Here are the best Star Wars games you can play on PC.

When considering the best Star Wars games for this list, it’s clear that the saga has had its ups and downs on PC. During the ’90s and early ’00s, LucasArts had a lot of hits, particularly with games that were targeted at using a mouse and keyboard or a joystick—these were the days when Star Wars games would launch just on PC, instead of every single console, too. And honestly, based on recent experience, it was a better time for fans of games based on Lucas’s iconic films. It’s hard to envision EA making a new X-Wing with just PC players in mind, for example. Then again, Jedi Fallen Order is perhaps the most promising Star Wars game in years, as a singleplayer-only Jedi action game.

While a previous version of this list was in a numbered order, here we’ve revised that so we can fit in more of our favourites. Among this bunch you’ll find brilliant dogfighting games, first-person shooters, Jedi duelling and even an RTS. If you’re looking for some not-so-good Lucasarts tie-ins, which are still loveable in their own right, check out our list of the worst Star Wars games.

Republic Commando

This light tactical FPS is one of the most enjoyable games to come out of the Clone Wars/Revenge of the Sith era, which is mostly remembered for disposable PS2 nonsense like Racer Revenge and Bounty Hunter. While Republic Commando looks a bit rough these days, it’s refreshing to see that era of Star Wars executed with the right adult (but not too serious) tone. If the prequels were more like this, you might even have enjoyed them.

After an extremely effective opening sequence where you watch the creation of your clone captain in first person, you’re put in control of a squad of clone specialists. You can order them around with simple presses of the F button, prodding them towards highlighted parts of the environment to blow things up, converge on a single enemy, or take control of an area. With decent dialogue and voice acting, too, it’s still easy to recommend now.

The neatest touch, which I’ve heard everyone bring up when discussing this game, is the comical windscreen wipe effect on your helmet that kicks in whenever its gets dirty or damaged.

Empire At War

It wasn’t the most radical, in-depth or interesting RTS around back in 2006, but it’s nonetheless as close as an official Star Wars game has got to capturing the magic of the saga’s space and ground battles (better than Force Commander did, anyway). Petroglyph’s Empire At War even has multiplayer again these days, after the developer switched it back on in September.

If one sci-fi multimedia series isn’t enough for you, check out Andy’s recent feature where he pitted the ships of Star Wars against those of Star Trek in a brilliantly detailed mod, then try it out yourself.

Rogue Squadron

When Rogue Squadron landed on GOG, I played through over half of it in one night. It’s still a brilliant shooter, featuring every Rebel spaceship with their own differences in sound design and feel (except the poor old B-Wing).

In the late ’90s I was obsessed with Star Wars games—I think I still have a PC Gamer demo disc containing only Star Wars game demos that I played again and again for about two years—and Rogue Squadron is weirdly one of those titles considered an N64 game before a PC game, even though it came to PC first in North America. I only ever played it on PC, and for someone watching the Star Wars Special Edition VHSs every day in 1999, Rogue Squadron blew me away. That’s partly because of the level of fan service employed in setting some levels in familiar locations (or some you heard in passing, like Kessel) or having the Millennium Falcon turn up halfway through a mission, but also because it’s so simple an arcade shooter that it’s aged pretty well.

Knights of the Old Republic

Knights of the Old Republic’s success comes down to a single smart creative decision. By setting their story thousands of years before the events of the films, BioWare neatly removed themselves from the complex and contradictory state of the expanded universe in the early noughties. Given the freedom to do more or less what they wanted, they were able to build a Star Wars RPG that made that galaxy far, far away feel fresh again.

This was an era when Star Wars fiction was frequently tripped up by its addiction to iconic characters and set-pieces. The original Knights of the Old Republic demonstrates that repetition can actually be a good thing if it’s sufficiently well executed. The plot is, after all, built from familiar parts—easy-going smugglers and their lifebound wookiee companions, deadly battlestations, young Jedi learning about the Force.