Once you’ve gotten enough experience from questing or killing enemies, you’re then allowed to level up your characters in a fashion that’s a little more hands on than usual.
So in practice, combat in KOTOR doesn’t turn out to be much different than what you’d expect to see in an old school Final Fantasy game, even though it feels radically different because of how information is conveyed to you. For more challenging encounters, however, you must make more usage of additional combat skills and (later) Force powers to tip the odds in your favor. For simpler enemy encounters, you thus don’t have to do much more than walking within range and simply letting the numbers sort themselves out. In reality, all numbers are being calculated using an old-school d20 stat system, and actions are actually playing out in a simple turn-based fashion. Whenever you find yourself pulled into combat, things appear to play out in a fast-paced live action style, but this is only an illusion. Talking with NPCs usually gives you plenty of hints, however, and enough information can be pieced together from what they say to figure out generally where to go next. KOTOR has a quest log to track your objectives, but it certainly doesn’t point where to go or what to do. Not only does this add a lot more flavor to the communities that you find yourself moving through, but all this additional dialogue is critical to figuring out what you have to do next.
This is a phrase tossed around a lot in great RPGs, but it feels doubly true here, and a big part of this can be credited to the in-depth dialogue system, which ensures that even conversations with one-and-done NPCs have more to them than just one or two lines. The story may sound a bit meandering (and… yeah, it can be), but KOTOR does a spectacular job of creating a world that feels adequately ‘lived in’. Little rabbit trails like this, however, don’t feel like they detract too much from the overall experience, as all of them improve your understanding of the world or its social systems in some way. If you want to gain passage to a critical part of the city, for example, you first must help a party member break her Wookie friend out of captivity. For example, the world you first start on-Taris-is defined by the struggle to both track down the whereabouts of an important Jedi whose escape pod crash-landed there and to find a reliable transport to get offworld.Įven these smaller objectives frequently get put on the backburner, however, as there are many steps involved in getting them done. In the midst of all this, you play a simple ‘nobody’ character who gets caught up in the struggle and ultimately changes the outcome of the conflict.Īlthough the specter of this wartime backdrop looms large over everything you do, KOTOR is mostly defined by the smaller, ground-level stories you get drawn into as you slowly pull together your party and chart your course through the stars. Though one of the Sith, Darth Revan, has been killed, their apprentice Darth Malak is still hellbent on completing their mission of eliminating the Republic. The game opens shortly after the Galactic Republic has barely finished a war against the Mandalorians and now finds itself being invaded by an armada led by the two Jedi-turned Sith who spearheaded the initial war effort. KOTOR takes place approximately 4,000 years before the prequel films, so there are no Skywalkers or confusingly resurrected emperors to be seen here.