All excellent choices from the ones I know. I particularly love galactic battlegrounds (also you’re the first person I’ve met that’s ever heard of it!) And Episode 1: racer.
You seem to have good taste, so I’ll check out Rogue Squadron and Phantom Menace!
And obviously these are just my opinions, I can’t fault anyone else for what they prefer.
My personal overall fav is Kotor 2. It’s so good.
Heh yeah Galactic Battlegrounds is so unfairly underrated IMO. People who knew of it brushed it off saying it’s just a reskinned AoE - but there’s so much more to it. I fell in love with it all over again last year, after I discovered a couple of excellent mods: the first being Expanding Fronts, which brings new civilizations, units, maps, music and QoL improvements. The other being cnc-ddraw - which fixes graphics/compatibility/resolutions and does some excellent upscaling. The game is so much fun with this, been playing local multiplayer with my friends using ZeroTier and we have massive battles against bots, its amazing.
Oh my god, you are a legend. Thank you so much for letting me know about these mods. I didn’t even think to check for them.
Going to have an insane amount of fun with it again!
And yeah. So many people that I recommended it to thought it was just AoE 2 again. But as you say, it actually has a ton more complexity. And the map editor and storylines were pretty awesome too.