Star Wars: Republic Commando puts you in the helmet of RC-1138, callsign Boss, and hands you three clone commandos to keep alive. LucasArts built the 2005 tactical first-person shooter on Unreal Engine and shipped it for Xbox and Microsoft Windows. Aspyr’s enhanced port followed in 2021 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with HD graphics and modernized controls. The multiplayer did not make the trip.
Trailer, via PlayStation.
Delta Squad Lands on Geonosis
The campaign opens with a montage covering Delta Squad’s creation and training at the cloning facilities on Kamino, then drops the team onto the front lines of the Battle of Geonosis at the start of the Clone Wars. Boss links up with Scorch, Fixer and Sev and gets a first assignment: assassinate Sun Fac, chief lieutenant of Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser and a member of the Separatist Council.
From there the squad sabotages the droid factory under Sun Fac’s headquarters, takes out an anti-aircraft bunker hammering Republic air forces, and boards a disabled Separatist Trade Federation Lucrehulk-class Core Ship to steal launch codes. They escape moments before the ship blows.
The order system is the reason this game still works. You don’t just shoot. You tell Scorch to breach a door, Fixer to slice a console, Sev to take a sniper perch. The squadmates carry distinct personalities, and the game uses them.
Aboard the Prosecutor
A year into the war, Delta Squad boards the derelict Acclamator-class Republic Assault Ship Prosecutor, their former home. They split up. Command contact drops. Scorch goes silent after reporting electrical interference with his visor. Boss gets ambushed by scavenger droids.
A Trandoshan captures Boss — part of a crew of slavers and mercenaries who have taken the ship. The Trandoshans intend to sell the vessel to the Separatists in exchange for battle droid dispensers. Delta Squad rescues its captured members, retakes the bridge, and destroys a jamming device to restore communication with command.
The mission escalates well past that.
- A Lucrehulk-class Trade Federation Battleship drops out of hyperspace.
- Delta Squad defends the Prosecutor against hordes of battle droids.
- The enemy Battleship opens fire on the Prosecutor.
- The squad fights to the gunnery deck to activate the ship’s turbo lasers.
- The RAS Arrestor arrives, buying time to fire and destroy the Separatist Battleship.
That final stretch is the game at its best: a small team, a losing position, and one job that has to get done.
What Aspyr’s Port Fixed
Aspyr’s port ran into a minor performance problem at launch, later resolved with an update. The bigger loss is structural. Multiplayer is absent entirely, which removes the mode most critics found average anyway.
GameSpot’s Jordan Ramée wrote that the remaster “manages to still deliver a compelling story of four specialized commandos engaging in a variety of combat missions across the Clone Wars.” He also noted the flaws in its gameplay are only more noticeable now, 16 years later — a figure that counted from the 2005 release to his 2021 piece. That’s fair. The shooting is stiff by modern standards. The campaign is short. Enemy AI won’t surprise anyone who has played a shooter since.
What Still Holds Up
Republic Commando received generally favorable reviews at release, with praise for its story and combat and criticism for its length and multiplayer. In the years since, it has become one of the best-regarded Star Wars games ever made and picked up a cult following.
The ranking of what matters here:
- The squad order system, which turns three NPCs into tools you actually think about.
- The characters — Scorch, Fixer and Sev earn their place through the missions, not cutscenes.
- The Clone Wars setting, used for small-unit special ops rather than spectacle.
- The length, which remains the real flaw.
The remaster’s value depends on what you want. If you never played it, the port is the cleanest way in, and the story holds. If you played it on Xbox in 2005, the HD pass and modernized controls are welcome, but the missing multiplayer stings more than the improved textures help.
The Verdict on Delta Squad
What makes Republic Commando worth revisiting is that it treats a Star Wars squad as a squad. Boss is not a hero. He is a leader with three specific soldiers and a set of orders, and the game makes you feel the difference. The Prosecutor mission in particular — splitting the team, losing contact, rebuilding — is the kind of level design that has aged better than the gunplay around it.
Twenty-one years on, the flaws are visible. So is the reason people kept talking about it.
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