(1) I discovered that in addition to the 10 locations in KOTOR there is an extra DLC planet as well, so I had to change this series title to be out of eleven instead of ten.

(2) I’d nearly completed all my quests on Manaan when my iPhone version of KOTOR started to get a bit buggy and crash a lot. Having heard desktop can be a better KOTOR experience and mods can help smoothen, and even improve, the game I coughed up another $10 USD and got it on Steam for my Mac laptop, which means a little less KOTOR on the go but a much bigger screen now.

(3) I’d only tried Steam one other time, to play LightNite and earn Satoshis but was annoyed when Steam booted it from their platform. Anyway, I was excited to try a potentially smoother version of KOTOR and improve/tweak it with mods—another experience I’d only dabbled in for “Skyrim” on Playstation and GameSharking my Pokemon Blue and Yellow Versions on GameBoy decades ago.

(4) Modding KOTOR on Mac was a bit of a trip for me since I’m basically a noob at desktop mods, but thankfully Reddit and Youtube were very helpful, along with the ReadMe files that came attached to pretty much every single mod. So after installing Unarchiver and a 15-day free trial of CrossOver, I was able to surf Nexus Mods and Deadly Stream for the most-endorsed mods: bug-fixes, audio/visual/menu improvements, repolished cut-content, and some wilder ones.

(5) There’re hundreds, if not thousands, of mods out for “STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic.” In fact, I think there’s just under ten-thousand mods on Deadly Stream alone … so there’s a lot to choose from. As I said earlier, I wanted bug-fixes, overall smoothening-over of the game, some aesthetic upgrades, maybe cut-content out of curisioty, and honestly something to help speed up my next playthrough since I’d be restarting after pouring 20 hours into the game on iPhone.

Here’s the list:

KOTOR 1 Restoration 1.2: This one and the one that follows are suposedly notoriously incompatible, but I tried the Restoration mod first and kept the Bug-Fix Collection on my desktop as a back up but hopefully I don’t need it.

The Comprehensive KOTOR Bug Fix Collection: Read above.

Remastered Cutscenes: I’m fine with the dated graphics but this one and a Character Skin Overhaul sounded tempting so I went with it.

Jedi From the Start: This one definitely makes the first planet if Taris a lot more fun. A few online comments I found said to switch the game to Hard mode for competitiveness, or to even get the Impossible Difficulty mod but I’ve never even played on Hard yet so I’ll wait to try that out. The only major bummer about this mod is that Trask is slightly cut out—you find his body later due to waking up alone thanks to this mod. Not groundbreaking but I yelled, “For the Republic!” in his stead out if respect. RIP Trask.

Brotherhood of Shadow: I think this is cut-content that was repolished. Never even heard of it since I’m used to vanilla KOTOR but more quests sounds great and this one had a ton of endorsements.

KOTOR Weapon Model Overhaul: Simply makes a lot of weapons look sharper, less fuzzy and basic.

Ultrawide Screen: Soon as I get this one to work, I’ll let y’all know. Apologies, this is my first time modding like this.

EZ Swoop Racing: I guess there’s purists who compare swoop-racing times which is cool but I hate swoop-racing because it’s not pod-racing and the control aren’t fun for me.

JC's Korriban - Back in Black for K1 2.3: Makes Sith Academy less corpo-dorky and more like Dark Jedi in training.

Lightsaber Choices 2.0: Can’t get this to work. If I downloaded the right one I can use a black lightsaber but my Mac keeps telling me no on this one.

Remove Force Armor Restriction: Never had a problem with the restriction but if there’s the possibility to play an armored-mage build, why not?

Tattooine Job Office 2.4: Extra missions, highly rated, plus my Mac installs it in less than fifteen minutes? Hell yeah.

Sith Stalker Armor: Currently going for a Light Side playthrough but if I change my mind later, I’d like to don this creepy cyborg get-up from Force Unleashes just for kicks.

Revan Items: I think we already get these but this one’s retouched … I think.

Revan’s Flowing Cape & Belt Fix 1.1: I don’t remember clothes moving so I did this one. Luckily I kept a list of all the mods’ weird file names in case I need to remove them from the Override folder.

Hi-Res Beam Effects: Makes Force Lightning sharper and more electrical-looking.

Four New Force Powers: One of these is just droid-flamethrower copy-pasted for organica under a different name. There’s also a debuffing dark-side anger one, and what basically sounds like a revive spell and I always stock up Phoenix Downs.

Lightsaber & Force Forms 1.6: Supposedly I should’t have tried this on Mac but I’m not far enough in my new game to see any problems. The main character is a Jedi so as a nerd I had to check this one out—hopefully this is truly the 2019 version with Mace Windu’s Vaapad. Fingerscrossed.

Realistic Visual Effects: Adds extra details, footprints, burn marks supposedly. It was a tiny mod so I was like, sure why not and my Mac installed it in a minute.

Ultimate Sound Mod: Lightsabers sound good but extra loud now, along with a lot of clearer sounds.

Dantooine Training Sabers: Is it canon for them to use Vibro Blades?

High Quality Blasters 1.1: This gives the guns some extra love, spit shine, and extra-effort overhaul.

Davik’s Upgradable Armor Mod: Didn’t see any problem here.

Remove Force Alignment Restriction: I want to wear bad guy stuff but be good, and vice versa.

Leviathan Differentiated Dialogue: Very highly rated and small so I was fine with it.

Loadscreens in Color 1.0: Why werw they in black and white to begin with?

Transdoshans Rescaled for K1 1.0: This just sounded funny so I thought—hell yeah.

Bastila's Dark Suit: Makes Bastila look more badass and less like Jabba’s bikini girl.

Genoharadan - Light Side: The difference between the Jedi and the Sith is that the Sith attack out of nowhere, while the Jedi force you to attack—or at least that’s what I want to do here with my Light Side options.

Animated Energy Fields: If it’s bettee than how the Stealth Field Generator looks, that would be nice but it’s not a deal breaker.

HD Darth Malak: He’s the main big bad, so he deserves all the love he can get when it comes to retouching.

Spectral Ajunta Pall Canonical Appearance 1.0.2: The fact there aren’t more moda for the supposed founder of the Dark Jedi that became the Sith was surprising. There’s a mod about his sword that I couldn’t install though.

Sith Soldier Texture Restoration 2.4: Makes them look slightly better and allows color variation, among other things.

I would’ve added more but the installations took me almost five hours to complete between the Override folder copy-pasting and hitting retry on CrossOver until it did an install with a small enough number of errors to pass.

I absolutely loved being able to choose my Jedi class on Endar Spine, eliminates a lot of the trouble of level-saving on Taris.That’s my new character— peaceful Scout explorer and Jedi Consular, named Varen Thard. This might make Dantooine a little awkward but Varen believes he’s a Jedi Consular—and that’s all that matters.