Around 1998-2006 must have been a great time to be a Star Wars fan. Regardless of your thoughts on the controversial prequel trilogy (mine are very positive), the amount of video games and other media releasing must have made it very hard to not get involved in the collective excitement. I say "must have" because I was born just a couple of years too late to get caught in the zeitgeist, only discovering Star Wars around 2007. Anyways, I received this game (and many others) as a gift from a friend many years later, around 2014-2015. He "converted" (repurchased) his entire video game library to Steam (the fool!) and saw no issue with giving me his entire disc collection. At the time, I was more interested in playing Star Wars Battlefront II (the good one) than anything else, so this entire disc collection went practically unused. About 10 years later, I dug up the collection and tried finding anything worth playing. Among the clutter of long-forgotten games like Quidditch World Cup was a disc entitled "Star Wars: Best of PC", a collection of 3 Star Wars games - Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars: Battlefront, and (of course) Star Wars: Republic Commando. Up to this point, I had a mixed opinion of Star Wars video games. I had experienced masterpieces like Battlefront II (the good one), The Force Unleashed (Wii), and Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force. I had also experienced my fair share of crap like Dark Forces (come at me) and Flight of the Falcon. Since this was a collection, I assumed Republic Commando belonged to the latter: I couldn't have been more wrong.
Republic Commando bills itself as a squad-based FPS beginning at the Battle of Geonosis seen at the end of Attack of the Clones to a covert mission before the invasion of Kashyyyk seen in the middle of Revenge of the Sith. This game is one of many pieces of media bridging the gap between Episodes II and III. In my opinion, two questions must be asked when assessing the quality of this game: "Is this a good squad-based shooter?" and "Is this a good Star Wars game?" I believe this game is not a good squad-based shooter. I consider the gold standard of that genre to be Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and SWAT 4 and this game does not even approach the level of complexity of those games, opting for much more streamlined gameplay. On the other hand, the answer to the latter question is a resounding yes. This game is entertaining, expands the Star Wars canon, and has some pretty good writing.
I played on hard difficulty, as I do for most FPSes. It is much too easy to turn your brain off and use only the assault rifle (or equivalent thereof) on easier difficulties which is, in my opinion, one of the downsides of the FPS genre. Hard difficulty presented quite a challenge at times while still remaining fun for the most part. Like Halo (from which this game borrows heavily), you have a shield bar and a health bar. The shield bar can take fire until depleted, upon which your health bar starts being damaged. After a while of not taking damage, the shield bar will recharge. You die upon your health bar being depleted. The main difference between difficulties is the size of the shield bar and the health bar. I'm not sure if weapon efficacy or enemies are affected by difficulty levels. On hard difficulty, one hit from almost any attack will break through the shield and do a nice chunk of damage to your health. In fact, I wasn't even aware of the existence of the shield until the end of the game when a ton of battle droids showed up. Battle droids have the only attack in the game that does not drain the shield instantly so when I was taking fire and my health wasn't being damaged I was quite confused. At that point, I finally figured out that the shield exists. It undoubtedly is much more important on lower difficulty levels, but at hard difficulty the shield effectively doesn't exist. The most challenging levels on hard difficulty are ones without cover and ones where you do not have your entire squad with you; luckily, I can't remember a time I encountered both of these situations at the same time.
You play as a member of Delta Squad - four genetically superior clone troopers raised together that are fit for a better purpose than being a meaningless addition to the Separatist meat-grinder. You are "Boss" (AKA 3-8), and the other members are Fixer (hacker), Scorch (explosives expert), and Sev (sniper). Fixer and Scorch tend to be more lighthearted, but Sev is a borderline psychopath (but still as lovable in my opinion). The game takes place in three locations: Geonosis, the RAS Prosecutor, and Kashyyyk. On Geonosis, as normal clones are deployed as seen in Attack of the Clones, your squad is assigned to assassinate Sun Fac, an important Geonosian politician. After that, you do some odd-jobs to help support the main battle before ultimately ending up on a Separatist core ship and stealing launch codes to stop the Separatist retreat. After a 1 year time-skip, the squad is tasked with investigating a derelict Republic ship, the RAS Prosecutor. After a couple of Dead Space-like sequences, you find out that the ship is infested with Trandoshans, their scavenger droids, and some battle droids owned by the Trandoshans. The Trandoshans plan on selling the ship to the Separatists in exchange for a bunch of battle droids that will help them subjugate the Wookies on Kashyyyk. After fighting through hordes of enemies, a Separatist ship appears out of hyperspace to execute the deal. It sends in a ton of reinforcements, but after fighting your way to the bridge they realize that the ship is no longer controlled by Trandoshans. After an intense last stand in which you need to simultaneously stop the droid advance and activate the ship's turbolasers to fire upon the Separatist ship, a Republic ship appears out of hyperspace and helps bombard the Separatist ship. Upon destruction of the Separatist ship, the droids inside the Prosecutor immediately deactivate and the mission is finished. After another time-skip, Delta squad is tasked with rescuing Tarfful, a Wookie chief, on Kashyyk after being imprisoned by Trandoshan slavers. After rescuing Tarfful, your squad encounters General Grievous and learns that the Trandoshans and Separatists are working together. Delta Squad is then tasked with some preparatory work for the Invasion of Kashyyyk (although they do not yet know this), culminating in an epic storming and destruction of the Bridge at Kachirho. That bridge was the main way the Separatists were moving troops into the city and its destruction hampered their defense. Finally, the squad must advance to four gun positions, with each member of the squad leaving temporarily to operate a gun for the purpose of eliminating a Separatist destroyer that was providing many battle droids for the defense. Upon blowing up the destroyer, Sev informs the squad that he's under attack and his comms cut out; the squad is forced (after some resistance) to regroup without Sev for their next mission.
There are a wealth of guns in the game. On the Republic side, you have the pistol - completely useless but has unlimited ammo, the assault rifle - only slightly less useless, the sniper rifle - very useful, but you can only carry 20 rounds at a time and ammo is hard to come by, and the anti-armor gun - very useful against super battle droids, but you can only hold 4 rounds at a time and ammo is also rare. On the Geonosian side, you can pick up some kind of laser gun dropped by Geonosian elites. It has a slight warm-up time but the resulting blast is devastating to pretty much every enemy, but it doesn't last very long. On the Trandoshan side, you have "slugthrowers" which are basically just normal guns (as opposed to energy weapons). The shotgun is a guaranteed one-shot kill on the two weakest Trandoshan enemies, but only at close range and melee is also a one-shot kill. The SMG is slightly more useful, but completely useless against nonliving things. The best Trandoshan weapon is the minigun dropped by Trandoshan elites, it was always a relief when I found these on the battlefield. On the Wookie side, you have a choice of bowcaster or a rocket launcher; I used neither in my playthrough. I think the weapon variety is interesting enough, but on hard difficulty in the later game you will almost certainly run out of ammo for most of your weapons and will have to depend heavily on your squad. You also have a choice of 4 grenades - explosive (works on everything), ion (temporarily disables droids and causes a lot of damage, pretty useless on living things), sound (I think these only work on living things), and flash-bangs (I have no idea what these are for to be honest).
There aren't that many unique enemies in the game. Geonosian grunts are very annoying but pretty easy to kill. Geonosian elites are even more annoying and are much harder to kill. The battle droids are just bullet fodder and you're better off just jumping around and meleeing them. Super battle droids quite annoying, as the only effective weapons against them are sniper rifles and anti armor - the two rarest ammunitions in the game. Later on, I figured out that the key to taking them out is to order my squad members to anti-armor and sniper positions as they ostensibly have unlimited ammunition; once I figured this out the game became much easier. Droidekas can be seen as just normal enemies with an extended health bar, although their fast rate of fire makes them quite deadly in large numbers. General Grievous' bodyguards are the most annoying enemy in the game, as they're quite easy to avoid but hard to hit since they're always jumping up in the air and they have massive health bars; luckily, the most you'll ever have to face at one time is 2 if I recall correctly. Trandoshans have the grunts and slavers; both die in one hit with melee and effectively the only difference is that grunts don't carry weapons, opting for melee instead. The Trandoshans have their own elite, who carries a deadly chain gun but a couple of headshots with the sniper rifle will dispatch them easily. By far the worst Trandoshan enemy is their scavenger droids, they just fly around and blast you; about 3 seconds of exposure to their beam is death at full health. They buzz around in an erratic pattern but die in one hit (but not before taking some health bars by attempting to kamikaze into you). I can't imagine how console players handled these. Finally, there are droid spawners that, when they land, regularly spawn droids until they are destroyed. The only way to destroy them is to place a bomb on them, this process takes 20 seconds which makes for some very stressful situations. Battle droid spawners are a joke, but nothing stressed me out more in my playthrough than trying to handle an area with 2 or 3 super battle droid spawners. I remember the Bridge at Kachirho took me about 15 tries to complete just because I had to manage the logistics of destroying 2 super battle droid spawners while dealing with a turret.
One lesson I wish I learned sooner was squad commands. It took until the late game until I realized that the squad is really only effective when they're assigned to certain tasks. Occasionally you'll come across points of cover to which you can assign squad members, these tasks being sniping, anti-armor, or grenade. Sniping in particular is extremely useful - the AI does not miss as far as I could tell. If left to their own devices, I believe the squad will do whatever they want, but a vast majority of that will be using the assault rifle which is pretty useless. There are also points on which you can command a squad member to place a bomb (like spawners), but only rarely is this a bonus rather than just part of the mission. Occasionally, you will come across turrets; it is almost always preferable to assign a squad member to this - they have more health and perfect aim. Finally, you can breach rooms. For this, you generally have two choices - quiet (hack the door with Fixer's "l33t haxx0r skills") or loud. Loud is always the correct choice, the stealth mechanics in this game are a joke and I would never rely on them. Plus, with a loud entrance you get a free grenade plopped in the room which may or may not be useful. It is important to note that despite each member specializing in a particular area, any member can choose to follow the command and does the task equally well which kind of breaks immersion in my opinion. I have no idea on how the game chooses which member to follow a command, there's no way to explicitly state it as far as I know. You can also issue movement commands, although I rarely used these and beat the game just fine without them.
The only way to regain health is to find a bacta tank and there are a comical amount of unique voice lines about getting bacta. This spawned an inside joke of bacta addiction among the community. Ammo is available as pickups on the ground, and certain enemies drop special weapons. The game autosaves at certain important spots.
This game also has a multiplayer mode, but online multiplayer was lost in the GameSpy shutdown. I'm unaware if OpenSpy brought it back or not. Regardless, I didn't play multiplayer it at all.
The level design is VERY repetitive at certain points, especially on Kashyyyk.
The game has some pretty good extras that are unlocked after missions. In my setup, video playback didn't work so I watched them on YouTube after I beat the game. There's a small interview with Temuera Morrison who voiced the clones in the movies and Boss in Republic Commando. There's also a music video for the song "Clone" by Ash, some obscure Irish rock band who really likes Star Wars. This song also plays during the credits. There's one on foley which is a technique where random objects are used to make sound effects; I had never heard of this before so it was quite interesting to me. Honestly, I don't understand how someone can make a living as a "foley artist", especially when the most common techniques are listed on the internet. The guy who banged coconuts together in Monty Python and the Holy Grail wasn't a foley artist as far as I know. Finally, there was one on how the programmers and artists underwent some special forces course in entering a building to model the door breach parts of the game.
This game features a pre-movie view of General Grievous, although he runs away before you get to fight him. However, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 2003 Tartakovski one, not the hideous 2008 Filoni one) already featured Grievous so rabid fans would not have been surprised. Of course, with the Disney acquisition this game was rendered non-canon but I've never cared what that stupid company thought of Star Wars. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the hideous 2008 Filoni one) does feature Scorch, and he even makes an appearance in the post-Disney acquisition The Bad Batch (2020). The latter even shows the Republic Commando HUD in a first-person shot so a couple aspects of this game are still canon. However, the Bad Batch is just a Great Value version of Delta Squad. Karen Traviss, the controversial Star Wars author, has written a series of tie-ins to this video game. For those yearning for the cancelled Star Wars: Imperial Commando, she wrote a book that might have been the storyline. Of course, the Rodent has struck these down from canon as well.
Honestly, the only songs I could recall from the game are Clone (the credits song) and Vode An. Vode An is basically the Mandalorian national anthem and gets a very nice treatment in this game, playing at the most epic moments in the game. I'm sure the other music was nice, but I couldn't name any off the top of my head.
Game source - Disc (Star Wars: Best of PC)
GPU - AMD RX580 8GB
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
OS - Linux (ran with Wine on Lutris)
Control - Mouse/Keyboard
I played with the highest possible graphics settings, although after I beat the game I learned that someone had released a patch that allowed much higher resolutions. No video playback was working, so I was unable to view the extras in-game. Also, the main menu is apparently supposed to have some video playing in the background but I didn't even notice anything was missing. The case for the CD was long gone (I only ever received the disc) so I didn't have a serial key. A valid one is easily found online. While I do own the disc, my desktop does not yet have a CD player so I had to rip the disc and copy the ISO file to my computer. If you run the game launcher it will ask for the disc, but funnily enough if you run the game executable directly it will not ask for a disc.
Star Wars: Republic Commando is a product of a bygone era, an era before smart phones enabled creating useless virtual casino, ad-ridden, money-wasting, time-wasting F2P shovelware slop as tie-ins for movies. An era that at least forced tie-ins to be available for consoles and PCs thus ensuring some baseline level of quality and playability. An era when it was awesome being a Star Wars fan, instead of speculating on what idiotic culture-war talking points are going to be shoveled into the next movie (yes, I fully understand Star Wars has always been a commentary on American society, but it was much more discrete and way better written). While not a good squad-based shooter, it is excellent in expanding the Star Wars canon and presumably whet the appetite of plenty of youth for the upcoming Star Wars Episode III. It was so obviously trying to copy Halo on several points (even down to the repetitive level design) but honestly I would rather play this than Halo any day.