If you love Star Wars and you love gaming, there are probably a dozen classics from your childhood that you remember fondly, most of them worth replaying exactly as they are. But if your favorite title needs a little new life breathed into it for the tenth playthrough, mods can save the day.
Fortunately, there are some transformative fan projects that provide the perfect excuse to not only replay the classics, but to do so with a fresh coat of paint.
You’ll find these mods on websites likeModDB,Nexus Mods, andSteam Workshop.
6Star Wars Battlefront II(2017): Skins, Heroes, SFX, and More
The more recentStar Wars Battlefront IIis a great game on its own, providing a genuineStar Warsbattlefield experience that can’t be matched anywhere else. More than many other games,Battlefront IIlooks and sounds likeStar Wars, and even eight years after release, looks and feels good to play. I still go back and play a few matches fairly regularly. But it’s not a perfect game, falling short in many areas.
Most notably, the game ended up missing a lot of aesthetic customization that fans wanted (Galactic Marines, anyone?), as well as famous heroes such as Mace Windu or Ahsoka Tano. Naturally, since the game stopped getting updates years ago, it’s missing any sort of content from newerStar Warsinstallments as well. All of this and more can be fixed with mods. There are plenty of options both onSteam Workshop and Nexus Mods.
Most of these mods do not add brand-new content to the game, but rather, add new skins or reskin an existing hero, such as replacing Obi-Wan with Ezra Bridger or Captain Phasma with Qi’ra. That said, there are some mods that add reinforcements, weapons or completely change sound effects, in-game lighting, loading screens, and much more. I personally love replacing the Resistance faction with rebellious clone troopers.
At any rate,Battlefront IImay not change much mechanically with mods, but it can definitely take on a whole new aesthetic with the huge array of mods it has available.
5Star Wars Empire at War: New Factions, Units, Mechanics and Battlefields
Empire at Waris one of my favoriteStar Warsgames, primarily because it’s still one of the best titles for commanding large-scale space battles even almost 20 years after its release. The thing is, the Original Trilogy isn’t my favorite era ofStar Wars, so it felt kind of limiting at times. Thankfully, there are some incredible mods out there that completely change the experienceEAWoffersif you’re able to install them.
Some of my personal favorite mods, likeRepublic at WarandRevan’s Revenge, change the era and factionsEAWoffers, allowing you to play in the prequel era and even the Old Republic era. This includes not only appropriate ground and space units, but also faction-specific mechanics, massively expanded galactic maps, and brand-new 4X strategy mechanics that make the game much deeper than it ever was before.
There are even plenty of full conversion mods that turn EAW into a game for a different IP, likeBattlestar Galactica,Stargate,Halo, andMass Effect. Needless to say, if you lovedEAWin the past, it’s more than worth a modded replay even in this day and age—there’s just no otherStar Warsgame that offers the same level of complex strategy and RTS combat, and it can even stand-in for other IPs that never made such a game themselves.
4Knights of the Old Republic II: Items, Quest Lines, and Cut Content
Anyone who is a real fan ofKOTOR IIprobably already knows about theRestored Content Mod. It’s been considered a must-have for years, as it restores all sorts of content that got cut from the final release of the vanilla game, including quest lines, dialogue, and entire segments of the game (though admittedly, that factory mission with HK-47 might be better off gone).
If you ever felt like this beloved game was missing just a little something, like the vision wasn’t completed the way the developers wanted, then getting theRestored Content Modwill help. That said, there are plenty of other mods available to give the game a fresh spin or make it worth replaying, especially if one of the big reasons you never replayKOTOR IIis because you don’t want to go through Peragus and Telos again.
You can get mods that skip these introductory sections of the game and allow you to jump right into the meat of it all. I wouldn’t recommend it on your first playthrough and maybe not even a second, but diehard fans that already know all the twists and tension building in those slow, creeping sections of the game may have more fun if they can just skip it. I know I’ve put off a fewKOTOR IIruns because of the lengthy intro.
3Star Wars X-Wing Alliance: Total Conversion and Massive Graphics Improvements
TheX-Wingseries ofStar Warsgames from the 90s were some of the first titles to let fans feel as though they really were piloting an awesome starfighter in daring missions and hectic battles. The first two titles,X-WingandTIE Fighter, gave different perspectives on the galactic conflict and sported unique ships matching the factions that you played as.X-Wing Alliancewas the last entry, with the best graphics and mechanics.
That said, us Imperial enjoyers felt cheated. How come the Rebellion got to have the most advanced entry in the series? It just wasn’t fair. There could have at least been aTIE Fightersister entry, right? Well, with theTIE Fighter Total Conversionmod, we don’t have to feel cheated. It ports over the entire 1994TIE Fightergame to the more advanced engine ofX-Wing Alliance, adds several new campaigns, and ultimately gives players a total of 148 unique missions to play.
Oh, and since the mod is based on theX-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project, the graphics look nothing like it did in 1999—with mods, these admittedly ancientStar Warsgames are easily on par with the modern era, completely revamping the experience of playing them. To top it all off, there are plenty of other full conversion mods out there, so this classic game can be altered for a dozen more replays, easily. Not bad for something over twenty years old.
2Star Wars Battlefront II(2005): Maps, Classes, Game Modes, Ships, and More
Don’t get me wrong, the 2017 version ofBattlefront IIis very good. But it stood on the shoulders of giants, namely, the original twoStar Wars Battlefrontgames from the 2000s. Even two decades later, the 2005Battlefront IIis considered one of the bestStar Warsgames of all time, and you may bet that a lot of fans were disappointed when a third installment never saw the light of day (though we did get some great PSP spin-offs).
In the past 20 years, this game has been subjected to hundreds of mods changing just about everything you may imagine. Modders have added dozens of new maps to play on, hundreds of reskins, brand-new classes, and even entire game modes that didn’t exist in the original game, such as the ground-to-space combined battles that wereElite Squadron. Some mods completely overhaul galactic conquest, while others add in other eras of the universe, such as the Old Republic era. You canremaster the whole thing with modsalone.
Heck, one guy madea modthat recreates the first two levels ofMetal Gear Solidin theBattlefront IIengine, though I’m not sure what his grand vision is. At any rate, by merit of being old, popular, and pretty easy to mod, the 2005Star Wars Battlefront IIis a game that can have thousands of hours of replayability added to its already great vanilla self, being well worth replaying even if you’ve sunk a thousand hours into it already.
Plus, if you’re a Halo fan who ever wished that there was aBattlefrontstyle game for the Halo universe, there’sa mod for thattoo.
1Star Wars Jedi Academy: New Stories, Total Conversions, Graphic Overhauls, and More
Jedi Academyis a great game all on its own. To this day, it still has one of the most robust lightsaber combat systems in aStar Warsvideo game. Despite being a completely excellent title with a narrative that demands at least two replays, there definitely comes a time when you’ve seen it all the game loses a bit of its luster. Thankfully, a lot like the originalBattlefront II, the game is beloved and easy to work with, so there are tons of mods for it.
Most notably, there are a ton of narrative mods for this game, adding completely original stories with their own characters and levels to play with. A lot of them even have voice-acting. Some of these mods don’t add new stories per se, but create levels that allow you to play through iconic moments in Star Wars, such as duels from the movies or events from the Clone Wars animated TV series.
There are also conversion mods that change the game to an entirely different IP, as well as plenty of mods that focus on just bringing this old gem up to a more modern graphical standard, whether it’s complete HD overhauls or AI upscaling mods. Personally, I think the breadth of single-player content mods makesJedi Academyworth several replays on their own, as they are each like an extra entry into theJedi Knightseries.
That said, don’t just limit yourself toJedi Academy. There are plenty of mods to look into for the other entries in theJedi Knightseries as well, including the games that started it all,Dark Forces.
At the end of the day, almost all of the classic Star Wars games have some great mods for them, but the ones we’ve talked about today are examples of titles that can experience the biggest transformations with mods. If you don’t have a PC and modding isn’t an option for you, don’t worry—there are plenty ofamazing Star Wars classicsthat are well worth your time if you haven’t played them before.
