KOTOR: The Streamlined Bioware Experience

I finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic this past week, my first game of the year (as you can tell from the title of this post). I was really excited to play KOTOR, mainly because not only have I been on a huge Star Wars kick lately, but I also recently put a lot of time into Dragon Age: Inquisition, which put me in the mood to play a big RPG. Prior to this I had never beaten KOTOR; heck I never even got off the first planet.

The story is pretty straight forward. Sith are bad and out to destroy the galaxy. You, being the good guys, have to stop them. The overall tempo of the story is incredibly similar to Mass Effect 2 just that, instead of going around the galaxy looking for people to recruit, you are going around the galaxy hunting for something called the Star Forge—an ancient structure created by a long extinct species. Each planet you go to holds a piece of the map that will lead you to it.

Quest wise, KOTOR is considerably smaller in scope compared to anything Bioware has pumped out recently and I'm actually fairly grateful for that. I put about 30-40 hours into KOTOR and beat it. Meanwhile people are taking upwards of 80+ hours to beat DA: I. Who's got time for that? Not this guy. Each individual planet you go to has a handful of local quests to complete and then there are a few quests here and there that require you to travel from planet to planet. For instance, eventually a league of assassin's (a creed if you will) is looking to add you to their ranks, but first you need to hunt down some bounties to prove to them that you are worthy. All the bounties are on different planet, hence making you travel around. Looking at DA: I, I'm pretty sure there are more quests in the first zone of that game—The Hinterlands—than there is in all of KOTOR.

5000 years and the Tusken Raiders' haven't changed one bit

Combat was pretty hit or miss... literally. They use a D20 system—which means for every action a character takes, they make a figurative 20 sided dice roll—and if you roll low, you miss your attack and you miss a lot! It's a little frustrating sometimes but you get over it. At first the combat is a bit unforgiving. There is no auto-heal, so you always have to use a medpack, and when you're first starting out you barely have enough money to stay stocked. Everything because a lot easier once you are a Jedi because then you can just force heal all you want. Until then though, good luck. One thing you could do though: If you are having a tough time with a fight, just reload the game (you should also be saving constantly) and use what is called a battle stimulant, which are injectable buffs that last 2 minutes and increase your abilities by quite a bit. Makes any fight a cinch.

Of course this game did come out over 10 years ago, so along with the scope being a lot smaller and the combat being a bit iffy, there are a number of other issues lying about. First is the scaling of difficulty. Nowadays every developer does some sort of scaling when they make an open world game. That or they design it in a linear way, starting off easy and progressively getting harder. In KOTOR, you can go to whichever planet first, searching it for a map piece. The first planet I visited was brutally hard and then the last one I got to was incredibly easy…like joke easy. With all the extra abilities and levels it's bound to happen of course. But I guarantee that sort of thing wouldn't happen if this was released more recently.

Carth is a huge pain in the ass; all he does is bitch and moan

The second thing was the horrible inventory. You are constantly getting items, and there is almost no good way to go about sorting them. I even had a mouse to do my clicking. I couldn't imagine playing this on the original Xbox and being able to sort through the rubble. This again is because of archaic design choices people made over 10 years ago. Then again, DA: I doesn't have a very good inventory either... I think it's just a Bioware thing.

My biggest problem with RPGs like this is the cast size. There are always way too many people, it's hard to choose who to use. Too many options is a blessing and a curse. Of course at least Bioware does it nicely and grants XP to all party members and not just ones in combat. At least this way if you are forced to use someone, they aren't inept and useless. Overall I found myself always using the same people until something better came along. And when I say better, I mean a Jedi. Most of the cast I found to be rather annoying really. The game gets you to talk to everyone on a rather frequent basis, and it seems like all they ever want to do is fight with you. Everyone is always peeved about something and it seems to be your job to make their lives happier. Unless you're on the dark side, then I guess you can just put them in their place.

Final Thoughts

I'm glad I finally beat KOTOR: It was an enjoyable experience and if you are a Star Wars fan, I'm sure you've already played and beaten it so I don't have to tell you to go play it. I was just late to the party.

Now I just have to beat KOTOR II, but before that, my second game of this year is going to be XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Stay tuned.