The best Star Wars game is here ... even if it’s filled with bugs and glitches.
STORY: It’s 4000 years before Palpatine kicked some serious democratic butt, but the Jedi and the Sith are more active than ever before. After the Old Republic successfully defeated an invading alien race called the Mandalorians, the Republic’s greatest Jedi war heroes return as ruthless Sith and begin conquering star after star, planet after planet. The galaxy’s last hope is one person - you - whose fate you shall decide. Will you aid the republic and wipe out the Sith? Or will you fall prey to the dark side? Hero or villain, savior or conqueror ... you alone shall determine the fate of the galaxy.
Due to my inclination not to reveal spoilers, I must say that the story, while nice, is seriously flawed in many ethical aspects. There were times where I was seriously questioning the reasoning power of some characters, since they had the tendency to choose the option that was the most dangerous or illogical in a situation.
In general terms you have your bad guys, your good guys, your indifferent guys and they all go to play with the toys fate has given them. Cliche, but it will never die.
GRAPHICS:
KOTOR is beautiful, for an X-Box anyway. The characters have an enormous amount of detail, especially the alien races, who look identical to their movie counterparts. The backgrounds are beautiful, from the City-Planet Taris, to the vast dunes of Tatooine. Some planet stages are bright and filled with vibrant colours, while others (usually the underground ones) are dimly lit.
All this comes at a big framerate cost. When you stumble upon a battle with three or more enemies, the framerate loss is - sadly - even more evident. The animation is very nice. Melee duels have a splendid choreography and ranged attacks have the same movie-charm as well.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS:
The music is nothing special, but it does resemble the tone and style of the movies. The sound effects are excellent. Lightsaber humming, laser beams, droid wheels, everything just screams Star Wars presentation. All NPCs have full speech in their dialogue, although most aliens speak their own dialect which is basically 7-8 different speeches. In short, both music and sounds show the utmost respect to the franchise and should satisfy all fans.
GAMEPLAY:
As mentioned above, the game’s core mechanics are based on the D20 system, and in case you don’t know, D20 is based upon the element of chance (a die roll of 20 sides) plus (or minus) some points because of specific bonuses (or penalties) your character possesses at a specific physical or mental attribute, or even a craft. For example, the stronger you are, the better your chances of bashing a door are, while the cleverer you are, the more skills and traits you can learn. The better you are at bypassing security devices, the better your chances to shut down an alarm, or unlock a door leading to a private residence.
In battles, you tell your characters to attack, use items, skills or Jedi powers and when need be, retreat. You can even have them memorize specific commands (up to 4 at the time) in order to perform more complicated strategies (i.e. tell your character to inject a healing serum, attack an enemy, heal a friend, and use a special attack, in that order).
A wealth of NPC characters will pose a large number of situations which will require a great deal of decision making on your part. Your character has basically three personalities: The angel, the devil, and the ass. The better your words and actions affect a situation, the closer you get to the path of the Jedi. The more harm you cause, the closer you get to becoming a Sith. Depending on your alignment, various Force powers become much easier to use, and some more difficult (a Jedi finds it taxing to use Sith powers, and vice versa).
A great deal of side quests appear on every location you visit, in order to further enhance your alignment axis (to good or evil) and to give you experience and some require a great deal of thought (i.e. spare an old friend even though he is a murderer?). It’s been ages since I had played a rpg that actually makes you feel that your say matters.
During your quest you gather a group of NPCs who will join your cause. Some of them get along pretty well with each other; others find the presence of some specific NPCs to be downright insulting. All of that leads to some character emphasis which - most of the time - is interesting.
The engine was translated fairly well in the game and it would’ve the perfect RPG gameplay, if it weren’t for the bugs and glitches it is plagued with. And BOY do we have bugs. You will find yourself in situations where you tell your character to go and aid an ally being clobbered by a group of foes, only to see your character run away in the OPPOSITE direction (and by the time he returns to the battle, your allies are probably dead). You will find yourself being teleported to other parts of the map without any sort of reason or explanation (remember this when you’re running in the dunes of Tatooine) whenever sand people attack. You will find your characters forget their memorized commands (which could be valuable healing) and simply do standard attacks. You will see your characters ignoring the enemy you told them to attack and attack someone else.
Note: Gameplay takes a 8 instead of a 10 due to the bugs.
OVERALL:
Star Wars KOTOR is a very good rpg in technical terms. It possesses a humongous amount of characters, customization, side quests, weapons, and character emphasis. On the downside, the storyline is weak in some points, and the bugs (especially in the end) are downright annoying. Still, all that is not enough to deter me from recommending this game to any d20 and Star Wars fan. Just like GameSpot says, you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy this game, but if you are, all the better.