Review by George Bailey
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has been hailed been hailed as the first "fully realized" Star Wars game. That's because it so accurately steeped in the Star Wars characters, lore and mythology. Having played this game for hours on end, I've found that to be largely true. Star Wars games have a checkered past--the story and themes lend themselves well to video games but most have fallen short of the mark. With KOTOR all of that has been changed and it's been placed in a role-playing environment--the first time ever--by Bioware and the results are amazing. This is one game that's hard to put down, with its deep, evolving story line, terrific character development, continuous action, and huge locales (even planets) to explore. The plot is the standard Jedi gone to the dark side, becomes a Sith and wants to take over the Universe. There are plenty of side quests and subplots to keep a player occupied till the 60+ hours of game play are over.
How It Plays
KOTOR is simple enough to get into and then shortly there after, takes over your life! There is so much to do, so many decisions to make that influence character
development you have to pause and think about your actions. You start out with a character selection screen. There are several different character types both male and female to choose from, be they scouts, soldiers or scoundrel. Naturally being a role playing game (RPG), your character doesn't have much in the way of skills so here begins the process that will last you till the end of the game. Since your main goal during the course of the game is to be a Jedi you have a lot of choices to make in regards to your actions. Be nice and go to the side of Light or be bad and turn to the Dark Side of the force. So you must be careful of everything you do or say. It's an intriguing balance one must work out and it's easy to make decisions that go back and forth. It's interesting to note that you are awarded points towards the dark side of doing an evil act, say killing someone that doesn't pose a threat to you, as apposed to killing a bad guy that attacks you. You can slaughter them left and right and earn no negatives. So there is some moral ambiguity here. You have a force meter to tell you where you stand, apply colored light to dark.
Like all RPGs you have plenty of inventory screens to go through to equip your characters, buy and sell things, upgrade your character's skills, view maps, read your journal, and so on. You can only have 3 characters total on screen at one time (yourself and 2 friends) so you have screens to cycle through to upgrade them. While I would have like to have seen more characters to join up with your main character, it's a good move as any more characters and you would be spending most of your time in inventory screens keeping everybody properly equipped. As it is, you spend a great deal of time there anyway as you amass a large collection of clothes, weapons, and other accoutrements.
The combat system is turn based. This is not what I first thought it would be when I first read about this game, but it works quite well, although some players may not like the pauses that occur in the process. It is not real time combat. In KOTOR the process is to assign attacks to your characters and then let them have at it. You cycle through a red star graphic that is superimposed over an attacking character. You then can assign a cue, or string of attacks to be carried out by your player. For example, you can assign a character to throw a grenade, use a Jedi force attack and then follow up with some rapid shooting or slicing with a light saber. Press the white button on the Xbox controller to let the player follow through with the series of attacks. It works great and when properly used can take down a very tough foe very handedly.
|
The Graphics
The graphics of KOTOR are by far its weakest feature. While there are some nice moments in it, this game simply is not up to Xbox standards. And it could have been had it been given a little more polish. The frame rate is dodgy. Really, no excuse for this unless Bioware was up against a tight deadline for release. The Xbox features the fastest running graphics chip of any console currently on the market. To see a flaw as apparent as this is beyond me. Also the graphics, while they do have a nice look and overall feel for the Star Wars universe-particularly the architecture and interiors scenes--seem to have little or no
anti-aliasing done to them. So, lots of jaggies can be seen throughout, particularly on diagonal lines and any graphics with contrasting edges. Even still, it does look nice overall; it just has a look
like the not enough care was shown in the graphics department. Fortunately, the game plays so well it doesn't stand out as bad as it could.
One point I will make about the graphics is the camera system employed is very good for a third person view. As you know, most developers have a problem creating a good viewing system for 3D games. KOTOR uses the Halo approach-one thumbstick to view and the other to move. There is no first person view and you can't exactly look up or down but it doesn't matter and overall, simplifies things.
The Bugs
It's been widely reported all manner of bugs found in KOTOR. I personally have had few problems with bugs. Maybe this is a problem with older Xboxes? The most notorious I've read about is the "kill save file bug." I myself have found had no problems with this problem. I save often and try not to save over on the same file more than once. There is a good
FAQ on this at GameFaq.com and you go there for all the details and work-arounds. The only problems I have found so far are some areas where the loading screen would hang up. I had alternate paths through an area so it was easy remedied. So you've been forewarned-save and save often!
The Sound
Once of the shining points of KOTOR is the sound. Everything from the classic John Williams music score to the sound effects (nothing quite like hearing that light saber warm up!), to the voice acting is spot on. Many reviewers have commented on the voice acting being very well done and it is.
KOTOR shows how real voice acting is to be done. The music is nice, not getting in the way but setting the mood where a particular mood is needed.
In Closing
Despite its flaws, bugs, and lack of overall polish, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is in the top tier of Xbox titles. It's by far the best Star Wars game ever made and at this writing, is the best RPG made for the Xbox. KOTOR has already been awarded many game of the year awards and deservedly so. It belongs in your Xbox library and is right up there with Halo in this reviewer's opinion. It has its flaws but you can live with them because the game play is so enthralling that it doesn't matter. It's neither too hard nor too easy and thankfully, you can set the difficulty before you begin. Save points is never a problem as you can save wherever you want. With the price currently discounted to around $29.99 at Ebgames.com and others, it's a great bargain for the amount of gaming time you'll get out if it.
4.5 out of 5
|
