[Review] I Did It All for the Wookies

I've been waiting for a KotOR remake for many years now, and after getting tired of the whole development rollercoaster, I decided to go back and replay the original. The first time I played KotOR, I had no idea I was starting a Star Wars game until I ran the game and saw the logo. I wasn't a big fan of Star Wars at the time (or sci-fi games in general), but it was recommended to me, so I ran with it.

Needless to say, it ended up being one of my favorite RPGs of all time. The characters were enticing, the graphics and animations were top notch for the time, and the big twist blew all of us away. Honestly, games where characters actually react to swings and projectiles are rare even these days. Plus, the extended Star Wars universe was truly fascinating, and it completely won me over.

Looking back, however, my standards were very different back then. The D20SW system is very loosely implemented, large parts of the game are barren and repetitive, quests are generally very basic, balance is nonexistent, aliens all have the same five gibberish lines that repeat over and over, etc. Not to mention the large number of bugs and crashes. It was far from a perfect game.

The modding scene is still reasonably alive. What was most surprising to me, though, is that the community is fairly splintered, even after all these years. There is little consensus on the de facto mods to install. Many of the mods feature incompatibilities (even if they're using the installer tool) and game-breaking bugs that never got fixed, and it's on you to find a solution in ancient threads on the internet. Overall, despite there being a great number of mods out there, it's hard to assemble a list of high-quality must-haves. Which, of course, isn't to say there isn't a lot of good quality work out there. I installed almost 50 mods for this run, though half of those are just high-quality texture updates.

After sprucing up the graphics and fixing some of the more egregious issues, the game is still very playable. Obviously, I've played through everything at least a dozen times before, so it's not all that thrilling anymore, but I did also install a bunch of content mods, which ranged from very decent to patchwork garbage. It was certainly a unique experience.

Before I started this run, I was rather annoyed that the remake is taking so long to make. It should be as easy as porting everything into a nicer engine, right? But after playing through it again, I can feel just how dated the whole thing is and how much work would realistically be involved in overhauling the entire game. I hope the remake eventually gets released, but I understand now why the issues in the development arose in the first place.

Would I recommend the game to people in this day and age? If you've never played it, sure. It's a piece of history that deserves to be experienced (with some mods, of course). But if you're just feeling nostalgic... eh. I'd say it's probably better to just keep your fond memories of it and find something else to play. You can wait a few more years for the remake.

The Man! The Myth! The Legend! by Keneth posted May 5, 2025 at 11:19 AM