Recent reviews by minch

Easily one of the best things to come out of Star Wars as a whole and stands up to the movies but has the advantage of showing the scope of the galaxy and characterization of the planets and people since the game should likely take around 70-100 hours to do everything on a blind playthrough. You get the immersion of living in the world (as much as you can for an RPG in 2003 with all dialogue being voiced) and interesting combat / DnD mechanics to enjoy it

Best part of the game are the characters and all the interactions you can either have with them one on one, dependent on which two members you take with you on each planet, or when two characters will have a unique interaction spontaneously happen where they tend to get into disagreements about the other person's views and culture. It feels organic due to the excellent voice acting and writing, and honestly is a step above pretty much all the other Star Wars movies and games due to that. Each character also has an interesting backstory that influences events and questlines on the planets themselves, so it gives even more value to people who want to experiment with their party and take different combinations.

You really are able to delve into each party member's history, with some being dependent on persuasion or repair to see through fully which gives nice replay value for people who want to see all of these moments. There's a lot of interesting ideas Bioware played with in regards to how the Force is used and interpreted by both light side and dark side wielders, and also tries to show the average person working for and living under both the Republic and Sith Empire and their views on that.

All the planets and locations are varied, and each culture is explained very well. I would go into it more but it will turn to spoilers quickly for new people trying to play. Story is great Star Wars and will hook you quickly, but new players may find the first planet difficult to get through, either because of unfamiliarity with the mechanics, the lack of quest markers to guide you, or because they have a dumb expectation of having Jedi powers from the get go and a lightsaber that will one shot everybody. You have to put that aside and work with the story as it unfolds, and there's lot of interesting stuff there for people who take their time explore

Anything else I say will be a spoiler like I said, so I rate this game highly in my list of favorites. Its literally not even my favorite KOTOR game and its still amazing, especially for first-time players that have no idea what happens in the story, You do not know what will happen next or what the outcome of the story will be since it's set roughly four thousand years before the OT and all of the characters are basically original. Please stick with it and do not spoil yourself; its one of the greatest video game stories ever told and almost the best Star Wars story in all the franchise (KOTOR 2 is still better on that front in my opinion but 1 still stands leagues above the prequels, sequels, and honestly maybe even the originals for me)

Play this game

daedra will literally threaten to ♥♥♥♥ your corpse so take that as you will