Reviews
Knights of the Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic
The best semi-real-time star wars RPG I have ever played.
To start my review I will give a quick definition of "semi-real-time" for any one who doesn't know what it is.
KOTOR is not a turn based RPG (IE final fantasy or pokemon where you take "turns" attacking")but neither is it a "real time" RPG(IE Star Wars Galaxy or Baldor's gate : Dark alliance where you fight in real time, no pausing.)
KOTOR lets you pause at ANY time, so in a way "you" control the turns.
Here is an example, you are playing KOTOR, you are facing a badguy( we will call him Fred), you have three people you control( we will call them Bob, Sam and Mo).
You press a button to stop time, now you tell Bob to run up to the Fred and start attacking with his sword.
Now you tell Sam you throw a grenade at Fred and fire a blaster three times.
Finally you tell Mo to use force Push on Fred and then heal all your people.
Now you press the button again, Bob, Sam and Mo carry out all the commands you just gave them and BAM! You just beat Fred.
So to recap "semi-real-time" means you can pause time, give commands, un-pause time and watch your commands be carried out.
Now back to the review.
Knights of the Old Republic(I'll call it KOTOR for short) is set 4,000 years before the movies, no Vader, No Luke, No Yoda.
The Sith have somehow built a MASSIVE army and begun to invade the Republic, leading the Sith is Darth Malak, a truly evil jedi who turned to the Dark side for "unknown reasons".
You play the roll of a Republic Solider who Crash Lands on a Planet called taris and must Save a Jedi from the Gangs there and then find out you are really a Jedi! You can learn to use a Light Saber, the force (with some Classics like Choke, Push and Mind Trick) and choose your path, Light or Dark, each with a unique ending.
The game also has More Side quests then you can swing a Light Saber at and has three mini-games, swoop racing, Pazaak( a black jack type card game) and a turret game.
During you quest you can have up to nine comrades to help you, but you can only take two with you at a time.
They range From a Blood Thirsty Robot to a Jedi Hermit to a Wookie with Family Problems who all stay on your ship, the Ebon Hawk while you aren't using them.
On your ship you can also up-grade your item, play mini games and talk to you comrades.
Through your Journey you can visit seven plates, including the Desert planet Tatooine to the Sea world of manna, and two space stations, one of which you can only visit if you have the PC version of the game or if you have Xbox live to download it.
The Dialog in KOTOR is topnotch, every character but yours has full voice acting, even the aliens (don't worry, there are subtitles).
And there are many options in dialog, many of which determine if you will be a Light or Dark Jedi.
So you can keep track of your Side there is a big meter in the game Menu that tells you if you are leaning towards the Light or the Dark.
One of my Favorite things to do while in a dialog is to use my force powers to get my way.
For example, when I land on Tatooine the landing officer there asks for a 100 credit docking fee, I can use my force powers to trick him in to not making me pay, I even get to see my character wave his/her hand Just Like Obi-Won.
The Graphics in KOTOR are good but not great.
The Cut scenes aren't the best ones I have seen but they are Generated in-game(meaning if your character is in the scene she/he will be wearing what ever you put on.
But overall the graphics are good, very little slow down and there are lots of things to see.
One of my few grips with it is the faces, there aren't many, you can easy see the same face six times on six different NPCs in the games.
The Effects for force powers are great, Force lightening looks wonderful.
The lighting is very good, the shadows in the shadows lands are done very well, if you look in to the sun the screen becomes to bright to see as if you look in to the sun in real life.
The character models are done well, faces are nicely animated and Characters are nicely detailed.
The game play is very smooth except for the load times, every time you go in to an area there is a load time that breaks up game play, but at least there is a little bit of info at the bottom to read at each load time.
The controls are very good, you move you character with one stick and use the other to control the camera.
At any given time you can have up to three characters with you, including your own.
You only control one at a time, while you do the other tow follow you.
You can switch between your three characters at any time with just the press of a button.
Combat is carried out in semi-real-time which we talked about before.
When you enter combat it pauses and you give your commands and watch the action, as I said before, you can pause ANY time to set up your plan for a fight.
Combat is not a huge part of the game but it is there, most of the time you will be exploring or working on a side quest. Luckily there is no blood or gore of any kind, with you beat some one they fall over a fade away.
Combat can get intense, like when you are facing six opponents ate once.
It will take a lot of thinking, you can just run in, Swords Flying and blasters shooting…well you can but you won't live long.
every character you have has strong points and weak points, take Mr. Wookie, he is very strong in hand-to-hand-combat but not so good at a range.
Or Carth, a Republic war hero who is deadly with a pair of blasters but will be torn apart in hand-to-hand.
KOTOR uses a 20 sided dice system from Dungeons and Dragons.
To decide what happens the computer roll a victual 20 sided dice and check the nubers to see what happens.
There are so many side quests it insane, there is one where two families are feuding.
Now you can get them to settle there problems and be friends or you can tell them to Kill each other, I'll let you guess which is the Light path.
There are also the Mini-games; swoop racing is a test of reflexes where you must guide a small bike moving at super speed across a long curse while avoiding rock and rubble but at the same time hitting boost pads for extra speed.
Pazaak is a black jack inspired card game where the two players have four cards in there hand that they play to try and get there score to a even 20.
Its not very simple, you must use your cards wisely young one, for
If you waist them you shell surely lose.
And fanily there is the Turret game which you must do a few times but if you have the right character you can do it any time.
You can the Gun Turret on top of your ship and must shoot down six sith fighters before they blow you to bits.
But some of the most interesting side quests are your comrade's, well all but a droid who just beeps.
All your friends (not counting the droid)have a complex side story that you can explore by talking to them.
As you talk to them you will learn about there past and who they really are, if you say the right stuff you can even start a love plot with some of the characters, but I won't say which.
The menus in KOTOR are very easy to use, you scroll through them with the trigger buttons and they include an equipment screen where you give your characters armor, weapons and other items, an inventory where you can view your items and money, a status screen where you can review you character's stats like how high there strength is or how dark they are.
There is a feedback menu where you can re-read recent dialog or check the numbers from recent combat.
There is a map screen and a main menu screen where you can change settings, save, load or quit.
Overall Knights of the Old Republic is one of the best xbox games there is, there is tons to do and you can easily play it many times.
The dialog is awesome and the games is just so much fun.
The only problems I have with it are the load times and the Graphics could have been better.
The story is deep and has a few big twists I know I loved.
It is a must buy for any RPG or star wars fans.
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