Steady your D12. Scot travels to a galaxy far, far away where the fate of the universe rests in his hands. Poor blighters.

You've probably heard the hype. Legions of gamers all singing in unison about how this is the best Star Wars game ever created, or how it completely destroyed their marriage, social life and hygiene habits in one, addictive play through. For good reason too, since Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox was an absorbing role-playing game rooted firmly in the Star Wars universe, with gameplay mechanics akin to the heavily-praised Neverwinter Nights.

PC owners now finally get a chance to sample Bioware's epic Star Wars romp. The game is set thousands of years before the game's big-screen counterparts, when both Jedi and Sith were strong in numbers. You awake on a spaceship under heavy attack from Sith invaders and are taught the basic functions of the game. Escaping from the ship, you set off to locate a talented young Jedi named Bastila, who could well be the key to ending the galactic war between the Republic and the Sith.

Just like Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege before it, Knights of the Old Republic uses the (albeit simplified) 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules for combat and character progression. Creating your character is likely to be one of the more important decisions during the course of the game. You'll get to choose from three classes: a soldier, a scout and a scoundrel. The soldier is your average, fighting class. The scout levels up quicker than other classes, allowing for them to gain more skills to aid their quest. The scoundrel, while weaker than the other classes, is stealthier and can surprise enemies and talk themselves out of fights.

Of course, being Star Wars, you'll eventually be eligible to dabble with force powers regardless of your character choice. Once a Jedi, you'll be given the choice of primarily concentrating your experience on wielding a lightsaber, your force powers or a mixture of the two. Force powers can be upgraded with experience, so the further your character progresses throughout the game, the more force powers you'll become accustomed with. Naturally, using specific dark and light powers are subject to your alignment with the force, but with experience characters will eventually gain access to the entire range of powers, albeit with a higher point cost for oppositely-aligned powers.

This is one of the main appeals of Knights of the Old Republic. The game can be played with whatever attitude you choose. If you're feeling delinquently evil, you could play throughout the entire game being rude, abrasive and generally doing wrong. Obviously, you can take a completely different attitude, and play through the game helping people wherever you can. You could also play through the entire game as you would yourself, arguing with people you feel deserving and only helping those who you feel in need. Playing through in this fashion will also work out where about your alignment is skewered on the force spectrum.

Since you're in the centre of a galactic war, you'll regularly encounter combat situations. At first glance, you'd be forgiven for mistaking the combat for being completely in real-time. However, launch into your first combat experience and you'll find that on the first sight of an enemy, the action will pause, allowing you to line up combat instructions, heal your characters and equip them with anything that would benefit their chances of survival. Once started, the combat requires little human interaction other than to heal, throw occasional grenades or activate force powers, but the combat is actually quite entertaining to watch, particularly the melee fights that break out when you equip members of your party with lightsabers and swords.

Amongst other things, combat will gain your characters more experience. Thankfully, anyone in your party you're currently not using will also level up alongside your active characters. This removes the tedious hassle of having to use all of your characters equally, and if ever there is a situation where they are needed, you'll know they'll be ready. Levelling up may appear a little daunting due to the sheer abundance of stats and feats you can build upon, but the game can recommend what it feels is the best option for levelling up if you choose. Elitists and those who want to build their character to their own specification will want to do this manually however.

The universe and environments all reflect the Star Wars universe well, and fans of the series will ultimately be able to relate with the scenery, characters and technology you'll interact with. In fact, the entire presentation of the game is one of the standout reasons to purchase it. The game features lines upon lines of well-spoken dialogue, and this all adds to the game's well-paced and well-directed plot. George Lucas should perhaps take note of Bioware's writing skills before he squeezes another movie akin to the likes of Episode I down the toilet bowl.

Unfortunately, the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic is let down by a few technical issues that really shouldn't have slipped past the testers. Even on a high-end PC, the action can grate a little in certain areas. The graphics, while certainly impressive and better looking than a lot of titles currently available, shouldn't be pushing high-end systems this far. Perhaps more unforgiving is the bugs that crash the game at random intervals, affecting users of Radeon 9600 cards. Those with Intel i845 or i850 chipsets running with a 100MHz front-side bus will also encounter problems with getting the game to run, forcing them to use software sound until they can get their hands on the patch.

Still, once the game is running there's no denying that this is one of the best role-playing games to emerge onto the gaming scene this year - Star Wars fan or not. If you are a PC owner and haven't had a chance to take part in this epic adventure yet, you shouldn't hesitate in picking this up for your rig. There has been no other game in recent memory that captures and brings the Star Wars universe to life as successfully as this one.

Scot "Milo Kast" Bennett