With recent news that a 3-D conversion of “The Phantom Menace” will be released next year—and really, is anyone surprised that George Lucas has latched on to yet another way to sell more copies of the same movies––I thought maybe we could focus on one of the few good things that sprang from the “Star Wars” universe: “Knights of the Old Republic.”

Known better as “KotOR” to fans, the role-playing game is an Xbox classic. After half a decade of working on the Dungeons & Dragons properties “Baldur’s Gate” and “Neverwinter Nights” series, developer BioWare was no stranger to playing with other people’s worlds.

Set 4,000 years before the awful prequels, “KotOR” thrusts the player into a devastating war between a republic on the decline and the upstart Sith, led by two fallen Jedi—Darth Revan and his apprentice Malak. The enigmatic Star Forge lies in the middle of it all: It is the engine of Sith power, the reason for Revan and Malak’s fall and possibly the key to winning the war.

“KotOR” was heavily influenced by BioWare’s D&D history; its systems could have been copied word-for-word out of a tabletop RPG rulebook. Feats, difficulty classes, saving throws—for anyone who’s ever rolled a 20-sided die, these are familiar terms.

But if you didn’t even know dice could have that many sides, the game’s combat may take a while to digest. Like most modern RPGs, hidden dice rolls determine whether an attack lands and how much damage it does. The difference with “KotOR” is that all the numbers that influence those rolls are on display for any player to see.

Transparent systems are often a good thing, but it makes for an awful lot of reading in stressful situations. That said, you’re usually safe ignoring a lot of the text, and you only have to finesse the combat in the tougher battles, which allows the story to take center stage. You navigate conversations in typical RPG style—scroll through a list of options and pick one for your character to say. The other guy responds, and you get a new list. But your choices matter. Even if the result is the same, the way you say something could draw you closer to the dark side or lift you toward the light. This incarnation of a morality system is not the most nuanced, however. Dark side choices are often more cartoon-villain-evil than anything.

Virtue is supposed to be difficult, but in “KotOR,” it’s the other way around. Threatening random bystanders for a few credits, conning your allies and killing at the drop of a hat.…I’m playing a dark-side character, and it’s not easy to make those choices.

Too bad, because “KotOR” rewards you for being as extreme as possible. The darker you are, the easier it is to use dark-side Force powers, and vice versa. If you want to play a more neutral character, dark and light powers will be equally costly. This means that, a lot of the time, my conversations boil down to scrolling to the most evil response and picking it every time. This is a problem that persists in games to this day.

Still, “KotOR” holds up. I’m not even a Star Wars fan, but I’ve played the game more times than I can count on one hand. Combat is tactical and dynamic. The story is actually pretty good, and the plot twist is one of the best in games. And I haven’t even talked about the excellent HK-47, your assassin droid companion who just wants to kill all “meatbags.” If you haven’t played “KotOR,” put on your last-console-generation goggles—y’know, back when characters casting a shadow was impressive—and check it out. You can find it for cheaper than a ticket to “The Phantom Menace 3-D.”