Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
It’ll be a hot time in the old Republic tonight.
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: XBX

PUBLISHER: LucasArts

DEVELOPER: BioWare

GENRE: RPG

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

The Star Wars juggernaut continues with the excellent Knights of the Old Republic. Generating an amazing amount of positive buzz over the past couple of years, the final release is one of the few games that actually live up to the hype.

Knights of the Old Republic is billed as a Star Wars RPG, but don’t let that scare you off. Much like Morrowind was a crossover success that appealed to all sorts of gamers, Knights is also and easy-to-understand game that has mainstream playability.

Set some 4,000 years before Episode 1, Knights tells a story that takes place during the glory days of the Republic. Jedi and Sith abound, and you’ll see a lot of familiar-looking faces, like wookies and hutts. Despite taking place in a different era, the game has a solid Star Wars feel. You’ll travel to many familiar planets and see people named “Darth Something.”

In a nice touch, you can customize your character, choosing from different professions (but not species), and can play as a male or female. During the game, your choices actually affect how different characters treat you.

Combat is the most RPG-like aspect of the game, with all the action taking place behind the scenes, with stats and virtual dice rolls. You can either choose your attacks turn-by-turn, with pauses between turns to make a decision, or let it play out in real time. You and your teammates will attack on their own, and you can throw in special moves as you see fit.

Both systems work well, but we ended up playing the combat in its turn-based mode, to give us a chance to absorb all the action going on and make proper decisions on attacking and healing.

The other main RPG staple, leveling up stats and abilities, also plays a big part. Every time you get enough experience points, you’ll be able to improve your skills however you choose. You could earn how to open locked doors, for example, or instead improve you ability to use heavy weapons. Use of persuasion, stealth and lock picking can often help you avoid out-and-out combat – if that’s how you want to play.

The thing that sets Knights of the Old Republic apart from many other adventure/RPG games is that your decisions affect the game in more than a trivial way. In encounters, you can often choose to befriend people and help them with their problems, or you can rob or kill them. Besides affecting how you are treated by the NPCs, your actions determine whether you lean towards the light side or the dark side of the force.

In a well-hyped game feature, you turn dark and menacing if you choose the dark side, but look upstanding and chipper if you do good. It adds great replayability to the game, and it’s great fun to play two simultaneous games – one good, one evil.

An Xbox exclusive that will eventually be ported over to the PC, Knights has the same slightly bland look that all Star Wars games of late have shared. Despite this, the characters are nicely detailed, and the Xbox hardware provides for some very nice shiny effects on armor and other metallic surfaces.

We also liked that all the dialog is spoken – many RPGs make you scroll through screen after screen of silent text. Despite good voice acting, some of the dialog falls flat, seeming a bit lifeless and simplistic.

Don’t let the RPG tag scare you off. Knights of the Old Republic is easily one of the most playable games we’ve come across in a long time. Plus, with cool female sidekicks, like your Jedi pal Bastilla, KOTOR adds a nice girl gamer touch to what could have been a guys-only affair.