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STAR WARS: KOTOR | Should you play it ?

6 View2025-08-11

Star Wars™: KOTOR

8.4

RPGAdventureCasual

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Hello, I'm finally back after more than one year, kinda missed rating games but life hasn't been kind on me. Anyway, today we'll speak about Star Wars KOTOR 1.

We'll talk about the gameplay, then the graphics and music, the story and we'll finish with a "should you play it".

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is simple yet kinda confusing sometimes (cough cough, the math puzzles, I hate math). The maps are well made and the game doesn’t hold your hand. If you get lost, there's not much you can do, you are lost, good luck finding your way to your mission.

The fighting is simple, it's in real time but you can pause. Every attack has a hidden dice roll like in a real life RPG. You can use lightsabers, blasters (Obi-Wan wouldn't approve), Force powers, grenades, etc.

You control 3 characters, the player and their two teammates that you choose when you get out of your ship, the Ebon Hawk.

There is a Light Side / Dark Side alignment that changes the ending, affects how NPCs talk to you, gives you different Force powers, and unlocks some side quests.

GRAPHICS AND MUSIC

Okay, the graphics are outdated by today's standards but hear me out, at least it didn't downgrade in KOTOR 2 (I'm looking at you, COD MW2022). The atmosphere on the planets is still amazing, the character designs are really well made and no matter how outdated the graphics are, your immersion never breaks. Nothing beats walking around on the different planets with the beautiful OST playing in the background. Jeremy Soule really did a great job. I could pause the game just to listen to the music.

STORY (Spoiler alert)

The game takes place 4000 years before the classic trilogy. The Jedi are still fighting the Sith as always. You wake up on a spaceship near the planet of Endar Spire. You don't know much, you don't know who you are or why you are here, but before you can ask yourself any questions, your ship gets attacked by the Sith.

You escape aboard the Ebon Hawk with your first teammate that you meet, Carth Onasi, a pilot you first meet when you wake up on the Endar Spire. You land on Taris. I won't go into too much detail because if you played this game, you know that you'll spend a lot of time on this planet. If you didn't play it, go play it. On this planet, you meet more teammates: a Jedi named Bastila, a thief named Mission Vao, and a Wookiee named Zaalbar. You escape the planet after what took me 8 hours before it gets destroyed by Darth Malak, the main antagonist of this game and the old apprentice of Darth Revan.

You go on Dantooine, become a Jedi, and learn you need to find some old relics named Star Maps which could lead you to a hidden planet with an old Sith temple located on it which could change the war drastically, Malachor V.

While going on the different planets to find them (Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Dantooine, Manaan, Korriban), you start to get some flashbacks until you learn that you were Darth Revan and that you were captured and brainwashed by the Republic to get a second chance as a Jedi.

Near the end of the game, you and your team get captured by the Sith but Mission Vao was able to hide. You play her and free your player and the rest of your team. While escaping, Darth Malak stops you. Bastila sacrifices herself to let you escape. She gets captured, you escape, go to Malachor V but you get shot down and crash on it. At the end of the game, depending on your alignment to the Light or Dark Side, you get a different ending and I won't say much.

The story is so long and so good that explaining it is hard. You have to play it and live it yourself to understand.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

Yes, yes and yes. It's a timeless classic. The story is good, the game is cheap, the story is incredible and if you play on PC, you can mod it and make it look better because some parts didn't age well to be honest.