Star Wars is back on full form, in this exciting RPG. This is what a Star Wars game is meant to be like!
KOTOR takes place 4,000 years before Episodes I and II, in a time well before the Empire and after a series of wars have led two powerful Jedi to the Dark Side. With such a setup, the game transports players back to a period before their first taste of events in the expanded universe. Yet KOTOR achieves a more impressive feeling of time travel in its encapsulation of everything magical about the Star Wars films of decades past. Non essential characters provide banter that envelops you in a galaxy far, far away. Subquests teach moral and even life lessons like those classic stories from your childhood. Characters exhibit distinct personalities that unfold masterfully over the course of 60 to 70 hours of play. But perhaps the most magical aspect of KOTOR is that you no longer have to simply identify with characters' decisions, because for the first time in a Star Wars experience, you're able to make those decisions yourself. KOTOR features a single basic storyline, but like most epic RPGs, the conversations you have with non-playable characters and your actions in random encounters determine your experience (in this case, your journey toward the Light or Dark Side of the Force). In other words, welcome to every Star Wars fan's dream. Feel the desire to talk trash to the Jedi Council? Go for it; you'll earn a few Dark Side points and lean more toward the Sith. Want to befriend a troubled NPC rather than slay him with your lightsaber? It's your call, but you can count on moving closer toward Jedi knight status if you play with some heart. Depending upon your alignment, certain quests will open and close to your character, and certain NPCs will react to you differently. It truly is a choose your fate style, and every decision you make in the game is taken into account throughout the entire title. Honestly, you could easily play nothing but this game for three months straight and still never experience everything it has to offer. With such open ended decisions at your fingertips, it's no surprise that the game's other role-playing elements are equally deep. BioWare based the game on traditional RPG rules, including the concept of experience points. In the beginning you can create your own character with attributes and feats you determine, or you can have the computer build one for you based on the three classes at your disposal: Scout, Scoundrel and Soldier. As you progress in the game, taking out a powerful boss or solving a complex riddle will earn you massive XP, while slaying smaller creatures or talking with John Q. Alien will result in subsequently smaller gains. Accumulate enough XP, and your character will level up, making him (or her) more powerful. If you're a casual RPG fan or new to the genre, you can choose to auto level up, which lets the game decide the most appropriate attribute, feat and Force Power upgrades based upon your style. If you're a more in-depth RPG fan, though, you can determine exactly how your character progresses each time you level up. This is a brilliant move, both because it makes KOTOR more approachable to console gamers, but also because it allows for the most meticulous customization without automatically bogging players down with details some might deem irrelevant. Also like traditional RPGs, KOTOR employs a party system allowing you to control three players simultaneously. This control is both literal, as you can maneuver any character in your party at any time, and figurative, as you can outfit your compatriots' weapons, armor and other accessories from the game's in-depth pause menu. Although you can only have three players in your "landing party" at once, by the end of the game you'll have nine total party members. Before entering each world you'll select your core party, but in the middle of nearly any quest, you can pause the game and switch party members on the fly. Such on the fly substitution is useful when faced with security or other situations that require the skills of someone else back on the Ebon Hawk (your ship), but it comes in particularly handy before entering combat. And combat will be something you'll enter on a regular basis. Battles were one of the most talked-about features before KOTOR launched, namely because people were uncertain how it would combine real-time and turn-based elements. Let the speculation cease once and for all.
Once an enemy is in sight, you are tasked to either hit proceed and let the computer do the fighting or program your character's next four moves. Once battle begins, you can switch characters to program other party members' moves, or you can let the more than capable AI do its thing. If you're really into customization, you can adjust the fight preferences of you and your teammates for those instances when you'd rather not program all the moves. Again, though, this is an instance where the added depth is there for gamers who want it but not forced upon more casual gamers who don't. As in traditional pen and paper RPGs, every hit, block and level of damage during battle is based upon a behind the scenes dice roll. Your party and opponents can even benefit from saving throws, which spices up the action and is a nice nod to the game's d20 roots. Despite its turn-based nature, though, the combat goes by at a frenzied pace and in real time, so people looking for action need not worry about KOTOR not providing its fair share. You can be as involved in the battle as you want, micromanaging every detail, or you can sit back and watch the cinematic action unfold. If combat and party management begin to wear you down, a handful of minigames provide a nice respite from the involved RPG gameplay. Pazaak is essentially Blackjack, but it maxes out at 20, and you can play cards of a negative value from the stash of four cards hidden up your sleeve. Swoop races amount to pod racing, and turret gun encounters while on the Ebon Hawk (which transports you automatically from planet to planet) provide an Air Raid like experience, only with a high production value. None of the minigames is particularly long, nor are they complicated or involved, but they do exactly what minigames are supposed to: relieve the stress of the primary play. Lesser games would be happy with such balanced and involved gameplay and forget about doing much graphically. Let's just say KOTOR is most definitely not a lesser game. From environmental design to special effects to character animations, the graphics in KOTOR are some of the best on Xbox. There are a few graphical letdowns, though, and they're worth noting because they're really the only downsides in this fantastic game. BioWare had to deliver from an environmental standpoint in KOTOR, because no other Star Wars title, be it movie or game, had explored important worlds in the Star Wars universe like Kashyyyk and Korriban. But while BioWare definitely delivered some creative interpretations of these worlds, the planets don't always feel as alive as they should. Ironically, it's not a lack of environmental panache like swaying grass, blinking panels or well textured surfaces, which is where most games falter. Instead, it's a lack of the jam packed NPC activity you'd expect on many of these planets, and when you do encounter them, a lack of unique character design. You see, in the midst of KOTOR's massive focus on walking and exploration, you're encouraged to talk to as many NPCs as possible. Yet not only do some locales feel under populated, but their small population is predominantly based on five or six basic character models, one of which even resembles a member of your party. Enemies suffer much the same fate, but then again, Stormtroopers looked the same in the movies, so perhaps clones are just a law of Star Wars nature. Pun intended. Where the character designs may be lacking, though, the conversations you'll have with those cloned kin are astounding in their variety. Every single line of dialogue, even lines in an alien tongue, is fully recorded by voice actors. Sure, in many cases those voices sound similar, but the fact that the dialogue is even recorded boggles the mind. Combine the incredible voice acting with yet another gorgeous musical score from a LucasArts game, and the overall sound quality in KOTOR will take you back to the good old days of humming Star Wars tunes and making lightsaber sounds with your mouth. And ultimately, being good old 'Star Wars' is what makes KOTOR so special. Games, prequels and even books, to a certain extent, have failed to achieve the universal appeal of the original trilogy. For one reason or another, those products have just not captured the truly classic elements that made Episodes IV-VI so magical. Star Wars on the whole has lost a step or two in the past few years, with no more movies being made, except the dissapointing Clone Wars, and the rather dissapointing The Force Unleashed, at least from narrative and immersion standpoints. Yet KOTOR returns every ounce of respect back to the franchise in one incredible game. Star Wars is back, and it's back in one of the most complete, compelling and charismatic games in years. And not to mention, it's even better on the 360.
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+ Amazing visuals
+ Good interactivity and missions
+ Amazing combat
+ Solid sound and music
+ Great box art
- Some character design issues