Jedi by Knight

Happy 10th birthday, KOTOR!  To celebrate, you can now play Knights of the Old Republic on the iPad (Aspyr, $9.99)

The day this was announced, I texted my husband: “Kotor for iPad. Get it now.”

Luckily he is a good husband.  He’s also the one that introduced me to KOTOR when we were in college.

I played that game for 40 hours in my dorm room, while listening to FOB’s Take This To Your Grave album.  Then I played it again, as a male character.  And again as dark side. Etc, etc. I’ve played through all the alignments and classes in that game, even weird combos like soldier/consular.  I played it so much that when I got the flu that year, I had feverish dreams of lightsaber combat.

I am so stoked to be able to play this game again.  After playing a few hours of the iPad version, I think KOTOR has aged fairly well, and this app does it justice.  The graphics naturally look a little blocky when compared to TOR, but everything looks pretty crisp on the iPad screen.  Some areas (Taris Undercity) get a little dark, so you may want to adjust screen brightness.

The touch screen interface works well for the most part; I was surprised by how un-frustrating it was.  All the icons for your journal, map, character sheet, etc. have been condensed into one “tools” button, which is a nice improvement since it takes up less screen space and it easier to tap.

Conversation looks pretty much identical to the original game, but instead of directly clicking on the tiny dialogue options underneath the window, they have added nice large number buttons on the right hand side (sorry, lefties) to select your word choice.  If you want to just read the subtitles instead of listening to the dialogue, you can cut the vocals short the by tapping the screen (haven’t figured out how to skip cutscenes yet, though…)

Movement is a little trickier; there is definitely a learning curve. Walking is done by kind of swiping and touching the screen in the direction you want to go.  It’s fairly intuitive, and you will get better with practice.  I do occasionally get “stuck” on other party members, or chairs, or something, which is mildly annoying.  You can also directly tap storage containers, etc. to auto-approach them and check their contents.

Combat is very easy, thanks to a few innate characteristics.  Combat can be paused; in fact, the game auto-pauses when you first spot enemies.  Also, you can queue up attacks on single enemies, or several different ones, as well as switch between members of your party.  With all these options, you can basically do turn-based combat if you want, or go with the real-time.  All movement during combat actions is automatic, so the touch screen movement controls don’t even matter.

You can save the game at any point, so it’s fairly easy to just pick up the tablet and play for a few minutes if you’re bored somewhere.

I think the only real drawback is that it is simply not as *comfortable* to play a 30-40 hour game on a tablet as on a PC.  I was trying to play it in bed, and my neck started hurting after about a half hour of looking down at the screen in my lap.

KOTOR is a *must*-play for any fan of Star Wars or RPGs.  It is also available through Steam (so is the sub-par sequel).

For a beginner, I’d recommend starting as a soldier; it makes the combat easier on your first playthrough.  Also, I’d recommend going either strongly dark or light side, as the bonuses are better.  However, for a more advanced player, I find the other classes more fun, and I love playing neutral characters.  The strength of KOTOR is in the story, and being creative with your character will let you get the most out of the game.