Star Wars Republic Command did not age well. So how would I know this, since I never played it back when it was new? Because of the way it’s been talked about lately. I heard praise not too long ago about how it was in the top five of the best Star Wars games ever made. Think about that for a moment. In a world with Knights of the Old Republic, Rogue Leader, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Fallen Order, etc. etc. etc., Republic Commando is in the top five?
Okay. To each their own, right? If I had played this game back in the days of the OG Xbox, I might have felt the same way. But I didn’t experience it until now, via enhanced backward compatibility on my Xbox One X. And man is it rough.
To be clear, the game looks great. It plays great. It’s just not great. It’s… fine. And it’s fuckin’ hard too.
There’s one thing I don’t have much patience for, it’s a difficult game that’s just okay. If I’m going to put up with a challenge, then it better be a damn good game. I don’t do challenge for the sake of challenge. I’m too old for that shit.
With that said, I realized something last night as I was pushing through the final mission, and it’s something that I think would’ve really fundamentally changed the experience for me had I been aware of it sooner. That’s the fact that your character is.. well… extremely underpowered. On purpose.
Republic Commando is a squad based shooter, and I would compare it to a cross between Rainbow Six and Brothers in Arms. You’ll give your squad commands in real time, and use their support to overcome obstacles. The main difference here, and the thing I overlooked for the majority of the game, is that your character is not going to be the one-man army you might expect him to be. Skill doesn’t play much into a battle. It can take many, many hits for you to kill a super battle droid by yourself. Here’s where the difference between Republic Commando and games like Rainbow Six Vegas differ; RSV, if you’re competent enough, can be handled by lone wolf’ing it if you need to. In other words, if things go to shit, and your squad goes down, you can usually take care of business on your own if you’re careful.
I found this to rarely be the case in Republic Commando. The squad A.I. in this game is non-existent. If you want them to do anything useful, you have to tell them to do it. Just running into a room and hoping they got your back is a recipe for disaster. A few enemies here or there is fine, but if you’re going into a large room where a big battle is obviously going to take place, you must order your squad around. Micro-management is the name of the game, and if you don’t do it, you’re in for a long, long night, just as I was.
The weird thing is, the squad will perform better when you plant them somewhere. For instance, the sniper will not sit back and snipe unless you tell him to. Plant him behind a bunker though, and he’s suddenly one-shotting droids from across the room. Heavy will sit and pew-pew, but if you tell him to hide behind a wall and frag, he’ll turn into a grenade launching madman. It took me the vast majority of the game to understand that it’s not just giving commands, it’s actually altering their power and effectiveness. You have to let them do the majority of the work. If you try to do it yourself, you’re screwed.
I don’t know if my misunderstanding of the game ruined it for me, but I honestly didn’t enjoy it enough to play through it again to find out. It doesn’t really change my opinion that the game didn’t age very well, and when stacked up to other Star Wars games of the past and present, I can’t honestly put it in the top 5.
Others might feel differently, but this isn’t their blog, it’s mine.
