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Modern Masterpiece Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a fantastically engrossing game. The visuals are everything you've come to expect from the Star Wars universe, the story is unexpected, and it all meshes together in interesting ways. Mechanically, the game is rather simple. Based on a simplified set of d20 (pen and paper RPG) rules, even a cursory knowledge of how the system works is enough to grasp the benefits and limitations of different feats and bonuses you acquire. Without some knowledge of the Star Wars d20 game, however, the rules can be rather confusing. There are a few bonuses in the game (notably the Light Side and Dark Side mastery bonuses) which are completely undocumented. It might seem strange for me to say, however, but that lack of documentation doesn't really matter so much. There are no 'bad' feats to get, and the beauty of the d20 system is that it easily scales to match the level of the party. Therein lies some of the storytelling beauty of this title. The quests - and even the main plot - are very open-ended. If you have a list of places to go to, there's no prescribed order in which you need to visit them. The difficulty of each seems to scale, so no matter how early or late you visit these places, the challenges are appropriate. While few of your choices change the actual plot in any way, they all affect the storytelling. Encounters happen when they are appropriate to the story, not necessarily based on where you are, so no matter how you play, the story unfolds as though that was exactly the right way to play the game. Allowing the player so much control over the telling is a very rewarding experience. Side-quests and party interaction give the game some replay value, as it's interesting to see how different non-player characters react to the choices you make and influence events. And, of course, there's always the choice of going light or dark side, which changes the way you play pretty significantly. There are a couple minigames. I don't understand the obsession with games inside games lately, but the ones in KOTOR are both unessential and not too difficult, so it doesn't detract from the game, and gives you something to do between bashing baddies. Bioware added a great feature that I, at least, have not seen in CRPGs before: the transit system. From any 'safe' area, you can go to your hideout instantly, then transit back to where you left. This lets you swap out party members, build item improvements, and swap equipment between members. Unfortunately, there's no point-to-point transfer. I've found myself using force sprint just so that I don't have to spend so long running through empty screens I've already cleared. It'd be nice to be able to click on a cave on the transit map and just go there, assuming I'd been there already. The game is not without its problems. Two that I've had are just random lockups and crashes to desktop (probably one every 8 hours of gameplay or so), and the infamous 8s bug. Every once in a while, when trying to level up a character, all their attributes will record as 8, which robs you of valuable skill points. If you save before doing the level-up, though, you can exit the game and come back in to fix it. Another problem I have on my system (2.8 GHz P4, 1 G ram, but only an FX5200 in it) is that explosions cause a massive framerate drop. There are options to turn off a lot of graphical bells and whistles, but nothing to put in low-quality smoke and fog effects. Don't let ending this review on a down note dissuade you, however. The game's fantastic, and I'm currently on my third time through it.