Some 4000 years before the birth of the Galactic Empire, the Republic is in grave danger, with thousands of powerful Jedi Knights having fallen at the hands of the reborn Sith. Led by the Sith Lords Darth Revan and Darth Malak, an impossibly large Sith fleet is asserting its dominance across the galaxy. A cunning counter-attack by the Jedi saw the loss of Darth Revan from the conflict, only for Malak to take his place and continue his reign of terror. In true Star Wars fashion, all of this means that the time has come for a hero to rise. Well...maybe.

A strength of KotOR, one of many, is the amount of freedom you have throughout the game. Freedom in gaming is an elusive beast and, therefore, it’s a testament to Bioware’s skill as both a developer and a storyteller that despite a sweeping and involving plot, KotOR still leaves it up to the player whether or not they live as a hero or a villain. This is KotOR's single greatest strength - the way the conversations and actions your character becomes involved in has a staggering complexity rarely seen in video games. For example, a player wishing to follow the dark path may have to repeatedly act in a bigoted and violent fashion, often (seemingly) against the needs and desires of his or her objectives.

On the other hand, someone attempting to follow the light path may discover that becoming an upstanding Jedi means a large degree of difficult compromise, and may result in the guilty remaining unpunished. The balance is never less than perfect, and the genius of the system is that very few actions are irreversible. Nevertheless, as you path you choose affects the outcome of the game significantly, such decisions are not to be made lightly.

Of course, that freedom extends to far more than simply character allegiances. At every juncture in KotOR, you have a choice, usually many. Right from the start, you have a wealth of options regarding character creation (everything you’d expect from a Bioware Star Wars game: attributes such as strength, feats such as two-handed fighting, skills such as demolitions, your name and appearance, etc) but also the option to automate everything and have the game generate a character for you. Similarly, while the game employs an intelligent autosave structure (saving your game everytime you move to a different area of the gameworld), there remains the option to save at will, minimising unnecessary frustration.

Any long term fan of Bioware RPGs will tell you that a good idea for some sophisticated roleplaying is nothing without a good ruleset behind it. Utilising the third edition of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, and in an efficent manner, invisible 'dice' calculate your score for a certain action, compare that score to an equivalent for your target, and the highest score wins out. Judicious use of items and skills adds constants to your random score, increasing your chance of success. Understanding how the game works is interesting, certainly, but far from necessary. The effect this has on the system of combat is that the player has freedom to make their own choices without traditional text-heavy scripts to wade through.

Ah yes, combat. Again, Bioware have done an impeccable job of making command-based party combat work on a joypad without resorting to a derivation of turn-based play akin to the one employed in the Final Fantasy games. What we have in KotOR is unquestionably real-time combat, and it certainly works in the game’s favour, but thanks to a nifty pause option, none of the complexity is lost. Simply hit the White button, add commands (be they regular attacks, special attacks, force powers, grenades, items, etc) to each character’s command queue, unpause, sit back and enjoy the results. The most exceptional aspect of the system is that battles can either be fought as pseudo turn-based affairs (using the White button to pause for each command) or pseudo real-time battles (with actions selected 'on-the-fly'). A combination of both styles will see you engaged in some truly epic struggles.

Predominantly dodging the random battle syndrome of Final Fantasy, KotOR at least scores realism points there, but it is worth noting that combat can become a little repetitive at times. Still, all things in life can be criticised to one extent or another, and it’s difficult to see how Bioware could have improved things on the battle front. Indeed, overcome the initial hurdle of getting to grips with the attack and defensive input methods, and within a couple of hours you'll be gliding through all of the available combat options with ease, as if your joypad hand was connected to the Force itself!

In terms of gameplay mechanics, KotOR is a first-class RPG, doing everything you’d expect it to do with aplomb. But there’s a difference between a competent RPG and a great game, and KotOR is far, far more than merely 'competent'. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and KotOR has them in spades. As it sweeps from planet to planet, taking in the familiar sites of desert world Tatooine and less familiar sites such as water world Manaan, it’s impossible not to become involved, nay invested, in the epic storyline, whether you follow the path of light or dark. There’s even a genuinely surprising plot twist or two.

Two key things work towards the heightened level of immersion found in the game. Firstly, there’s the backstory. Freed of the shackles of working within a predetermined section of the Star Wars timeline, Bioware has been able to craft it’s own universe and its own backdrop, setting events in the historical context of events such as the Mandalorian Wars; events the player never has any role in, yet events that stick in the mind because their affect can be felt on the other elements of the game.

The second factor is the script, or more specifically, the characters. The quality of the writing, the dialogue, the characterisation, etc in KotOR almost single-handedly makes up for every cliché-driven sub-Hollywood rubbish lesser games have forced down our throats for decades. Each central character has a rich personality, from HK-47’s genuine hilarity, to Candoras’ grizzled-war-vet.-style arrogance, Mission’s naivety and Carth’s crushing insecurities, all served brilliantly by a realistic, emotional script, a script so good it even manages to nail character romance, something few games seem brave enough to even attempt with a straight face these days.

Throw in some addictive subgames, such as the surprisingly enjoyable Swoop Racing to the crack-subtitute that is the card game Pazaak, and you have a refreshingly complete gameplay experience. In terms of production values, it’s difficult, in most areas, to find anything to complain about. Cutscenes are above average, utilising a combination of in-engine graphics and renders to good effect, and taking advantage of the excellent audio present throughout. Genuinely impressive voice acting (especially for the nine central, controllable characters and the other key figures) is bolstered by solid sound effects and brilliant music, mixing existing Star Wars music with additional pieces that wouldn’t feel at all out of place in the new film.

Visually, however, things can be a little of a mixed bag. Little details such as ships soaring overhead in Tatooine are impressive, and weapon effects and the like make battles suitably exciting, but the characters lack detail and, while some planets look simply gorgeous (particularly Dantooine, Manaan and the final, unknown world), others are simply bland. Indeed, Korriban is such an uninspiring and boring environment that it almost seems to make the gameplay in that section more boring than elsewhere!

Occasionally, certain areas of the game become a little stale; as the intricacies of the plot are revealed, sometimes the last thing you want to do is trudge through more `dungeons` and, while undoubtedly still fun, it does grate at times. All other points of criticism really are just nitpicking. Occasional crash bugs, for example, are certainly anger-inducing when they happen, but they are thankfully few and far between, and chances are you’ll spend a touch longer staring at the intrusive loading screens than you’d like, but again, that’s a small price to pay for such an extensive gameworld.

Despite these minor flaws, however, KotOR remains a thoroughly engrossing, hugely compelling and annoyingly addictive game to play. Although an aversion to all things Star Wars might put off certain initiates to the game world, the game stands-up so well in its own right that a few hour's play will see all but the ardent anti-Lucas fan involved in the plot. Gamers who abhore combat that involves a bit of thought and reflection, however, may wish to steer well clear. But for anyone looking for a lengthy, epic adventure featuring hugely memorable characters, a great script, and superb game mechanics, there’s no better place to look than Knights of the Old Republic. And if this is a taste of things to come, perhaps that one about Star Wars games set outside of the original trilogy may not be a rule for much longer.