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A game to bolster your expectations of console ports. Well, there goes fifty hours of my life. No, wait... Close to one hundred. I had to see the dark and light side endings, with completely different characters. Oh, well. It just went by so quickly. The nitty-gritty: Knights of the Old Republic is a role-playing game with a system based on a variant on the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons Rules. This means it's mechanics will probably be easy to pick up for anyone who has ever played ANY role-playing game, paper- or computer- based, as all owe some debt to D&D. Its divergences are in its Star Wars setting: instead of fighters with swords and wizards with spells, expect Soldiers with blasters and Jedi with Force Powers; instead of dwarves and elves, your party will feature a Wookie, droids, and a Twi'lek. It has a pause-able real-time combat system, meaning that the player can pause at any time to issue orders to his or her party members. When the game is unpaused, the characters will proceed to launch attacks, use powers, etc. at a rate of about one set of maneuvers every three seconds. This makes the fighting flow fairly well, and it's pretty, if not particularly believable. The graphics have an attractive, rather stylized look to them, somewhat comic-bookish, though I doubt that was the particular intended effect. This is just a way of saying that while the game looks good, don't expect photo-realism: it isn't there. So, why the high rating? Largely, the story. I wouldn't call myself a hard-core Star Wars fan; I've groused about the recent films with the majority, and didn't realize that the Mandalorians were same race as the original trilogy's infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett until I read it somewhere much later. That said, there is an incredible amount of dialogue here, and it's a credit to both the writers and the voice-actors that I wanted to hear it all through, at least the first time (reading the subtitles and skipping ahead is an option, so less patient players need not worry.) There are moments of melodrama, moments of humor, and plenty of time to get a sense of who the characters are and why we should care about their ultimate fate. This sense is not absent for the player's own character: though something of a cypher in the beginning, the player has a chance to get a strong sense of who this person is, and who he or she should come to be. You will probably revel in your character's power (I know I did), but it isn't just the assemblage of stats and skills, the endless drudge of leveling up so common to other RPGs; it's the sense of your increasing ability to make a real difference in what's happening on the various planets and cultures you visit. The most significant downsides: The combat is frequent; if you don't learn to enjoy it, you will find the game tedious. Though the battles are largely strategic, there are purely arcade sequences which are, to some extent, unavoidable. I found them a pleasant diversion and a fine addition to the multitude of different tasks your character undertakes, but my wife found the turret-gunner segments overly frustrating. Fair warning. Plotwise, the game at several occasions resorts to what is sometimes called "magician's force": there appears to be a choice, but there is none. Specifically, there are portions of the game where a villain uses force powers or trickery to paralyze you or members of the party: though in combat all such events result in some "behind-the-scenes" dice-rolling to see if a character escapes or resists their fate, these instances are automatic and unescapable, usually to allow someone to be captured to advance the plot, or allow a villain to escape, or force the player to face a dramatic confrontation on their own. I found this a little frustrating on occasion. ("Oh C'mon. I have the "force resist" power active, and I'm kicking his butt. Just let me have at it!") Such techniques to keep the plot on track are pretty common in games, but makes parts of a game that emphasizes choice seem unnaturally constrictive. Lastly, the "dark side" choices aren't exactly subtle. You're either a basically decent person, ultimately, or a complete psychopath. Like I said, the script made me care about some of the characters, and the things you must do to follow a "dark side" ending were actively painful to me. I suppose arguably that's a testament to how well written the script really is, but I'd always imagined the dark side to be more subtle and seductive. How many people would really follow a philosophy that seems to amount to "You'll wield your power to do whatever you want- until someone else more powerful, who is also doing whatever they want, kills you." More emphasis on the freedom and individuality briefly touched on in the "dark side" philosophy would make for a more interesting game. All in all, a great game (and no, I really don't begrudge it the hundred hours of my life.) If you see only one Star Wars movie this decade... It should probably be this game, instead. Really.