Is Star Wars: Republic Commando Still Good?

Star Wars: Republic Commando is 15 years old. I always read good opinions about the game, but never actually got around to playing the squad-based, Clone Wars-era first-person shooter. The game is broken up into three campaigns, so I decided to play through the first campaign to see how I felt about playing through the rest of the game.

I made it my mission to find out if Star Wars: Republic Commando is still good in 2019.

The first campaign takes place during the opening battle of the Clone Wars. After a brief introduction about who you and your squad mates are, you hit the battlefields of Geonosis, blasting apart bug-like geonosians and the robot soldiers of the Trade Federation. Unfortunately, one of the first aspects of the game I noticed was how unsatisfying the gunplay felt.

Your battle rifle sprays laser bolts in a stream of blue blasterfire, but every enemy appears impervious to the damage until they suddenly collapse to the ground dead. Every single enemy feels like a bullet laser sponge, so blasting through hordes of geonosians and battle droids isn’t at all as satisfying as it could be. Adding to the slog of having to clear ever-refilling rooms (the spawn rates of enemies felt absurd at times) of nonreactive enemies was the frustration of having to deal with a camera that liked to wobble every time there was an explosion.

Considering the first level takes place in a war zone and then in a collapsing command center, the camera shaking was pretty tedious to work with.

As squad leader, you can issue some generic commands to the other clones in your squad and they each have their special tasks that only they can complete. For example, one clone can hack computer terminals. Running through the levels and shouting out commands was pretty cool, but it quickly lost its appeal when I realized that my squad mates seemed to be able to only do that one task over and over and half the time their A.I. just couldn’t keep up with how fast I was blasting through the levels.

I should mention, I was only able to blast through the levels after turning the difficulty down to Easy?

The squad member A.I. made playing on Normal difficulty unbearable. They were constantly being knocked out by the seemingly endless waves of enemies, and the shaky camera made making precise shots frustratingly difficult.

The game is based on the premise that you’re this badass squad of clone soldiers. While playing through the first campaign I felt anything but a badass squad of soldiers while playing Star Wars: Republic Commando.

My squad mates needed constant babysitting, and there was a segment of the first campaign where I had to do all the duties that my squad mates specialized in. I was planting bombs, hacking computers and sniping just as efficient as my squad members were. So what was the point of them?

That question nagged at me the whole time. My squad mates didn’t even sound like clones. The squad leader (the player’s character) was voiced by the guy who played Jango Fett, but then one of my squad mates sounded like an American marine, and another sounded like a cowboy. It was jarring and felt like an obvious oversight considering we’re all clones of Jango Fett.

By the end of the first campaign, I was ready to declare my opinion: Star Wars: Republic Commando doesn’t hold up well.

The soundtrack, however, does. The main theme is riveting, and the game’s use of the films’ soundtracks kicked up the excitement to levels the gameplay couldn’t match.

So while I don’t intend to play Star Wars: Republic Commando again, I do plan on listening to that soundtrack many, many more times.