Pros:
- I appreciate the choice of using DND-like mechanics of combat.
- The plot includes some interesting lore about the distant past of the SW universe (now non-canon, but eh). There’s a very interesting twist in the story.
- Some characters can be somewhat humorous or charming.
- Decent art direction and music that stays true to SW and makes for cool new additions.

Cons:
- Combat was always a slog because of how unresponsive the controls were. It’s hard to keep party members from doing things you don’t want them to do without constantly switching characters and micromanaging their every action, which would draw out battles far too long. The pre-set battle behaviors only do so much.
- Level design is corridors and uninteresting puzzles. Puzzle solutions are either weirdly arbitrary or painfully obvious. The ridiculous amount of backtracking was pretty painful.
- Game balance seems all over the place. The build I chose, a stealth build, turned out mostly nonviable because of forced head-on encounters throughout the game, not to mention your party (which is not stealthy) has to be with you to progress. Combat was a mix of brain-dead-simple encounters and sudden difficulty spikes. In those cases, simply dumping all your consumables onto your characters usually did the trick to brute force past hard battles.
- The UI/UX, on top of being pretty unresponsive, was far too crowded and was a chore to navigate. The massive loot bloat throughout the game did not help this.
- The plot is mostly by the numbers, barring the few interesting aspects noted above.
- Many characters are uninteresting or even annoying. Some character arcs go in odd directions or make big jumps without nearly enough cause.
- Voice acting overall was undercooked and often seemed like they just used the first take from every voice actor, despite the talented names in this game’s cast. It’s worse for characters with less focus, of course.

Score: 4/10, closer to a 5 than a 3.

God I loved this game*

A lot of people said this game is one of the best Star Wars narratives out there, and I 100% agree. Pretty much all the characters ranged from simple 'not a repainted movie character we swear' types like Zaalbaar and that one R2 copy I forgot the name of, to actually great characters like Carth, Candorus and especially Bastilla. And the worldbuilding of planets like Dantooine, Korriban, and ancient Tatooine were really cool to learn about and explore* in probably my overall favorite Star Wars take since Empire Strikes Back, as well as seeing original older versions of things like troopers and the Sith order (turns out Star Wars can be pretty cool if you don't focus exclusively on one family tree and the dozen people and couple planets that surround it, HUH DISNEY?)

But you, clever reader, have probably noticed a few asterisks dotted throughout my review. And that's because while the writing is top shelf Star Wars, this is also a video game, where you have to interact through gameplay.

The gameplay sucks.

God I hope that remake gets back up and comes out, because the gameplay here exists on a scale of 'tedious but bearable' to 'holy shit who playtested this garbage?' Combat is...mostly fine. You make a build, you get party members, and you take it in turns to kill whatever shows up in front of you, standard RPG stuff. But then certain fights (from named Sith especially after the third planet you visit and they start spamming the move that heals them and hurts your entire party at every opportunity.) are actively frustrating. Same with the planet exploration, with all areas being in two categories. The place where people are, where you get to learn about the conflicts and lore from an often neutral position, making both the Sith and Jedi more interesting as a result. These places are great. But then there's the place where gameplay is, where you hang around an area fighting dudes until you find the plot hook and progress. Rince and repeat until you get to the final area and have dozens of guys thrown at you for ages, fight an annoying final boss, and come away satisfied enough.

Overall, it's peak Star Wars wrapped in a layer of shitty and poorly aged gameplay decisions. I absolutely recommend it, but for the love of god don't be ashamed for playing easy.

This is my favorite Star Wars video game.

I had this game as a kid but I never got to truly play it until now. My older sister had bought it and I tried to play it, but I was too young to understand it. I finally played through it now and... wow. What a phenomenal game.

I was hooked on this game from the very beginning. I don't remember the last time I felt this way about a game, where I was so engrossed in its lore, its gameplay, its characters, that I couldn't put it down and would think about it non-stop.

With that said, no game is perfect, and KOTOR itself has a couple of flaws. The levels in the game all have tremendous worldbuilding - such that you can dedicate an entire game to each of them - but I did find a couple of them to feel a bit unpolished in terms of level design. I was also a bit underwhelmed with the finale, both in terms of gameplay and story.

Everything else about the game was top-notch. I finished playing it last month, and I'm already itching for another replay. I'm excited to experience the game again while exploring different story options and trying out different builds for my character.

Also, here's one last word of advice, do not read any Wookieepedia article remotely related to this game unless you want to give yourself major spoilers.

Playing heavily modded, and boy howdy, what a treat! I played the game back on the Xbox, the one before Microsoft decided to go off the rails with their naming conventions. Loved it then, and haven't touched it till now, and I am glad I did. While some of the main twists and turns could not be forgotten, some of the less important plots had been forgotten and it was a joy to rediscover them again!

However, there is another side to this story, and that is how clunky and outdated the game is. It really had me anxious to finish it after about 25 hours played. I literally couldn't wait for the game to end, even while enjoying it, as all the clunky and glitchy aspects wore on me like 1000 tiny paper cuts. Took 28.5 hours to complete, I was kind of surprised both how quickly the game was over, but also I had remembered it taking much longer the last time I had played it.

Simply put, one of the most enjoyable video game adventures ever. While certainly janky in a modern context, if you enjoy strong location-based storytelling, you cannot go wrong with KOTOR. Just make sure you play it on the appropriate system. While I had a good enough time on Switch, its performance issues were not good, lol. But the Star Wars RPG format here is like, so much fun lol. And the storytelling on each of these planets is great too. And Taris is one of my absolute favorite opening sections in any video game. Pure RPG heaven.

Terra meter: 78%

Story/narrative - 4/5
Gameplay - - 4/5
Sound/music - 4/5
General presentation - 4/5
Overall enjoyment - 3.5/5