Late one night I was browsing the App Store on my iPad, looking for something to pass the time during my morning commute. I looked high and low before giving in to my urges and perusing the RPG section of the games category. Almost immediately I realized this was a mistake when I spotted one of my favorite games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). Before I knew what was happening my finger had already clicked “Purchase”, my iCloud password was entered, and the most addictive game of my life had stormed onto my iPad.

Full disclosure, this is not a small or inexpensive game. The app is a $10 purchase that requires nearly 2 GB of space and appears to retain every asset of the original game. The result is an experience that gave me instant nostalgic feelings of staying up late, drinking Mountain Dew, swinging a lightsaber, and waving my hands to convince someone that I did not have the droids they were looking for.

One of the hardest aspects of the mobile game was grasping the controls correctly. On the iPad, the controls are completely touchscreen with no virtual joystick. Movement is handled by touch and hold or swiping. As a result, it’s very easy to move around in large areas, but making tight turns can be difficult. I also found the controls associated with swoop racing or space combats in KOTOR to be frustrating. Swoop racing was doable after a practice run or two, but the first space combat nearly killed me. The only minigame that benefits from the touchscreen interface is Pazaak. I found myself rarely playing this game with a controller, but with a touchscreen I spent nearly 2 hours playing in the Taris cantina.

An upside of the touchscreen interface is that using skills, feats, or items is incredibly easy. The most recently used is always displayed within its usable context with an additional option to select one more feature. Menus were also very easy to navigate and had a generally good flow with a touchscreen. The option to pause combat to quickly switch things around was in an incredibly convenient location; my thumb tended to hover right over the play/pause button almost any way I held the iPad. Even though I found myself occasionally wishing for a virtual joystick, not including it results in an incredibly clean and immersive interface.

This classic Bioware RPG has held up incredibly well. The strengths of KOTOR (characters, setting, incredible plot twists) have stood the test of time and are often just as good as the more recent Bioware RPG Dragon Age: Origins. Although the touchscreen controls have some downfalls, the overall experience is positive. If you have never played KOTOR before or you want to restart your addiction, this iPad version is p erfectly capable.