Knights of the Old Republic #TBT

Knights of the Old Republic #TBT

Game

I'm going all the way back to 2003 for this one. The woman on woman content is...limited, but it was a step in gaming and an important one. The first, and most of the attempts afterward, toward LGBT representations in Triple A gaming was made by Bioware. They jumped in fully with Jade Empire and then decided same sex relationships were worth regular inclusion in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. The fact that there are way more LGBT characters in Star Wars video games than in the movies is irritating. How many more? Infinity percent more since there are some in the games and none in the movies. But that's a rant for later.

The gameplay is fun, not quite turn based strategy, although you can turn that feature on if you'd like, but it's also not a true real-time action game. In traditional RPG fashion, you kill monsters, complete quests, gain experience, upgrade stats, gain new skills, and improve gear. There's the light side/dark side meter, the only real departure from the classic RPG setup, in which you gain or lose light side or dark side points depending on how you behave. If you delve too far into dark side, your character will start looking evil and if you manage to max out in either direction new skills and options open up, meaning there's really no reason to sit anywhere in the middle of the scale. Bioware fiddled more with this concept in the Mass Effect series calling it paragon/renegade, and then abandoned the whole thing eventually.

The graphics and sound design are great. Classic blaster noises, lightsaber hums and clashes, ship engines, are all straight out of the movies. The voice acting is top notch all the way down to the aliens speaking in alien languages and sounding very alien...maybe a little repetitive, but generally we're talking some top notch immersion, which is nice because it's also a pretty lengthy game and that's a good thing.

Let's get to the woman on woman content, which is why you're here instead of a more traditional review site. It's limited, but as far as I know, this is one of two games where you can be a Jedi and have romantic interactions with another lady Jedi (the other being the deep expansions of the spinoff MMORPG). Before you get too excited, that lady Jedi isn't Bastila. She's the cover lady, the MacGuffin, and a romance option...if you're playing a guy. Bummer. Instead, the romantic option for the lady loving ladies is a Cathar woman named Juhani who you save from the dark side and either guide back there if you're an evil character or bring to the light if you've gone that way with point collecting. It's a tame, kind of sweet relationship that requires the whole game to develop into the not exactly steamy, but kind of an emotional connection. Having played the other two romance options (Bastila + male protagonist or Carth + female protagonist) I can say none of them are particularly mind blowing or deep, so the woman on woman content wasn't skimped by comparison. And what they considered steamy romance with Bastila was really awkward and not at all sexy.

Playing this game for woman on woman content doesn't make a ton of sense. If that's the primary reason for picking it up, there are better options with more to enjoy and I promise to review those soon. However, if you're looking for a Star Wars game that's fun, often funny, has a bunch of clever Easter eggs, a good story, and all the classic Star Wars goodies you can enjoy (Wookies, Rancors, blasters, lightsaber battles, Hutts, droids, people having a bad feeling about this) and wouldn't mind a light story of a cat lady (half cat/half lady) falling for a mysterious woman...then you're in luck, because that's exactly what KOTOR brings to the table.

Once upon a time, you'd have to find an ancient copy of an original Xbox game and then load it up on an Xbox 360 and hope everything still works if you wanted to play this. Not anymore. It's available on Steam, Amazon download for tablets, for Android on the Google Play, iTunes, and a bunch of emulators. It's not a free or freemuium game, but $9.99 isn't a bad price for what you get.


I give Knights of the Old Republic 5 stars out of 5 for the game and a Nice 1st Try for the woman on woman content.