Fifty-six Star Wars games shipped between 2000 and 2009. We have not played all fifty-six, and neither has anyone else writing a list like this.
So we did not rank these from memory. We used three things anyone can check: what critics said at the time, what the games sold, and the question almost nobody bothers to answer, which is whether people still play them. That last one we count ourselves, a few times a day, straight off Steam.
Those three things do not agree with each other. That turned out to be the fun part.
The data
Scores are what critics gave each game when it came out. Player numbers are the most people we saw online at once in the week up to August 31, 2026. A dash means the game never made it to Steam, so there is nobody to count.
| Game | Year | Metacritic | Peak players, Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knights of the Old Republic | 2003 | 94 | 394 |
| Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader | 2001 | 90 | - |
| Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast | 2002 | 89 | not tracked |
| KOTOR II: The Sith Lords | 2004 | 86 | 506 |
| Starfighter | 2001 | 84 | - |
| Episode I: Battle for Naboo | 2000 | 84 | - |
| Battlefront II | 2005 | 83 | 239 |
| LEGO Star Wars II | 2006 | 81 | - |
| Jedi Starfighter | 2002 | 81 | - |
| Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy | 2003 | 81 | not tracked |
| Battlefront | 2004 | 80 | - |
| Empire at War | 2006 | 79 | 2,031 |
| Republic Commando | 2005 | 78 | not tracked |
Read that last row again. Empire at War got the worst reviews on this list and has about five times more players today than anything else on it. On a Sunday evening in 2026 it beat Knights of the Old Republic, a 94, by better than five to one.
That gap is the whole reason to do this with numbers. What critics thought in 2006 and what people actually load up in 2026 are two different questions, and a list built only on review scores quietly answers the wrong one.
The ranking
Knights of the Old Republic 2003
BioWare
- Metacritic
- 94
- Playing now
- 394
- Sold
- 2.77M
A 94, about 2.77 million copies sold, and still a few hundred people playing it twenty-three years on. It is the only game of the decade that wins on all three counts, and the only one where the reviews and the staying power tell the same story.
Empire at War 2006
Petroglyph
- Metacritic
- 79
- Playing now
- 2,031
A 79 when it launched, and the most-played Star Wars game of its decade today by a mile. The mods are why. Total conversions have kept it alive long after the original would have aged out, so the reviews judged what shipped in 2006 while what people play now is twenty years of community work sitting on top of it.
KOTOR II: The Sith Lords 2004
Obsidian Entertainment
- Metacritic
- 86
- Playing now
- 506
Scored 86 against its predecessor's 94, largely because it shipped visibly unfinished. It now has more players than the original does. The reason is TSLRCM, the fan restoration that spent years putting back cut content and fixing hundreds of bugs, and it is the clearest case in Star Wars gaming of a community finishing a game the publisher would not let the developer finish.
Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) 2005
Pandemic Studios
- Metacritic
- 83
- Playing now
- 239
An 83 that became the decade's cultural staple. Still on Steam, still played, and still the reference point every new Battlefront gets measured against twenty years on. Nostalgia for this one is unusually well earned.
Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader 2001
Factor 5
- Metacritic
- 90
- Playing now
- GameCube only
The second-highest score of the decade at 90, and the hardest to act on: it was a GameCube exclusive and has never been re-released. If you do not own the hardware, this is a game you can read about and not play. Factor 5's flight model is the best argument the decade has for a remaster that has not come.
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast 2002
Raven Software
- Metacritic
- 89
- Playing now
- not counted yet
An 89, and the lightsaber combat everyone still cites when they complain that modern Star Wars games get sabers wrong. Available and cheap on PC.
Republic Commando 2005
LucasArts
- Metacritic
- 78
- Playing now
- not counted yet
The lowest score in the table at 78, and the one that gets brought up most often as underrated. Squad tactics, a grim register, and clone troopers written as people rather than mooks. A cult classic in the accurate sense: it underperformed on release and grew in reputation.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2008
LucasArts
- Sold
- ~7M
The commercial champion of the decade. It moved about seven million copies by 2010 and was the fastest-selling Star Wars game in history at the time, and it did not crack the top twenty by review score. It sits here as the clearest illustration of the gap between selling and being good.
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy 2003
Raven Software
- Metacritic
- 81
- Playing now
- not counted yet
An 81, more customization than Outcast, a thinner story. The multiplayer community outlived the servers it was supposed to die with.
Star Wars: Battlefront 2004
Pandemic Studios
- Metacritic
- 80
An 80, and the foundation the sequel improved on a year later. Historically important, comprehensively superseded.
What the numbers do not capture
Star Wars Galaxies (2003) is absent, and that is a judgment call. The servers shut down in 2011, so there is no live figure to compare and a review score from launch describes a game that changed beyond recognition afterward. Ranking it against games you can buy today would be comparing different kinds of thing.
We are missing a few. Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy and Republic Commando are all on Steam and we are not counting them yet. That is on us rather than any comment on the games, and we are sorting it.
Sales numbers from this era are patchy. Publishers stopped announcing them for most mid-sized games, so we only quote a figure where somebody actually published one.
What to install tonight
If you want the best game: Knights of the Old Republic. When you reach the sequel, install The Sith Lords Restored Content Modification before you start. It is free, it is on Steam Workshop as well, and it puts back the content Obsidian ran out of time to finish.
If you want the one with a living community: Empire at War, with mods. The player numbers say you will not be alone in there.
If you want the decade's comfort food: Battlefront II.
If you want the one you probably missed: Republic Commando.
The details
- Review scores are from each game's release, checked against Metacritic's own top-20 Star Wars list.
- Player numbers are ours: the most people online at once in the week to August 31, 2026, counted the same way as in our player-count coverage. Steam only, so console players are not in here, and anything older than Steam has no number at all.
- KOTOR sales via VGChartz. The Force Unleashed sales as reported in 2010.
- This is the first entry in an era series. The 90s, the prequel era, the Disney era and the full mega-list follow.