Time for another slightly older game. I had wanted to play this before, but my old PC was just not wanting to play it even though it was more than strong enough. I think I had a weird bottleneck going that just made the game unhappy, maybe the CPU, maybe the RAM, definitely not the GPU. But when I originally bought this, I’d get roughly 3 seconds of gameplay, then the game would legitimately freeze for 10 to 30 seconds, then would give me another 3 seconds where I could move… calling it unplayable would be putting it lightly.

But with my recent PC with a pretty beef GPU and a pretty beef CPU and RAM that has lights on it, I can run this game on ultra at a very high framerate and no weird freezing. So finally I can play it!

I’m late to the party, but let’s check out a Star Wars game!

Developer: Respawn
Publisher: EA
Release date: November 15th 2019
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbone (PC version reviewed)
Genre: Action with minor RPG elements

This game’s story takes place a bit of time after Order 66, the climactic ending of Episode 3 where Palpatine orders the clone army to kill all the Jedi. You play as Cal Kestis, a padawan on the run who barely survived the attack. He’s been hiding out on Bracca, working as a scrapper (learning some engineering on the side to help for the scrapping job). One day Inquisitors come by (they’re basically Sith trained to hunt Jedi) to investigate and Cal ends up revealing himself and running away, when he’s kinda-randomly found by Cere and Greez. Cere is an ex-Jedi who cut herself off from the force, and she has information about a secret held by her old Jedi Master (Cordova), but only a Jedi can help, so finding a survivor like Cal was her first step. Cordova hid a Holocron in a planet Bocano’s Vault, a special place made by an ancient alien race that has a very specific way of opening it. So Cal must travel across various planets to find clues by Cordova, as well as re-learn his Jedi abilities (because the only one he still has at the start is the weird ability to slow down time for a target). There’s not much else to really talk about plot-wise without getting a few spoilers in.

There’s some elements of the story I do enjoy. It does occasionally has the classic Star Wars feel. You know, travelling through space, exploring different worlds, killing things with lightsabers, funny robot companions, you know the stuff. I like BD-1, he’s a pretty cool and versatile robot companion that makes a lot of sense unlike the ball one. I like Greez a lot. I like that the Force actually does what the Force is supposed to do (you now what I mean if you’ve seen the sequel films). Simple mental things (this pushes it a bit far but nothing that would be all that OP), push things, pull things. The slow-motion thing is a bit weird, but I could justify it as restraint, which you could do with pushing and pulling. All good. There’s a few questionable parts in the plot, or weirdly-resolved parts (like, there’s this Wookie you’re looking for but fail to find in your first visit of Kashyyyk… but then he’s found by an NPC off-screen later, and when you meet him he’s… basically useless… thank you game for making me search for a useless character and then having SOMEONE ELSE find him), or completely unresolved parts (though you know that whatever Cal and Cere end up doing is ultimately doomed). There’s some parts that happen and just aren’t addressed by the end, like anything in Kashyyyk, the colosseum place and various other things. There’s still at LEAST 7 Inquisitors that aren’t in the movies and thus should be dying at some point, for example.

There’s a specific part at the end of the game that made me very happy… To talk about it without spoilers… I can’t (and I won’t, even if this game is a bit older)… So instead I’ll try to explain it in a different way. So the Star Wars sequels, they’re awful, for many reasons (ridiculously bad writing being chief amongst them, as basically not a single scene in the series works mechanically, based on knowledge from the previous movies, pure logic or very basic physics). But the main one for me is the entire disregard and disrespect of everything that came before it in the franchise. Basically every old character and event is basically ruined for no reason that’s ever justified. Some characters’ whole arcs are rendered moot entirely. Even its own new characters are ruined by the end (if they haven’t ruined themselves before that). But what it does to a specific character’s legacy is so stupid, so bad, that the whole point of Star Wars is entirely gone by the time you start RotS. This game does the opposite. It might not be a perfect story, it has issues. But at least it doesn’t actively hate Star Wars, like the sequels do. It has some amount of respect for the franchise and its characters. And after how bad the sequel trilogy was, I’m happy to see something that’s reminiscent of real Star Wars. So anyways, that’s enough about story.

So this is an action game with minor RPG elements. It bears some resemblances to Dark Souls though they’re some of the more minor functionality aspects. You play as Cal, so you are a Jedi padawan with some decent use of the Force. For stupid reasons he doesn’t remember how to use most of the Force beyond the insane power to slow things down, basically his connection to the force starts up weak, but sometimes he’ll get flashbacks to training and then suddenly he’ll be able to Force push or Force pull or do front flips, which will let you explore more of the game and get to places you couldn’t before. A bit more on that later.

So your basic controls are pretty simple. Lightsaber attack, Force-powered lightsaber attack, dodge (twice to roll), defend and jump. You can lock-on to enemies, though you kinda rarely do that because it’s largely useless against weak enemies. You can heal if BD-1 has some stim packs, but also there’s a problem here that sometimes BD-1 just won’t respond. Strange. You have pretty basic attacks generally, you can learn more from the skill tree. If you defend with good timing you parry enemies, bringing down their… parry meter? When that’s empty you can hit the HP (with weak enemies it’s generally a one-hit kill). For shooting enemies, missiles can be Force pushed, lasers can be blocked if you hold defend or reflected if you press defend with the right timing (though charged lasers I think need really strict timing, it’s better to just dodge those, I only reflected one). It’s not super complicated combat generally, it’s all about defending well, dodging when needed and attacking when you have an opening. Red attacks can’t be blocked or parried so you have to be careful with those. Simple but pretty satisfying. Also it’s not very hard since you can heal pretty easily, but some enemies can kill you pretty easily, so sometimes you’ll die (sending you back to your last meditation point).

Killing enemies gives you EXP, get enough EXP to get a skill point. Skill points are spend in the skill tree. Skills can cost up to 3 skill points. Skills can be some simple like more maximum health or maximum Force, or it can be improved attacks like longer range for a lightsaber throw, or new combos entirely like a delayed long-range stab, or improved Force powers. The skill tree is very straightforward, so you’re likely ending up with most skills unlocked by the end. No customization here.

Game progression is where the Dark Souls and Metroidvania influences lie. Basically you go through an area, usually pretty linearly. As you progress you tend to unlock doors or platforms or drop down ropes and such that you can use on revisits of the planet as shortcuts to different areas. Your access to areas is predicated on what Force powers you have. There may be a bridge right in front of you that you could use if you could Force pull, but obviously you can’t if you can’t Force pull. Some semi-destroyed walls can be broken with Force push. Some platforms are a bit too high for a normal jump, but by using the Force to push yourself up with a front flip gives you more height. And so on, there’s a lot of environmental uses for these powers, like untangling vines or pulling vines towards you, and such. I guess the other Dark Souls-style element is that when you get to a meditate spot, it heals you (and recovers your stim packs) but it also respawns every non-boss enemy.

The Force is also a big asset in combat. Like, you could fight those enemies that are standing in front of a cliff. Or you could Force push them off the cliff. In fact combat encounters with weak enemies become trivial when you can Force pull them and stab them in the heart, even the semi-strong ones. A few enemies are immune to that or use it as a way to counter-attack, of course, but a well timed push or pull can open up enemies for counter attack. It’s pretty fun. Force push, especially when you power it up, becomes a massive crowd control tool as you can knock a ton of people down and slowly pick them off, repeatedly. In boss battles you can use it to get free hits on enemies, and also knock down their parry bar a bit (which gives you a few hits). Jumping is something you’ll basically never do in battle unlock an enemy attack calls for it, but it’s an option, and jumping on an unsuspecting enemy can lead to a stealth kill from above.

One big problem with this game is its resemblance to Uncharted. Uncharted is garbage, for many reasons. And outside of not having a cover system and actually having combat that’s pretty fun and not auto-win, Jedi Fallen Order does take a lot of the things that makes Uncharted bad and basically copies them outright. The “platforming” is largely the same, and it’s awful. You just grab on to ledges and vines and such and go in the direction the game wants you to. The wall jump (which wasn’t in Uncharted but would’ve been implemented the same) is very specific as you can only do it on very specific walls and have to just not forget to press jump before the end of the wall-running animation, that way you don’t die. The vine-swinging is also ultimately pointless. You grab the vine, swing to the spot it wants you to swing. All this platforming, it’s not gameplay. Sure you press buttons, and things happen, but there’s no decision making, no challenge, just you pressing the buttons the game wants you to in what are otherwise cinematic moments. Take out these boring stupid platforming segments from the sequel, only have the platforming if it’s integrated decently into a puzzle, otherwise it’s not fucking gameplay. The other bad parts this game has a lot of, which you probably saw in many games before like FF15 and I’m sure Uncharted has these. You have all these narrow passages to go through. Basically, you hold forward on your control stick for 20 to 50 seconds, just waiting for Cal to go through a tight space. Why is this a thing? It’s literally just wasting your time for no reason at all. It’s the easiest type of “gameplay” element to criticize because it’s in the game for no reason, it’s literally not gameplay and it’s an active detriment to the game. Remove them and you make the game less tedious, instead getting back to real gameplay faster. There’s a TON of these moments too, I have no idea why.

If I had any other issues to bring up, it’s pretty much just aesthetic… You’re hitting enemies with a lightsaber. You know, this thing that cuts through metal. In the game it also cuts through animals, monsters and robots, you can split those fuckers in half or dismember the shit out of them. But it won’t cut through a human/humanoid alien. Why? There’s one alien that gets a hand cut off, and it’s during a cutscene so you had nothing to do with it. It’s weird. I mean, even the movies have some dismemberment going, from Maul to Jango to literal main characters Luke and Anakin. Why do Star Wars games refuse to do this in gameplay? You’re literally slashing stormtroopers in half, let me see it.

Speaking of aesthetic, the other issue I can bring up is collectibles. There’s a bunch of them, there’s chests all over the place that give you stuff. This stuff is varied, but there’s one common element that makes it shit. Other than yellow chests, which give you stim pack upgrades, everything else you find DOES NOTHING. It’s cosmetic stuff. So you get a ton of lightsaber parts to customize your lightsaber. This does nothing, it just changes how it looks. You get colors for your poncho and your clothes. You get colors for the Mantis (your ship) and you get colors for BD-1. ALL the stuff you spend time finding, is 100% cosmetic. It sucks. I’d love for lightsaber customization to have gameplay effects, somehow, for example. Feels completely useless to get all these chests. There’s also a few occasional max health and max Force power-ups, you need 3 of each for the benefit. This is definitely a part that needs some extra depth to be worthwhile.

Overall

I did enjoy this game, but there’s a lot of little things it would need to fix in a potential sequel. So let’s talk about things the sequel could fix. Some of these are REALLY easy. Remove the Uncharted platforming segments, remove the “moving slowly through narrow passages” segments, make the tons of collectibles actually useful rather than just cosmetic (like a stat system of sorts so all these lightsaber parts do something other than look a little bit different)… And this isn’t a flaw, but I’d like to see a deeper skill tree in a sequel. The one here was fine, but a sequel could go a bit deeper pretty easily. Or maybe have several skill trees by giving you many different playable characters. By the end of this game there’s at least 2 extra characters that could have interesting gameplay elements that would make them play very different from Cal’s gameplay. And having larger worlds, and more of them, would be great (and with larger worlds you would need a fast travel method at some point, because even with shortcuts it sometimes feel like you’re wasting your time).

I think that’s a good way to critique the game, point out what doesn’t work and what could be improved in the context of a sequel. This game itself has pretty fun combat, an okay story that pretty much respects the legacy of Star Wars, and a decent challenge (pretty easy game that can kill you from time to time). I put it squarely in the “pretty good” category, which is not something I’d usually say about a game published by EA.

Overall I do recommend this one, and it’s pretty easy to find at low prices nowadays.