Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

The Good
Everything was great about this game accept a few things. They had great story lines, amazing characters, and gameplay was fun.

The Bad
Well, the graphics arent that great. Uhhhh, Thats about it. With it being a RPG its replay value isnt that great, you only want to play it once or twice.

The Bottom Line
AMAZING. It is a turn based RPG. You pick your attack, and he does it. It isnt like some turn based games though, in most if you dont pick your attack your opponent dosent pick their either, your at a mini attack screen, but in this if you wait to pick your attack the game automatically picks your weakest attack against your opponent. It has a great storyling with an unpredictable twist, and amazing characters. You and 9 other people (well, 5 people, 1 wookie, 1 Twileek, and 2 droids) go on a quest for the Star Forge to either save, or destroy the galaxy. You can only travel with 2 at a time but 3 of them are jedi so you are able to have your whole party as jedi. It is an amazing game, now a platinum title for the Xbox ($19.99) so go buy it and have a blast.

The Good
You start out being able to choose between three "classes" of characters and whether you are male or female. These classes affect your stats as you level up as well as certain skills your character has. And choosing male or female affects your relationship to certain characters in the game.

Having the ability to choose between the light side and the dark side in the game is a great way to add replayability to the game. I played through as the light side first and had a lot of fun doing so, and when playing through as the dark side, I still had fun even though I already did everything once before.

Upgrading certain weapons and armor, as well as the light sabers, was a nice way to make the weapons more personal to your game. Rather than everyone ending up with the exact same weapons, you are able to upgrade certain things to add a little more variety. Although the upgrades for armor and standard weapons are the same no matter what, the light saber upgrades require you to make a choice as to what properties you would like for your light saber(s). You are even able to choose the color of your light saber(s).

When you become a jedi, you are able to choose what kind of jedi you want to be from three choices. Your choice determines your stats as you level up as well as what additional skills you have for your character.

The graphics were very well done and the cut-scenes of the planets were spectacular. The game allows you to remove most of the user interface from the screen to make the game a more cinematic experience.

The NPCs that are important are usually very interesting to talk to and many of them react based on your own actions. This allows you for a very immersive environment for your character.

The game also offers a VERY unexpected twist to the plot. Although clues are given throughout the game (they are redisplayed to you when the twist happens), someone would have to be very good at noticing subtle clues in order to figure out the twist before it happened unless they know about it beforehand. The twist really adds a lot to the game.

In order to save some time when moving throughout the game, you are able to instantly return to your ship from any "safe" place and then return from your ship to that place. This helps to save some time walking around.

Your party members have interesting (usually) stories to tell you which they will tell you as time passes if you choose to talk to them about it. These stories open up various side quests and can make your party members more interesting.

The Bad
The game was not very challenging. The only part that posed any real challenge was the very end because you can never completely kill off your enemies... you just have to get through to the next area alive. Unless you have a lot of med pacs, or you have three jedi with healing powers and a lot of jedi power available to them, this can become difficult. After getting through that small part of the game, you get to the end where you fight the last character who is very easy to beat.

Some of the side quests were annoying because you are always going back and forth between planets and then running all over the place to complete them.

The Bottom Line
If you like Star Wars and would like to play a jedi in an RPG, this is an excellent choice. The game offers a lot for the gamer and the problems with the game are really very minor. The only real problem is that you are not offered much of a challenge.

The Good
KOTOR is a true masterpiece. The Xbox version, released to much critical acclaim in Spring 2003, only got PC gamers more excited about what was to come. Now that I've played the PC version (which I consider to be superior to the Xbox version), I can say that this is the greatest RPG I've ever experienced. It's definitely in my Top 3 of all time (I'd say it's the second best...second to Grim Fandango and one notch above Beneath a Steel Sky).

Coming from BioWare, the Canadian developer of the Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, and the sleeper hit MDK2, KOTOR is the most accessible and fun of their roleplaying games (MDK2 might be more accessible, but it's an action game, a far cry from most of their work). The accessibility is shown right from the start. There are only three classes to select - the Soldier, skilled in combat, the Scout, skilled in exploration, disabling mines, and hacking computers, and the Scoundrel, skilled in stealth, lockpicking, and persuasive talking. You can choose to be male or female. The game uses a simplified version of the D20 system used for Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Ctulhu, and the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. However, you don't have to be very familiar with the system at all. A quick read of the manual will explain attack bonus, saving throws, skills, feats, abilities, and powers. It will even explain all the technical details of what the computer is doing that you don't really need to know. Creating a character in Baldur's Gate often took a while, and Neverwinter Nights, even with the "Recommended" button, still took a bit of time, but creating a character in KOTOR often takes less than 2 minutes. The hardest part is picking your portrait and name.

The game uses a 3D engine, and you move using the standard WASD control scheme. You will notice from the start that unlike Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, every single line of dialogue is voice acted (except for your character's lines, but that's because they're supposed to have your voice...it's roleplaying, remember?). The voice acting is excellent, especially for the droid HK-47. HK is quite possibly one of the most entertaining video game characters I've ever seen. His policy of calling humans "meatbags" and constant urge to kill something really must be seen to be believed. The graphics also need to be seen...they're just simply amazing.

Gameplay is excellent. Combat is psuedo-real time (it's turn based, but you can't really tell since it moves so fast), but can be paused at any time to issue orders to your party, which can have three members at a time. Dialogue is full of moral choices that can really effect your thinking and play style. One time I felt so bad about threatening a shopkeeper to lower the price of a droid that I loaded a previous saved game (but there is thankfully a quicksave key, which can really prevent replaying certain parts a zillion times). You also really start to care about the characters you travel with. One sequence involves my character being interrogated. If I lie, my companion gets tortured. You know your companion doesn't want you to give the information, but the sight of seeing her tortured nearly makes you crack. Emotional sequences like that truly show that game development is an art.

The story is much better than Episodes I and II. George Lucas should take notes. KOTOR's story keeps you enthralled to the very end, and on the way you'll experience one of the greatest plot twists in any storytelling media ever...book, movie, or game.

The Bad
KOTOR isn't without its flaws. Even after installing the patch, it still crashes sometimes, though quicksaving often can remedy this issue. Like many Infinity engine games, KOTOR sometimes runs choppy, but this can be fixed by quicksaving and quickloading. Since I have a Geforce 4, I'm not sure about the ATI card bugs, but I've heard that there are still some crash bugs with ATI cards and that soft shadows don't always work with them.

Some other minor issues involve the voice acting of alien dialogue to be VERY lengthy. I can often finish reading the subtitles ten seconds before the non-English voice acting ends. Seriously, how long does it take to say "I really hate the Sith" in Twi'lek?

Another very minor issue is the game's anachronistic tendencies. It's supposed to take place 4000 years before A New Hope, yet the technology seems to be on roughly the same level.

The Bottom Line
Despite its bugs, KOTOR is one of the best games I have ever played. It takes 20-40 hours to complete, and is fun until the end. I almost cried when it was over..I didn't want it to end.