Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

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
First, the graphics are pretty good. People will move their lips while talking, the terrain is nicely detailed etc. Next, the amount of interaction is pretty food. You'll always have a ton of dialouge choices when you talk to characters, (which will have a signifigant effect on your force alignment and how other characters act). Next, there is a ton of weapons, armor, grenades etc. that you can get.

The Bad
Well first, this thing is a total memory hog. It takes up 4 Gigabytes which is more than 20% of my hard drive! Next, the game is very buggy. Sometimes it can lock up, others it will get a player "caught" on a wall. (Although patches have helped). Sometimes, using the force to persuade people is kinda boring. You just click on it and if you are good enough, you succeed. If your character doesn't have the required stats, you don't succeed. This lack of skill based gameplay for parts of the game is somewhat disappointing. Next, this games runs quite slow unless you have at least 1.4 GHZ processor Which I don't have:( Finally, combat is somewhat lackluster. You just arm your weapon and tell him to attack (although admitadly, there are moves you can do that change the stats of your attacks) and he'll attack the same way 50 times in a row (or however long). They all seem to have only a couple animations for attacking. Finally, the planets can seem a bit disappointing. You can explore through a whole planet in a little less than several hours. The fact that every planet has 1 city and everything around it is barren wasteland is kinda disappointing.

The Bottom Line
This is a pretty good game, but don't believe the hype. It's not a game that will change your life.

The Good
This is a game that has it all: a great story about love, hate and deception, a fantastic cast of characters, a well-written, well acted out dialogue, interesting locations and satisfying weapons and equipment. If you're a fan of the Star Wars universe and want to play an involving RPG then look no further, this is your dream come true. But even if you're just looking for a great RPG you're not going to be disappointed. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic delivers. It even has somewhat pretty graphics!

The Bad
Unfortunately this game is full of bugs. No show stoppers, but irritating little ones like sometimes your characters stats gets stuck after being reduced by a dark jedi. No fun. Other times one of your characters just stops moving in mid-combat and just stands there and takes a beating. No fun either. And if you play the game for a few hours on end it is bound to eventually crash. Not at all fun. And lastly the controls.. who was the genious that thought up the mouse-look function of KotOR?! It's a game in true 3D but you're only allowed to look left and right (if you want to move at the same time)!

The Bottom Line
This game is so much fun it hurts. Really, it does. You just don't want it to end, but after around 30-40 hours it will. Its strongest point is definitely the story. it has twists and turns you just can't foresee and all the great side quests and sub missions really make you come back over and over again. A neat feature is that you can play both sides of the coin: you choose for yourself if you want to be a light jedi or a dark jedi. Lots of replayability in this one!