Info about STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™:

Official game description:
Note: Mac version only supports English language  
Choose Your Path.  
It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. You are the last hope of the Jedi Order. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side? Hero or villain, saviour or conqueror... you alone will determine the destiny of the entire galaxy!  
*   A brand new Star Wars role-playing experience with unique characters, creatures, vehicles and planets.  
*   Learn to use the Force with over 40 different powers and build your own lightsaber.  
*   Adventure through some of the most popular Star Wars locations, including Tatooine and the Wookiee homeworld Kashyyyk.  
*   Choose your party from nine customisable characters, including Twi'leks, droids and Wookiees.  
*   Travel to eight enormous worlds in your own starship, the Ebon Hawk.

Release date: 5 Sep, 2009

Categories: RPG, Single-player Story, Choice-based Narrative, Party-based Combat, Real-time with Pause, Character Progression, Player Customization, Open-World Exploration


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Timeless RPG Masterpiece (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game as a classic, one of the best RPGs ever made, and a foundational title that influenced the genre. Despite its age, it remains fun, engaging, and offers significant replay value, often described as an unforgettable experience.
- Captivating Story & Choices (weight 0.63): The narrative is consistently praised as one of the best-written in gaming, featuring a complex plot, rich lore, and one of gaming's most iconic and surprising plot twists. Player choices are deeply impactful, shaping the story, character alignment, and overall outcome, which significantly enhances replayability and immersion. High-quality side quests further enrich the experience.
- Authentic Star Wars World (weight 0.53): The game is celebrated for its deep and immersive Star Wars lore, set thousands of years before the films in the Old Republic era. Players appreciate the freedom to explore distinct planets, engage with the Light/Dark Side dynamic, and experience what many consider the best Star Wars story outside the main movies. It appeals to both dedicated fans and newcomers.
- Memorable Companion Characters (weight 0.27): The game features an exceptional cast of well-developed and charismatic companions, each with unique personalities, backstories, and quests. Players form strong attachments to them, with characters like HK-47 frequently singled out for their memorable dialogue and humor. This system foreshadowed later BioWare successes.
- Enduring Presentation Quality (weight 0.13): Despite its 2003 release, the game's writing, full voice acting, and atmospheric elements are frequently lauded for holding up remarkably well. While graphics are dated, they are often seen as "good for its time" and don't detract from the overall immersive experience, particularly compared to many modern titles.
- Worth Technical Hurdles (weight 0.12): Many players acknowledge that the game may require troubleshooting or mods to run smoothly on modern hardware. However, the overwhelming sentiment is that the effort is well worth it, as the core game experience, its story, and replayability far outweigh any initial technical frustrations.
- Engaging Tactical Combat (weight 0.09): The game features a strategic turn-based combat system, often compared to Dungeons & Dragons, that players find engaging and challenging. The ability to pause combat and employ tactics, along with varied fighting styles, prevents it from feeling clunky and adds depth.

Common complaints:
- Severe Technical Instability (weight 0.76): The game is plagued by numerous critical bugs, frequent crashes, corrupted save files, and character movement issues (e.g., freezing after combat), rendering it unplayable for many. It struggles significantly with modern hardware and operating systems, often failing to launch or crashing constantly.
- Dated Gameplay Mechanics (weight 0.49): Players found the combat system clunky, slow, repetitive, and unintuitive, often relying on RNG. Navigation, pathfinding, and overall pacing were also criticized as tedious and poorly aged, requiring excessive backtracking and patience from modern players. Character progression and build variety are seen as limited.
- Outdated Visuals & Port (weight 0.48): The game's graphics and animations are severely outdated by modern standards, impacting immersion. The PC port specifically suffers from poor optimization, lacking support for modern resolutions and aspect ratios without extensive user-applied modifications and troubleshooting.
- Extensive Modding Required (weight 0.42): To achieve a playable state on modern hardware, including proper resolution support and stability, players must spend hours troubleshooting and installing numerous community patches and mods. This is seen as a significant barrier to entry and a frustrating necessity.
- Tedious Early Game & Morality (weight 0.15): The initial planet, Taris, is often described as dull, tedious, and slow-paced, discouraging new players. Additionally, the game's morality system is perceived as overly simplistic and binary, offering little nuance in choices.
- Unfair Mini-Games (weight 0.1): The Pazaak card game is widely criticized for feeling rigged against the player, with NPCs consistently making optimal moves. This makes the mini-game frustrating and tedious to play.
- Inferior to Sequel (weight 0.04): Many reviewers compare the game unfavorably to its successor, KotOR 2, citing shallower writing and overall less depth. There's a desire for more modern Star Wars RPGs of this caliber, but also disappointment in this game's comparative quality.

Gameplay feedback:
- Immersive Star Wars CRPG (weight 0.3): Players experience a classic BioWare D&D-style RPG set 4000 years before the films in the Old Republic era. The branching narrative follows an amnesiac hero making choices between Jedi and Sith paths, offering high replayability. Character creation, class progression from non-Jedi to Jedi/Sith, and companion management are central to the deep role-playing experience.
- Tactical RTwP Combat (weight 0.19): The combat system is a hybrid of real-time with pause, rooted in D&D/d20 rules with underlying dice rolls. It's tactical, allowing players to queue actions and requiring strategic character building, though it may feel initially confusing. This system emphasizes decision-making over reflex-based action.
- Impactful Morality System (weight 0.11): A core feature is the significant Light Side/Dark Side choice system. Player decisions profoundly influence the story, character relationships, and the effectiveness and cost of Force powers, shaping the protagonist's alignment and ultimate destiny.
- Adjustable Difficulty & Length (weight 0.07): The game offers adjustable difficulty, often described as easy to learn but challenging to master. The narrative provides a lengthy experience, commonly cited around 40 hours, although some players report completing it in approximately 20 hours.
- Strategic Companion Management (weight 0.03): Players manage a diverse party of companions, strategically selecting two active members to assist in combat and dialogue. Companions contribute significant damage and utility, though they cannot be used in all final battles.

Performance notes:
- Extensive Troubleshooting Required (weight 0.11): Players frequently encounter crashes, launch failures, and other instability issues on modern operating systems and hardware. Resolving these often necessitates detailed troubleshooting, including adjusting graphics settings, running in compatibility modes, deleting specific game files, or using particular AMD GPU drivers.
- Widescreen Mods Essential (weight 0.08): The game does not natively support modern widescreen resolutions, leading to display issues, incorrect HUD scaling, and even crashes during cutscenes. Players must utilize community-made patches and mods like Flawless Widescreen or UniWS to achieve a playable and visually correct experience on contemporary monitors.
- FPS Capping Fixes Bugs (weight 0.05): Many players report game-breaking bugs, particularly character movement locking after combat, that are directly tied to uncapped frame rates. Enabling V-Sync or manually capping the FPS to 60-72 in-game or via external drivers is a widely recommended solution to ensure stable gameplay.
- Varied Platform Performance (weight 0.04): While the game generally runs well on platforms like the Steam Deck and Linux via Proton, some users report issues on specific setups, such as Macs having minor bugs or the game performing poorly when streamed via Discord. Windows 10 performance is generally good after applying common fixes.

Recommendations:
- Must-Play Star Wars RPG Classic (weight 0.56): Players overwhelmingly recommend the game as an essential experience for Star Wars fans and RPG enthusiasts alike, praising its engaging story, impactful choices, and lasting appeal. It is consistently hailed as a "masterpiece" and a "legend" in the genre, with many feeling it is a must-play regardless of its age.
- Appeals to Classic RPG Enthusiasts (weight 0.15): The game is particularly recommended for fans of old-school CRPGs, D&D-inspired mechanics, and BioWare's narrative-driven style. These players appreciate its deep story, compelling characters, and moral choices, often overlooking its dated graphics and gameplay for the rich experience.
- Best Purchased on Sale (weight 0.06): While widely considered a valuable experience, many players suggest waiting for a discount before purchasing the game. Given its age and the potential need for user-applied fixes, acquiring it on sale makes it an even more appealing investment for those willing to engage with its classic mechanics.
- Experience Story Unspoiled (weight 0.04): Reviewers consistently emphasize the importance of experiencing the game's iconic narrative and major plot twists without any prior knowledge. They strongly advise players to go into the game "blind" to maximize the impact of its story, which is considered a primary draw.

Other player notes:
- Deep nostalgic connection (weight 0.14): Many players have a profound, decades-long relationship with the game, often having played it since childhood. They frequently return to it for nostalgia, sometimes replaying it multiple times across various platforms, cementing its status as a personal favorite.
- Defines Star Wars RPG (weight 0.11): The game is considered a landmark Star Wars title, defining the "golden age" of the Old Republic era for many fans. It's cherished for its compelling story, often influencing players' perceptions of the broader Star Wars universe, despite its current "Legends" (non-canon) status.
- Strong remake/remaster desire (weight 0.1): There's an overwhelming and passionate demand from players for a modern remake or remaster, with many expressing anticipation or frustration over its development status. Players hope for updated graphics and mechanics while retaining the original's core essence.
- KOTOR II highly praised (weight 0.05): Many players hold KOTOR II in high regard, often preferring its nuanced writing and exploration of moral ambiguities within the Force. There's a strong desire for a completed KOTOR II experience and for a potential KOTOR 3 to continue the narrative.
- Robust community support (weight 0.03): The KOTOR community is noted for its helpfulness, providing critical resources like bug-fixing patches and content restoration mods (e.g., TSLRCM for KOTOR II). This community effort is vital for enhancing and preserving the game's experience on modern platforms.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.26): Players feel satisfied by the game's rich story, memorable characters, and engaging plot twists. The game's lasting appeal, replayability, and overall high quality, often enhanced by mods, contribute to a fulfilling experience, especially when it runs stably on modern systems and offers good value.
- Frustration (weight 0.14): Frustration stems primarily from numerous technical issues such as game-breaking bugs, frequent crashes, and difficulty running the game on modern operating systems without extensive troubleshooting. Players also find the dated, clunky combat system, primitive UI, and poor PC port quality to be significant annoyances that hinder enjoyment.
- Admiration (weight 0.13): Admiration is overwhelmingly directed at the game's status as a classic, masterpiece, and one of the best Star Wars games or RPGs ever made. This is driven by its exceptional storytelling, deep characters, immersive world-building, and enduring quality that has stood the test of time, often revolutionary for its era.
- Disappointment (weight 0.07): Disappointment arises when technical issues, such as crashes or compatibility problems, prevent players from experiencing the acclaimed game or enjoying it fully. Outdated gameplay mechanics, particularly combat and graphics, and the perceived lack of modern support or a remake also contribute to this feeling, sometimes leading to a loss of game progress.
- Excitement (weight 0.06): Excitement is generated by the game's captivating story, impactful choices, and immersive Star Wars universe experience, especially around major plot twists. Players also express excitement about replaying the game, anticipating sequels or remakes, and recommending its brilliance to others, emphasizing its high quality and lasting appeal.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.06): Nostalgia is strongly evoked by revisiting the game after many years, particularly for those who played it in childhood or adolescence. It's linked to fond memories of the game's authentic Star Wars feel, its status as a classic, and recalling the 'golden age' of BioWare or RPGs.
- Joy (weight 0.04): Joy comes from repeatedly enjoying the game's fun, immersive qualities and high replayability. Successfully overcoming technical hurdles to play a beloved classic, feeling connected to the Star Wars universe, and experiencing its memorable story and characters contribute to this positive emotion, often described as 'feeling like a kid again'.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.03): Players experience general enjoyment from the game's fun gameplay, engaging story, memorable characters, and humorous dialogue. Despite its age and some dated mechanics, the overall immersive experience and entertaining side quests contribute significantly to this positive feeling.
- Appreciation (weight 0.02): Appreciation is felt for the game's enduring quality, its significant contribution to Star Wars lore, and its pioneering influence on the RPG genre. Players value its well-crafted story, characters, and accessibility despite minor technical flaws or its age, often highlighting its superior quality compared to modern titles.
- Acceptance (weight 0.02): Acceptance involves acknowledging and tolerating the game's dated aspects, such as graphics, clunky combat, or minor bugs, due to its age. Players often find these shortcomings forgivable because the game's core strengths outweigh them, or because community mods can help mitigate the issues.
- Love (weight 0.02): Love represents a deep and profound emotional connection to the game, often stemming from its overall experience, immersive story, and memorable characters. This emotion is frequently tied to the game being a long-standing personal favorite, having a significant impact on the player's appreciation for Star Wars or RPGs, and recalling the passion evident in its creation.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope is primarily expressed through the desire for a remake, remaster, or official patches that would update the game for modern systems, improve combat, and preserve its core essence. Players wish for future Star Wars games to emulate its quality and for a faithful movie adaptation of its story.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is demonstrated by strong recommendations for others to play the game, often calling it a masterpiece or timeless classic. It stems from the game's exceptional quality, deep story, and high replayability, inspiring players to immediately replay it or advocate for its enduring brilliance.
- Recommendation (weight 0.01): Recommendation is directly caused by the belief that the game is a must-play experience for specific audiences, such as Star Wars fans or cRPG lovers, despite its flaws. Players frequently suggest using mods to enhance playability or offer advice on how to best enjoy the older game.
- Helpfulness (weight 0.01): Helpfulness is demonstrated by players sharing technical tips, workarounds, and specific mod suggestions to assist others in overcoming common game-breaking bugs, crashes, or compatibility issues on modern systems. This advice aims to ensure a smoother, more enjoyable experience for new and returning players.
- Affection (weight 0.01): Affection is a strong, enduring fondness for the game, often rooted in its well-written characters, unique atmosphere, and memorable soundtrack. It reflects a long-standing personal favorite status and deep personal connection, appreciating the game's charm and quality despite its dated aspects.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise is caused by unexpected enjoyment, especially for players who initially had reservations about the game's age, graphics, or unfamiliarity with the Star Wars franchise. The unforgettable plot twist and the game's enduring playability after many years also contribute to this feeling.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement is derived from the game's humorous dialogue, particularly from characters like HK-47, and quirky character interactions. Players also find humor in the ludicrous or 'asshole simulator' options available through dark side choices, and the presence of easily fixable old bugs.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief is felt upon successfully resolving frustrating technical issues, such as crashes or display problems, allowing players to finally enjoy the game as intended. This feeling is often intensified by comparing the functional game experience favorably to the state of modern Star Wars content.
- Desire (weight 0.01): Desire is primarily focused on the wish for a modern remake or remaster of the game, incorporating updated graphics, improved combat systems, and contemporary features like controller support or Steam Workshop integration. Players also express a strong wish for a genuine sequel or future installments in the series.}