Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Rating: 9/10

KotOR is probably my new favourite BioWare RPG, though there are many left for me to play. It has a great storyline with the traditional nice guy/regular guy/total asshole options for conversation and general character building, based of course around the Force.

You begin the game as a soldier of the Republic with a somewhat mysterious past. Where your character goes from here is up to you, dark side, light side and I-don't-give-a-fuck are all available to you. There are 3 classes to initially choose from: Soldier, Scout, and Scoundrel. When you become a Jedi, you choose between Guardian, Consular and Sentinel. All of these classes are very unique and there is a lot of character customisation to be done here. There are also some limited customisations for gear, in the form of standard upgrade devices to be used on some special armour and weapons. Lightsabers however can be customised using crystals you can find around the place. One of these crystals determines colour, while the other two give the lightsaber special properties.

The combat is based of a d20 system and is turn based, however it plays out in real time (though you can pause it to queue up actions and order party members around). I found that ranged weapons were somewhat weak compared to melee, but there is something to be said for having at least one party member not blocking you when you want to hit a guy. I think this is the appropriate section to note that the swordplay animations are great, if somewhat repetitive; its really fun when you have lightsabers.

The story is excellent, and some pretty crazy shit happens, especially, but perhaps unsurprisingly, when the Force comes along. The characters are great, I think every companion (save perhaps the bots) has a history to share with you over the course of the game and they will sometimes join in conversations to tell you if they approve. They are all very different, from HK-75 the murderous assassin bot who can't imagine how we meatbags put up with all the water sloshing about inside us, to Jolee, the old man and ex-Padawan, who always has a cheeky remark to insert.

I loved all of the worlds that there were to visit, all of them were unique and had some great side quests to do or people to meet. There are only six or seven worlds in total though, which seemed very limiting. I know that stopping the Dark Lord of the Sith is pretty important, but couldn't I go to just one more planet for some swoop racing? No one will challenge me or pay me since I became champ on both of the available circuits. And how about a Pazaak tournament? I paid a lot of money to put my side-deck together, I want some recognition damn it.

The graphics are pretty good, no widescreen support without some mod I don't have but that wasnt much of a problem. The sound is good, the music and background noise always suits the situation, and the voice acting for all the different voices and languages was done well.

All in all, KotOR is a fantastic game, well worth playing. The character and party customisation allows for some definite replayability as well. I have not yet played the sequel, and I think that will probably be my next venture. So, before I strike the TL;DR threshold, assuming I haven't already, Cheerio.