Brass and string instruments line up to give the biggest hurrah, as you gaze upon the two gender, three class options that lay before you. The swelling of the entourage coming together to invigorate you, the player, into stepping into worlds far, far away. This is the tried and true Star Wars motif since its prospering popularity over the years.

You know what isn’t Star Wars though? This PC port, by gods it stinks worse than the rotted remains you see in Rancor pits! It’s one of those “lackluster yet serviceable at release, slowly deteriorating over time due to tech advancements” cases, and though there’s a whole heap of mods to sift through, here’re the essentials: KOTOR 1 Community Patch, the first method of PCGamingWiki’s outline to get proper widescreen alongside even more widescreen mods to make it look better, and finally Dialogue Fixes via its PC Response Moderation variant (I’ll touch upon what that lil tidbit is later). Oh, by the way, get this on GOG above all else, unless you want to spend more time getting the Steam copy to work with all of this. If your reaction to this is “wow, that looks like a lot of file unzipping!”, well first of all some of these are installer-based, and secondly you’re correct! Even as someone that doesn’t mind doing mod tinkering I grow exasperated each time I have to do this travailing setup! I’m pretty sure the mobile, Switch port, and especially Xbox’s backwards compatibility releases are all sound though, with the exception of the Switch port’s Tower Of Hanoi puzzle in Korriban being bugged out where Aspyr not only recommends avoiding it, but flat out tells you to get the optional reward for this optional bit in a cheat menu.

As for the game in question, well let’s speed by the background real quick. I’m sure most of this is common knowledge by now, but during some email discussion in 99 and some pre-production in 2000, the team at Bioware was given a choice by LucasArts: either do an Episode II title, or do one that’s set 4 millennia before. Feeling that the latter option provided more freedom, they opted for that, and dealt with very little pushback granted from transferring their concept works over to the Skywalker Ranch. PC was an obvious choice given their preceding works, but the Xbox was chosen for factors such as its familiar PC-like architecture, its at-the-time recent success, as well as the fact they would be releasing one of the first RPGs in the console’s already small pool. As much as I like to go in-depth with behind the scenes info, ehhhhhhh I kinda don’t care enough this time around. To reiterate, I feel like KOTOR1’s dev story is known enough that going over it would be pretty superfluous, despite some ideas and comparisons they bring up being relevant to what I’m about to go over. I’ll cap this off by discussing how, if I’m not mistaken, this was the first instance of BioWare’s One Narrative Pony that they’d rely on for their 2000s reign. You know, the one that’s structured like a Mad Libs template: As the first act unfolds, you, MAIN CHARACTER, are going about your day until suddenly, EVIL FACTION has arrived unprompted and is currently wrecking your and the denizens of STARTING AREA’s asses! Once the bout has settled, as well as completing about one, one and half places worth of tutorials, you’re then transferred under the leadership of GOOD FACTION. With a deliberate task set upon you, an uncovering of the secret SPECIAL MCGUFFINS tied to ANCIENT CIVILIZATION sparsely acknowledged from tales of yore, this prompts you to go towards 3/4/5 plot-significant places to try and find them all, making up the bulk of the second act. On the transitory phase of Act 2->3, MAJOR PLOT REVELATION has occurred regarding you and/or the people you’re working under and/or the villain, thereby altering the ways in which you’ve interacted with the beats of the story leading up to this point! After doing one last mission, you’re then on your way to the big climactic battle against EVIL FACTION, conversing in one last rapport of your fair-hearted crew before you march onward, cementing your good/evil/somewhere in between ending once and for all.

While I’m making fun of criticizing Bioware’s writing, I’m choosing to jump several rungs and talk about their character writing cause it’s uh… very lackluster. Though I won’t make any grand sweeping declaration due to not yet finishing all their RPG titles, missing out on Baldur’s Gate 1&2 and stopping Neverwinter Nights and Jade Empire way too early, I nonetheless can’t really bring myself to care that much about this iteration of the Ebon Hawk’s crew anymore. A major cognition I’ve developed is how aggressively simple a majority of them are, with the only key cohorts being Bastilla and Carth Onasi whom I’ll discuss last. Now, there’s nothing wrong with simplicity, and Bioware’s well within their rights to stick with this since there are other RPG contributors that strive harder and more bolder within the market both at the time and especially now. Hell, this even works to its benefits cause Jolee, Canderous Ordo, and HK-47 were my favorites due to the former’s enigmatic disposition “I’m too old for this shit” from the Jedi/Sith conflict after bearing witness to several of their foibles as well as getting wrapped up under a friend’s trial case in Manaan, as well as listening to the latter two’s stories of action and killcounts both from their intricate details as well as just being humorous to hear and even witness amongst their overworld banters. That said, the rest of the crew do not share this, and in fact are hindered severely from rigidly staying as they are all the way to the end. Mission’s teen rebel attitude never goes further than what you’d experience in Taris, nor does the reveal of her brother and her shattered ideal of him ever go deeper than “she then realizes the harsh truth that he’s kind of a bad luck scammer tumbling downward”; Zaalbar’s entire deal is only unveiled once you reach Kashyyyk, and even then because of story reasons he’s MIA for a major chunk until the end where you have to convince him to side with his well-meaning and good leading father or his hostile, egotistical older brother with both containing little depth to work off of; T3-M4 gets absolutely nothing, not even bonus modifier unlocks like HK, which in fairness makes some sense since he’s supposed to be the R2D2 expy but does hurt when going back knowing he gets just a smidge more room in the sequel; Juhani’s the closest a non-lead companion gets to having a fully fleshed arc influenced by your behalf, but tragically this also falls short due to its flimsy execution regarding her origins, her fuel of hate, and how your influence reach to her inner struggle of sticking with the Light or embracing the Dark end up not mattering. Also stings that, not only does she have the most amount of bugs riddled within her progression flags, her lesbian kindling with the female PC is woefully truncated likely due to the intolerance same-sex relationships had - and continue to have - been dealing with for years.

Taking the role of secondary and tertiary leads respectively are Bastilla, a Padawan who’s ambition and training are only matched by her stubbornness and unwillingness to see reason amidst your actions to the narrative, and Carth, a Republic soldier staunchly believing in just while continuously on edge due to past betrayals and the uncertainty of what he is never dwelled upon. This, in turn, leads to them having the most amount of growth and screentime as both PMs and chess pieces, becoming more stuck to the tangled web and ties on the Dark Lord Malak and his rampant, increasing army’s might as they try to take hold of the galaxy’s grasp. This has the double-sword approach however due to also meaning that their character flaws are at full display, doubly so if you’re doing the Male or Female romance route, which means someone attuned to RPGs, Star Wars, or both have heard about these two in passing at some point in a negative light. Truthfully, I like these two compatriots, to the point that finding the time to tease them turns out to be particularly amusing, and I can't imagine the first game’s story working without them. There is, however, such a thing as too much, and the way Bastilla’s nagging tutorships while she props herself up to be more important, Carth’s Lawful Good attitude contributing to No Fun Allowed actions every single time one has occurred, especially if you take upon two of the DS-aligned partners, alongside yet another case of Bioware needing to stop doing romance cause they suck ass at meaningfully presenting the parties involved as budding lovers and not Action Dolls A&B that’ll quiver before you just by selecting enough of the wooing options, while being as thoroughly unappealing if you do wish to take the relationship further and ending them as unceremoniously as they start them, means that they overtuned their quirks too much even if the intent was, obviously, to make their brewing troubles known. Another harmful thing to everyone involved is how the game’s pacing and progression blockers are attributed, since due to a majority of the cast being unlocked right when you exit Taris and all of them can be quickly chatted up after every major quest with seldom few locked behind level ups, this means about half of them can either finish or begin their specific questline right when you finish the first actual planet. This last point, however, I’ll lighten up on since it can be spaced out adequately, and it seems like each division of Bioware were aware of how abusable and lite this tactic can be, with subsequent titles having much more sensible flag checking, even if they are, yet again, occasionally bugged…

Speaking of planetary scouring, I’ll give credit and say that the pacing on getting through each of them is very apt and rarely too strenuous. Since each zone you travel to and fro on are typically linear, boxy environments with dungeons delving to the corridor route, the locales both in these spots and the in-betweens are compact enough to run through. This also mitigates backtracking to be a mere annoyance, since all sidequests regarding the people inhabiting these balls of life are commonly placed at the civilized areas at the beginning, with very few actually plopped onto the dungeon’s surfaces, and even then they’re also made sure to go hand-in-hand with that planet’s Star Map excavation. Bolstering this is Jeremy Soule’s contribution to the music which, although I’m not as enamored by anymore, is still something I largely enjoy hearing, be it the soothing keys and strings in Manaan’s Ahto City, the booming tunes exuding the doom lingering in Kashyyyk’s Shadowlands, or the haunted hymns that surround you as you stride through Korriban’s Sith Academy. Incredible stuff from someone working within the confines of an 8MB/s MIDI system at the time! All said, there’s still bumps on the road, and as you can imagine they take form whenever they call to go back-and-forth between the important NPCs and/or special item, or clog up the exploration part entirely. Taris tends to get the brunt of the negativity, but honestly aside from the tutorial popups - which you can turn off, even - it’s designed enough that trips (in my case, two laps regarding before and after rescuing Bastilla) regarding everything to do and everyone to meet are all rounded up during each As to Bs to Cs markers via key interests marked either on the map or from visual cues. Dantooine, on the other hand, requires far more traversal across its expansive plains due to the story blocks only being placed down after one menial task after another from the Council has been answered, likely as a way to ease players into not only their new lightsaber toys, but also Force Powers as well. Fine enough, but did they really need to have the maximum amount of combing have to take up to four trips for utter completion? Plus, the atmosphere of a thriving megapolis that slowly deteriorates as you descend further down the planet’s levels is more thrilling to me than being within an arm’s reach of an academic facility kissed by autumn grasses and orange hues.

Something that will persistently elongate the ventures, however, is combat and how encounters within this are handled, which seems to be the main sticking point everyone has nowadays. Since this is following up on the studio’s Dungeons & Dragons releases prior to this, it also means every check and balance is stuck to the rules from those tabletops - actually, it’s more accurate to say it’s following those established by Wizards Of The Coast’s Star Wars Roleplaying Game, itself being derived from the d20 system on D&D 3e, all under the Odyssey Engine - itself an updated iteration of their previous Aurora Engine - albeit much more simplified in an attempt to cattle as much of the mainstream audience as possible. Despite its choreographed moves and grounded-level camera, it still very much plays like a typical cRPG real-time battle system, with the closest it gets to being truly turn-based having to dig through the options and enable auto-pausing after every action has been taken. This, already, is a cumbersome direction to get a grasp over, but what doesn’t help is that the moment-to-moment loop is lopsided. Resource management is dabbled less so on the inventory culls and management on where/how you use physical items or the Force, and more on how much of your time you’re willing to tax off just to take down a typical group of 3-5 thugs at a time. Even during the times in which an uptick of enemy hostility is expected, such as raiding enemy bases, going through ruins/caves/abandoned settlements, or tasked with a challenge by a supervisor, so much of your time is being spent less so on strategizing the battlefield and the ways in which to get around them, and more on figuring out which ways makes you go into hyperdrive from the area of combat quickly and effectively, all under the scrutiny of rounded up dice rolls. In layman’s terms I’m pretty damn annoyed that battles in this game rely so heavily on just wasting time and energy instead of putting pressure on my squad to pull my skin out of the fryer in any meaningful way, a feeling I imagine is accentuated if this is your first rodeo for this game or even RPGs as a whole, but the repeat runs have dulled all of my senses and enervative me to the point that I stare blankly whenever a Kinrath stalks up to me like it owns the place. Not helping is the fact that the friendly AI is really, really stupid, getting stuck in place or failing to execute a simple task well within their line of sight at least once in every major planet. A majority of this isn’t me spouting cynical, erroneous assumptions, due to Casey Hudson, Ray Muzyka, James Ohlen, and Greg Zeschuk themselves elaborating on this and more in the Post Mortem section of Game Developer Magazine’s December 2003 issue.

Coinciding my issues is how, seemingly because of the established MO, build variety and skill management is downscaled to such rigid measures as well, meaning that you actively have to try as much as possible to make your PC or companion’s builds suck shit. With this game’s Warrior, Mage, and Rogue being dignified by Soldier & Guardian, Scout & Consular, and Scoundrel & Sentinel respectively you’d assume there’s ups and downs for each of them. Well, sorta? Strength influences melee and chances to hit, with Dexterity influences stealth, defense and dodges, ranged, and even lightsaber should it be specced higher than Strength. Those two alone already affect build construction, but there’s also Wisdom for defensive/supportive Force wielders as well as Constitution if you’re looking to construct some tanky meats. Aside from that though, builds tend to be tossed to the wayside since there’s not enough motivation and lures to try out as many combinations as possible, due to the fact the actual skills in question are majorly superfluous. Persuade is never not useful in RPGs that feature it, and dumping a few points in Awareness and/or Repair/Computer Use is fine enough, but you’re never gonna use Stealth and Security since there’s no reason to ever use them due to the former rarely, if ever, being an effective manipulation against hostile squadrons and there’s no penalty for bashing locked objects open regarding the latter, Treat Injury and Demolitions fall off the wayside once you hit the midgame due to better options becoming available for both medical and combative fronts, and trying to dump points on the tech-specific trees you didn’t pick after settling on its alternative is just wasting points. When taking PMs into consideration as a way to offset these lowered priority, this becomes a smidge better, but yet again there’s catches since some are just flat-out better at any role you design them under than others, like Mission being an outclassed ranger compared to Carth, perhaps Juhani, and HK-47, or T3-M4 being the go-to utility unlocker for everything due to his high spread amongst those stats and even further with the littlest effort in min-maxing. That’s all in regards to skills, with feats I don’t have as much issue cause there’s an adequate room to wriggle and flex under for everyone, despite the knowledge I have of the game’s combat encounters and each planet’s speciality, such as classifying one person under the Dueling stance and another under Two Weapon Fighting making huge waves for how they handle foes. It’s a weird point because I understand all of this was done with the aforementioned market and demographic in mind, but I can’t help but feel like my options and ability to roleplay who I want are limited. About the only good I can say for this department is that, since this is a Bioware title, breaking encounters to your absolute favor is yet again delightfully joyful.

What really grinds me in that last point, is about the general writing and more specifically, how Light Side vs Dark Side playthroughs are written. It’s no secret Bioware’s knack for morality is troubling, the binary slots they tend to do becoming mocked for how extremely good or extremely evil PCs can become, and nowhere is that more evident than in this game. Even as someone that sticks with “Good” paths in RPGs, being one here is unfulfilling since I’m basically sucking up to someone in the most overt, dignified way possible, made even worse with how childish every remark you can choose to say (this is why I specify picking the PC Response Moderation variant way earlier, it’s still kind of bad but options sound a lot more sensible comparatively). DS players get an even worse outing cause it’s the most bog-standard “you’re a jerk and everyone hates you but that’s OK cause you’re super-duper powerful” type of spiel you’d see in other titles of the genre, with not that many options that harken to that obscenity. Well, there is one important choice near the end that serves as a pretty viable RP moment, and this in turn can lead to one of the funniest Evil moments in any Bioware game ever, so that’s one hopeful spark. In regards to every other bit of writing it’s solid enough, I suppose. Worldbuilding feels strangely downplayed, an odd circumstance since this is way before the established OT or even Prequel ages, and any turn to embellish something is almost certainly cut off right when it allures you with questions, such as the mystery of the Sand People’s intelligence or Kashyyyk’s origins being afflicted by the Star Map’s placement in the Shadowlands. Tatooine -> Kashyyyk -> Manaan -> Korriban isn’t my preferred order just cause of the plot ramp up making the most sense, it’s also cause I get to deal with all the weakest offerings first so that I can relish in the variety of options available to consider in the last two. The only huge writing portion I can credit for a great job is the twist, which even in my efforts to keep as spoiler-free as possible, is likely the first thing that pops into your mind when thinking about this title. Heavy-handed for sure, I can’t deny that the setup and foreshadowing that follows is handled in such an effective moment that I don’t even particularly blame Bioware for utilizing that Narrative Pony I jabbed at earlier, especially since it led to them ironing out some kinks to deliver stronger executions. Like, consider the Protheans from Mass Effect real quick and compare them to how the Builders are established, it’s almost like Drew Karpyshyn went for a re-edit of his initial draft! My only real problem is that how the falloff of this is handled due to its bizarre underplay, which I figure is due to the fact that choosing any planet in any order meant they couldn’t be too wild with the variables, and the fact that Malak just kind of sucks? He has cool Moments but he himself isn’t cool, he’s sort of a dork. Maybe that was the point, but nonetheless gimme Loghain and Saren any day.

A lot of this review has been casting a negative light on it, despite the rather positive score I gave it. It’s largely due to the fact that I know Bioware - be it this team and the key figures appointed or the studio’s name as a whole - can do better, and have even experienced them do better in their titles to begin with. But, hey, you know what? I still had fun at the end of it all. As stated, that pacing is exceedingly well-tuned, which is great for them since one of their main goals was establishing this as a 40-60 hour sink, which meant that even during its lowest I was only ever slightly annoyed instead of suffering in agony like in their other titles, and a majority of the problems I shared are largely spiked from my change in views as to what I want in an RPG. In fact, the only negative I have that’s substantial in any way - aside from Malak, anyway - is that the Star Forge is completely and utterly awful as a final dungeon, highlighting all my issues with the combat and exploration, as well as blatantly spawning more enemies as soon as you defeat them, like gross! I hope BG1&2 and JE don’t have final dungeons anywhere near as bad as that, cause god Bioware has only gotten me to feel satisfied in an endgame area one time despite all the titles I’ve played from them thus far. Anyway, back to my main point: I recognize KOTOR1 as a pretty solid game all-around, and I also think it was the right type of title to get my tyke years hurdled onto the RPG genre amongst a few others I had growing up. That was a long time ago, though, and my taste has evolved and morphed many times over the years, to the point that I can’t exactly hold KOTOR1 to the high position as I once had it on before, even in my rosy attempts to believe otherwise. Come to think of it, it seems like even back then the lure and pull of its sequel was stronger and more gratifying despite the scars it bears.