Star Wars was never better than when the Old Republic was canon

polygon.com:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Star Wars? It’s pretty cool. That’s true for a lot of people, because whether or not you’re into the franchise’s current direction, it’s been around for so goddamn long that there is almost certainly an era, a comic, and/or a series of books or video games that speaks to your individual taste in genre fiction. It is simply hard to object to laser swords, space wizards, and starfighters on principle. It’s when you get specific that arguments can happen. Today, my specific argument (and I reserve the right to have a different one tomorrow) is that Star Wars’ Old Republic era kicks ass, and I’m a little bummed it’s mostly been abandoned.

Spurred by Ahsoka’s revisitation of old Star Wars Legends-timeline stories I’m fond of, I’ve been tooling around with a bunch of stories set in the Old Republic, a no-longer-canon Star Wars era ranging anywhere during the roughly 30,000 years prior to The Phantom Menace. What’s interesting about this Star Wars setting isn’t just the absolutely massive span of time — which naturally allows for stories wildly different from the films — but that ideas on what an Old Republic story could be varied a lot before an aesthetic became codified in BioWare’s classic RPG Knights of the Old Republic.

Prior to KOTOR, comics like Jedi vs. Sith depicted a version of Star Wars that was full-on fantasy, where Jedi Knights were literally knights in elaborate armor, only with lightsabers, and ships looked like giant galleons that could fly. Compare that to the current Star Wars story, with its strict brand guidelines, and I feel like I’m talking about a mythical city like El Dorado, a place where kooky writers and artists could just think of anything and call it Star