Force. If you choose to collect that bounty, your Force Meter is pushed down toward the Dark Side. But if you give him the credits your Force Meter rises toward Light Side.

And after many, many hours of play that one would expect from an RPG, one notices that this is no ordinary video game. Time was spent wisely, as the graphics, storyline, dialogue, combat system, etc. of this non-linear game are superb. This game is truly worthy of it's Game of the Year stature, and then some. Check it out! And when you are done with it, play it's sequel, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, another superb Star Wars game.

This game is incredible! The game is so big and you can choose to help people or kill them or make their lives miserable. You can decide to become the Dark Lord or you can turn to the light side and be a Jedi Master and save the galaxy. I have played it at least fifteen times and every time I have played I always discovered new ways to play the game. Although it is a Star Wars game it is almost completely different from the movies. You can interact with the people in your team and get involved into their story lines. Except an old man in your group. Well maybe you can and I haven't done that. It is a really big game. Although I thought a planet you have to travel to, Manaan, was pretty boring, the rest of the game was great. I was curios to find was that a space station you can go to at Yavin, was not in another copy of the game that two of my friends had. It sucks for them because in the game you build a lightsaber and can put crystals in it to make it more powerful and to have different colours. You could have yellow, or red, or green, or blue, or violet. But two other crystal colours you can buy near the end of the game are at that space station. But a really hard thing to do (for me) was to turn to the dark side. It was really sad to ruin these peoples lives (even though they probably deserved it). But, that is just me.

One of the first games I ever got for my Xbox, and I still treasure it today. In my opinion, I find this KoToR better than its sequel, although some may disagree.

The game is set four thousand years before the rise of the Empire (which basically allows the developers to play around with the storyline, as it won't have any effect on the movie timeline). The Sith Lord known as Darth Malak is searching the Galaxy restlessly for the Jedi called Bastila, a young Jedi with a gift. Unlike many, she has a powerful connection to the Force, a gift which allows her to influence the outcome of many battles, wars even, via her Battle Meditation power. You star as a soldier/scout/scoundrel (you choose) stationed onboard the Endar Spire, the same ship that Bastila is aboard. A sudden attack by the evil Sith prompts you to escape planetward, towards the world of Taris, where you must find Bastila immediately, lest the enemy capture her first.

This game receives my eight out of ten for several reasons: its excellent and breathtaking graphics, its original, involving gameplay style, its deep, intriguing plot, its strange, very different characters and its underlying premise of (once again) good versus evil. The other two marks were lost mainly because of its long but necessary prologue, to fill you in on the background of the game, and to get you accustomed to the controls, and how the game operates.

This is one RPG not to be sniffed at. Good or evil, hero or villain....you decide.

I've been a fan of Star Wars for many years, and I've played many of the franchise's games. Some of them provide excellent action ('Republic Commando', 'Jedi Academy'), but none of them are memorable in the way that 'Knights of the Old Republic' is. In fact, the only Star Wars game which I think approaches it in terms of quality is its sequel. The premise of 'KOTOR' is fairly simple: You play a soldier whose mission it is to stop a powerful Sith Lord, and in order to do so you have to find several components of an ancient map. It may sound like a cliché RPG, but on your travels you'll encounter so many interesting people, fascinating stories and incredible quests, you'll never want it to end. I know I didn't.

I played this on the PC, not the XBOX and I can honestly say this game is amazing. Its made by Bioware and works on a similar system to Neverwinter Nights but to be honest while i didnt like NWNs I love KOTOR. The story is extremely involving and it gives you an extrordinary amount of freedom.

Dark side or light I enjoyed every minute of it. As a hardcore gamer I can honestly state that this game ranks as one of the best games ever made. Challenging the greats like Half Life and Deus Ex.

As another reviewer stated the plot starts off very much like Episode 4, but it is so much more. If that dosnt pursuade you then how does the ability to make your own lightsaber sound?

Graphics: 8 - Nothing groundbreaking but certainly nice to look at Sound: 10 - Probably the best voice acting I have ever heard with great music and atmosphere to match Gameplay 10 - So much freedom, The Combat Plays out extremely well, your never left wondering what to do next (unlike NWNs), And the game length is phenominal, My first play through the game came to a total 75 Hours. More than double most other games on the market. Also it has high replayability due to the ability of playing dark and light side.

Overall - 10

You must play this game!