I just finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic after playing it off an on for about the last month. The game certainly held my attention that entire time; I just didn't have a lot of spare time to dedicate to it. But I got on a roll the last night or two and finally finished it. And wow. Wow, wow, wow. I was pretty impressed by the game at the start, but by the end of the game I was completely won over.

KOTOR is a role-playing game that does a pretty good job of hiding the fact that it is one. The combat is dice-based, but real-time. The character interaction is heavy, but written and voice-acted so well that even my girlfriend was impressed. And the story is good enough to be a film of its own. And I'd say better than Episode I or II at that.

Gameplay:

As a character in the pre-film-era Star Wars universe, you are free to play the game as you see fit. The game is constantly letting you make decisions about how you want to play the game (alone or with a party, blasters or lightsabers, light side or dark side). The game at times feels like a third-person action game, but when it comes time for combat it uses a version of the d20 rules that play out in real-time. You can also pause the combat at any time and queue up actions for your party members. This is an amazingly cool feature, because if you're just in it for the action you can almost button mash, but if you want to be tactical (and at times strategic) you can do that too.

When you're not in combat you're exploring the worlds, talking to characters, and solving quests. This is an RPG after-all, and the game is full of quests and side-quests to keep you immersed in the world. Most of the quests have some level of puzzle involved in them. I enjoyed the puzzles that involved conversations with other characters, or using your skills to determine the truth in a situation. But some of the more classic Zelda-styled puzzles played a little dry. Sometimes the payoff for the quests is new gear or credits, but usually the main reward is experience points, which you can then turn around and use to enhance your main character and fellow party-members. But to be completely honest, often the story payoffs were just as good as the feeling of leveling-up.

Leveling-Up in KOTOR is terribly fun, as you get to increase your skills and gain new feats (I.E. powers/abilities) for not just your main character, but also all of the characters in your party. Particularly fun was trying out as many of the different Jedi powers as I could, which can really make combat amazingly fun. There's nothing quite like setting up all of your characters to pull off some amazing moves, watching them attempt them, just failing, having to slightly adjust your plans, and then defeating your enemies. And while combat is a little sparse in the earlier parts of the game, they more than make up for it in the later levels.

By the time I felt like I was on the last fourth of the game I started focusing less on all of the side-quests (which can take up a lot of time), and focused instead on the main plot. Part of me lost a little interest in all of the side stories (there are some nine other party members after all), but mostly I was just interested in seeing how it would all end.

Story:

I can't really say enough good things about KOTOR's story. It's a really, really good story set in the Star Wars universe. They made the extremely good decision to set the game far enough in the past before the films take place that there would be no accidental continuity problems, or an even worse problem, which I call "Jango Fett Syndrome." Thankfully no one in KOTOR is related to anyone in the films. While meeting up with Lando's great-great-great-great-great-uncle might appeal to some gamers, I was quite content with the deep, interesting and almost believable cast of characters presented in KOTOR without them all being related to Luke, Han and Leia. Sure, the key races are there (Wookies, the Hutts, the Yoda-looking dudes, the guys with head-tails, etc), but they also do a good job of introducing new interesting races with back-stories of their own.

To the story in KOTOR itself, it's classic Star Wars: a rag-tag group of ruffians out to save the universe. While you get to create your own character, including gender, class and portrait (all of the choices are human), they do a good job of involving you in the story and giving you compelling reasons to help the various people who join you in your quest.

Darth Revan, the current Dark Lord of the Sith (a title Darth Vader would later hold) is a fairly compelling villain, and I found myself anxiously awaiting each cut-scene that furthered his story line. I won't say anything else about the story, but they do a great job of following the narrative structure of the first trilogy of films, and there are some definite parallels.

Graphics:

The graphics in KOTOR are pretty good, and definitely do the job. But I don't think this is what the game should be judged by. Instead I'd like to comment on the art-direction, which ranges from excellent to a little bit of been-there-done-that. I recognize that one of the largest problems when working within an existing franchise is including enough elements that people can immediately identify it as being part of the larger universe. Without spoiling any potential story elements, I'll say this: the original planets that were created for this game were beautiful, interesting and very well done. But I felt that the planets that have been featured in previous Star Wars films or extended-universe fiction were a little dry.

But besides those slightly less polished spots, the art direction in KOTOR rocks. The character designs were excellent, and I never caught myself thinking that something didn't fit into the Star Wars universe. Some of the character designs are flat-out bad ass, which includes just about anything having to do with the Sith or Dark Jedi. And the game has a nice paper-doll like quality to it, where you can dress your characters up based not just on function, but also on style. Sorry, I'm trying not to spoil any of the cool moments in the game that made me giggle with glee. There is a lot of character model reuse in the game, but the variety of textures used do a pretty good job of making it very distracting.

The weapon and item design was pretty standard fare for Star Wars, and it certainly was nice to see some classic items like thermal detonators and the wookie bowcaster make appearances. Missing were the over-the-top guns that have appeared in the Dark Forces / Jedi Knight games, which I personally think is a good thing. But I did like the addition of swords (as in non-lightsabers) to the universe, which certainly made the game feel like it was set in the past from the films.

Sound:

The music and sound effects in KOTOR were all very well done, and gave it that classic Star Wars feel. I think it's the kind of thing that you only notice if it's bad, but my girlfriend pointed out that it was actually good, which I had to agree with. But the place where the audio shines in KOTOR is the voice acting. My god, where did they find these people? Not only was the script good, but they got some actors and a good voice direction who made the deliveries actually buyable. I would much rather have a game as well acted as KOTOR with no-name actors than a game with big-name actors who give the flattest, most boring deliveries of their careers.

The voice acting sells this game, and I highly recommend playing the game with subtitles turned off. It really makes you listen to the characters, watch their expressions (which are good for the most part), and think about what they're saying. I found myself speed-reading and scrolling through the non-English-speaking characters' dialog as fast as possible, which gets boring. But with good acting you can loose yourself in a conversation, which is nice, because there is a ton of it to be had.

The Bad:

KOTOR is not a perfect game, and there are certainly some parts of it that I found less than enjoyable. The first issue, which is probably the most talked about is the fact that this game has some pretty serious bugs.
Most of them you can avoid by saving often, but it can get fairly frustrating. I ran into one bug where the game stopped playing any sound at all and I got stuck in a conversation of pantomime a couple times. And once or twice the game simply locked up on me. This really stinks, and I really hope that they will be patching this game via Xbox Live. But these bugs should not keep you from playing this game if you're still reading this and still interested.

The second issue I had with KOTOR were the mini-games. Without revealing too much, the two key mini-games feel a little rushed and rough around the edges. In particular is the fact that in the pause menu there is an option to inverse the controls for the mini-games, but that menu is inaccessible once you're actually PLAYING the game. Next time I would leave these elements out -- reward the player with a nice cut-scene instead of frustrating them with nearly impossible controls.

My final issue with KOTOR is that at times it feels a little constraining. I was pretty pleased with the size and explorability of the environments -- some being more linear than others. But what got me was that in an age of GTA and Deus Ex, KOTOR still dictates which characters you are allowed to engage in combat and which you are not. Don't get me wrong -- I know that you can't let the player go around killing whoever he wants whenever he wants. But at the same time GTA and DX have shown that you can add consequences to the player's actions. So while the player might be able to raise a little hell every now and then, he pays the price in money, health or by having to revert to a save-game.

Closing Thoughts:

All and all Knights of the Old Republic was a great experience, and it's an excellent addition to the Star Wars universe and my collection of video games. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys RPGs, Star Wars, or great writing in games. I will certainly check out whatever Bioware does next.