My Status: Beaten once at ~40 hours
Difficulty: Medium

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is an excellent RPG with great visual and sounds. Even though the story takes place 1000s of years before any of the movies any fans of the franchise will instantly recognize the worlds, surroundings, people and items in KOTOR.

The game is very much a standard RPG affair. The fighting is actually turn based even though by looking it at you will never be able to tell. This makes the presentation of the fight scene awesome. The sound of blasters and light sabers really does add to presentation of the fight. A lot of the fights you can just enjoy just sitting back and watching your characters run havoc on the enemy. This doesn’t mean the game’s fighting is without challenge. Many times you will have to take an active role by pausing and giving commands to your characters.

The game also features a very interesting light and dark side system, where almost every mission can be solved through different path. The game took about 40 hours to beat the first time through but begs to be played a second time as people react differently depending if you are on the light path or the dark path.

Of course none of this would matter if the game didn’t have an interesting story. The game luckily has an awesome story. Not only is it filled plot twist on a personal level but the story is grand in scale. You get to hear the stories of every member in your party with all there baggage but at the same time you are trying to rescue the entire Galaxy.

KOTOR is an awesome game that is just a big of an Epic as the franchise it is based upon. Any fans of Star Wars will love this game but there is a lot of just good role-playing and story telling for everyone to enjoy.

This game is a 10. I played through it the first time (for 60 hours) and, when I got to the end, I just wanted to play it again. As far as a comparison is concerned, however, KOTOR 2 is a more fun game to play. You have more powers more quickly and the combat seems faster in the sequel. KOTOR takes a little more strategy, as my character is not nearly as powerful at the end of KOTOR as he was in KOTOR 2 (my character wasn't even powerful enough to take down Malak without hints). Having said that, the STORY of KOTOR is far superior to the storyline in KOTOR 2. I actually said "Wow" at around the midpoint of KOTOR because the story was that good that it drew me in. A very well written storyline from BioWare.
The graphics and sounds are still great, even three years later... and I can't wait for BioWare to give us a KOTOR game for the 360.
The KOTOR Franchise gets at 10 overall. If you haven't played either game and are a fan or RPGs or the Star Wars universe, start with this one. I wasn't even a fan of RPGs (had only played them a couple of times) until this game, but it's easy to control and fun enough to bring in the casual RPG player.
This game is a MUST PLAY!