First-person Shooter

Developer: LucasArts

Publisher: Aspyr

Nintendo Switch

Well regarded by Star Wars and FPS fans alike, Star Wars: Republic Commando leaves a lasting impact even 16 years later. The squad-based shooter gives you control of Delta-38, nicknamed “Boss,” leader of a 4 man squad of equally capable clone commandos. Blasting their way through some of the most vital battles of the Clone Wars, Delta’s adventures offer a unique take on Star Wars while uplifting one of the most frustrating game mechanics to plague the shooter genre.

Despite Republic Commando‘s strong cult following and Delta Squad’s slew of multi-media appearances, the game itself has remained in deep cover. Until now, as Aspyr has released a port of the game for the Nintendo Switch and the Playstation 4. The Switch version is a rocky port but it’s good to have Delta Squad back in some form.

The individual gameplay elements of Republic Commando seems like a recipe for a miserable experience. A limited arsenal, resilient bullet sponge enemies, and drawn-out non-combat actions. However, it’s all excellently used to leverage the games’ excellent squad mechanics.

To this day, Republic Commando is the only shooter I’ve played to actually make squad mechanics fun. A scarce few have made it functional. The vast majority of other attempts ended disastrously.

Republic Commando struck the perfect balance, living up to its tagline “The Squad is your Weapon.” The commandos are competent enough that you don’t feel like a babysitter, while not being so effective that you feel irrelevant. Halo: Combat Evolved’s regenerating shield and health bar shows up but with one crucial difference: you go down when your health runs out but you’re not out until every squad member joins you.

In all but the harrowing circumstances, you can expect them to get you back on your feet.

As leader of Delta squad, you can also give orders. In stark contrast with most squad-centric shooters, your commandos actually listen to your instructions. The standard orders are limited but usually all you need. An individual target can be singled out, prompting Delta to pour their fire onto it. In the larger firefights that can leave them vulnerable, so it has to be used sparingly. But when you let Delta’s combined forces loose on a single target, it’s always satisfying.

Most importantly, Delta can be ordered to interact with the environment. Republic Commando is made up of a winding labyrinth of corridors and cramped chambers. The game occasionally tries to fool you with flashy skyboxes but it rarely works. Luckily the close quarters feel is a big part of the game’s appeal.

Additionally, the level design is very well done both visually and in terms of actual gameplay. Major encounters will have a few areas Delta utilize: vantage points that can be used to set up sniper perches, commandeer turrets, or deploy explosives. It helps distract from the “shooting gallery” feel the game can develop at times, setting up some very satisfying moments.

Beyond steamrolling battalions of droids and their alien allies, Republic Commando also requires you to perform certain actions to progress. It’s usually in the form of setting explosives and hacking terminals, a process that can take anywhere from 10 seconds to an entire minute. Players can choose to do this themselves but usually, they can dispatch a commando to handle it, while you and the others defend them.

It breaks up the flow of the game without being cumbersome, while also contributing to the teamwork focus of Republic Commando.

The game occasionally sends you in alone, reminding you just how much you end up relying on Delta. However it gets frustrating after a certain point, as best shown by the first half of the game’s second setting, an abandoned Republic Cruisers booby-trapped by Trandoshan slavers.

Crawling through vents and service tunnels, with shadows masking your opponents, all while you have no one to turn to for help makes for a very atmospheric level. However, that’s totally undercut by how frustrating that portion gets. Republic Commando lives and dies on its squad mechanics, as without them you’re left with a middling FPS.

While Republic Commando fills a long-desired niche, it certainly has room for improvement. The game feels very rushed, accentuated by there being only three “levels.” Each setting, Geonosis, the ghost ship, and Kashyyyk, has hours of content each but it starts to feel samey. The game came around to 8 hours for me at normal difficulty, with my previous hard playthroughs stretching longer. That’s about average length in this genre, so I’d say it comes down more to how that time to how it’s spent.

At the same time, the game already feels repetitive, even if clever set-pieces keep things interesting. As satisfying as the door breaches and ambushes can get, I suspect the novelty would wear thin. Delta lining up to patch up at the bacta stations littered after every fight is already tiresome as is. Republic Commando leaves you wanting more but maybe that tinge of dissatisfaction is better than if it overstayed its welcome.

The small enemy variety doesn’t hugely help. The standard array of separatist droids are more than faithful to their screen counterparts. The more inventive Trandoshan and Geonosian enemies show a willingness to branch out and bring in some stranger adversaries. But they can start to feel like predictable foes after a certain point and Republic Commandos‘ willingness to recycle them doesn’t help. Geonosians’ inexplicable appearance during the climax on Kashyyyk particularly stands out. Still, it’s a lot more variety than is standard for the genre, even if it falls shorts of the Sci-Fi shooters Republic Commando takes it influences from.

Enemies end up fairly beefy, compensating for just how much firepower you can bring to bear. I’ll go as far to say this is the only piece of Star Wars media to sell the “stop a Jedi in their tracks” energy Super Battle Droids and Droidekas are supposed to have. The mixture of squad mechanics and level design makes that enjoyable and not tiresome. The small roster of weapons also pack enough of a punch. Blasters are hard to give weight but Republic Commando pulls it off as you blow battle droid limbs.

Even if they did have to strain the narrative a little to bring in shotgun and SMG equivalents.

Even the best shooters suffer from difficult spike problems but Republic Commando has some major ones. It especially hurts with how Delta can efficiently carve through their adversaries, only for you to repeatedly reload saves after hitting a brick wall. That it often feels like unreasonable circumstances rather than tactical brilliance (both on the part of the in-game adversaries and the developers) doesn’t help matters.

Whatever issues Republic Commando might have are papered over by the strong atmosphere. In line with depicting the “soldier’s view” of the Star Wars universe, there’s a much more industrial and threatening feel to everything. The actual graphics are pretty clunky, but the strong art direction and appropriate use of lighting has ensured Republic Commando has aged much more gracefully than a lot of its peers.

Over decades worth of spinoff media, Star Wars has drawn from a variety of genres, with media appealing to a variety of age groups. But even so, I can’t think of much like Republic Commando, where your visor regularly off blood stains and Wookie corpses serve as impromptu cover. It’s especially surprising when you consider this game somehow nabbed a T rating.

Like the visuals, there’s some strong contrast in the soundtrack. Republic Commando‘s original tracks, particularly the chanting heavy ones, are a surprisingly good fit for the game without straying too far from feeling like Star Wars. However, the gulf creeps up again once John Williams classic score pops up. Some of the more militaristic tracks fit but there’s a weird disconnect when you’re repeatedly stabbing screeching aliens to the adventurous track “Escape from Naboo.”

That sound design overall is very strong though and does a better job marrying Republic Commando to the larger Star Wars mythos. Film sounds, mainly blaster fire, meshes well with the game’s own additions. More broadly, the sound adds a lot of weight to an already heavy game, selling the intensity of the experience.

Republic Commando doesn’t offer the most in-depth of stories but that’s to be expected of an FPS and especially such an old one. While their characterization isn’t exactly rich, each member of Delta has a distinct personality, with talented performances and amusing dialogue ensuring they’re memorable.

To my surprise, the game has a healthy sense of humor, something that’s severely lacking in shooters and especially those that emphasized the tactical, special operations side of things. Not every joke lands and a few really show the game’s age. But the ones that hit make the experience and it’s nice to see the game isn’t afraid to make Delta the butt of the joke. The sense of humor goes a long way to add more personality to Republic Commando, while also bringing the at times bleak tone closer to something more recognizable as Star Wars.

Much like its squad of hard-bitten clones, Republic Commando is greater than the sum of its parts. It really is unfortunate that we never got a sequel to refine and develop this strong baseline. The game showed the broad range of stories you can tell in the Star Wars galaxy and what a shooter could be. For that, Republic Commando is still worth playing.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this Switch port is the way to experience it.

To start, the multiplayer is missing in action and it looks like no attempt was made to improve the quality of the behind-the-scenes videos. Republic Commando opts for a very immersive hud, with the edges of the T visor blocking off your vision, along with the various text and status indicators. It’s very cluttered, almost suffocating when scaled down to the Switch’s handheld screen. There are some serious performance issues in the more elaborate segments. Beyond a chugging frame rate and dialogue getting cut off, there were quite a few glitches I don’t remember from my PC playthroughs.

This port doesn’t play much better docked. Performance issues persist, even if it makes the crowded user interface more tolerable. As appropriate as it is to have Delta squad on a portable console, this is far from the ideal way to play Republic Commando. Hopefully, Aspyr will fix the issues, which they’ve been looking into.