The most overrated Star Wars game? This received strong reviews back in the day, is still held in high regard by the fanbase, and secondhand copies could go for pretty high up until it got rereleased on the Switch and PS4. I remember finding mine in a store years ago for roughly $21 and thinking that was a steal. Little did I know that when I would finally get around to playing it much later, I wouldn't end up having much fun.

Let me be clear, I absolutely LOVE what they were going for tonally. From the insurmountable odds, enemies that were fodder in the movies being turned into legitimate threats, and the occasional splatters of alien blood on your visor Republic Commando expertly captures the tone of a gritty war film. It does a better job of showing a darker, more desperate side of the franchise's conflicts from the perspective of an expendable grunt while still managing to stay true to that classic Star Wars feel than the likes of Rogue One or Andor have. At least until that ill-fitting credits song. If you thought Godsmack was out of place in Prince of Persia, let me tell you mid-2000s misplaced teen angst had nothing on this.

Unfortunately, the actual gameplay isn't as enjoyable. RC is a tactical first-person shooter that doesn't get the shooting, combat sequences, or arguably even the squad control mechanics right. I get you aren't supposed to be a gung-ho killing machine in these types of games, but I at least expected to be able to AIM properly. Targeting with the right joystick is bafflingly stiff, awkward, and clunky making it hard to hit exactly what you want to even with the overly large reticle taking up the center of the screen. To put it simply, Halo this ain't. That's a real problem when the campaign inexplicably wants to try its hand at being a regular FPS at points by stripping you of your AI-controlled allies and forcing you to go it alone. The poor gunplay and speed at which your enemies can kill you can make these stretches quite a drag.

Luckily, most of the time you're with your three AI teammates. It doesn't necessarily make things all that much better, but battles are less of a pain. Well, before they start artificially increasing the difficulty by continuously throwing more of the bullet-sponge special foes at you at once, that is. Your fellow members of Delta Squad are impressively competent on the battlefield. Honestly, the most you'll ever really have to do is point them to spots where they can lay down sniper or heavy weapons fire, focus all their attention on a specific threat, and occasionally tell them to heal up. For the most part though, they can handle themselves and whatever danger is headed their way so there's not always a reason to give them any direction at all. It kind of makes it hard to be excited about anything when you realize the action almost exclusively consists of walking forward until reaching the next area where you'll need to hunker down for a bit to fend of repetitive waves of hostiles, and that in most cases the smartest strategic leadership decision you can make is to just simply sit back and let your subordinates take care of everything. Especially in the stages where ammo pickups are scarce often leaving you with dry blasters. Also, I mean, come on... Ammo? In a SW title?

A shame, because the settings these firefights take place in are genuinely fantastic. From the massive canyons on Geonosis to the sprawling bowels of a Republic capital ship and the immense forest that is planet Kashyyyk, the level design has such a way with scope so that you're fully aware of exactly how VAST these locations actually are in a manner I've not personally experienced from another piece of Star Wars media despite the linear paths you travel through them. I caught myself wishing there was more going on with the writing to accompany the sights. RC is solely focused on delivering its central premise alone, so there's not much happening narratively. Delta are an amusing bunch, particularly Scorch who sounds and acts so similar with his constant sarcastic lines like Grif from Red vs. Blue I legitimately had to check to see if they were voiced by the same person (they're not, it's some dude named Raphael Sbarge), but they really aren't given a whole lot to do. There are some interesting lore tidbits such as the revelation that bullets were once a thing in the galaxy far, far away, and while I wasn't expecting something too significant from an EU story I did at least think there would be a semi-decent plot to keep me invested. Yet, after progressing through the three different scenarios you're treated to a hilariously abrupt conclusion that feels less as if intended to hammer home the theme of stepping into the role of a highly dispensable soldier, and more along the lines of they ran out of development time to include the final mission or two.

Republic Commando isn't a bad game. It simply never does anything it sets out to do all that well. Except maybe multiplayer, it's most praised aspect on release. Naturally however, the servers have long since been shut down so on the OG Xbox in 2024 that's far from a selling point. Even if you were up to go the split-screen route, man, I'd have to recommend you just choose Halo instead any day. As a hardcore fan of the property, I view this as an altogether skippable and forgettable experience. Of all the prequel era SW I've been annoyed by seeing get demoted to "Legends" status (because it's not like Disney is doing anything with this period of the franchise anyways), I'm not too sour about this one.

5/10