Review:
*Originally written November 19th, 2019*
There's no denying that EA has had a bad run with the Star Wars franchise since it became owned by Disney. Their 2 Battlefront efforts were slammed and hated (2 in particular, but, that has been fixed by this point and is actually quite playable!), but in all honesty, what people have wanted from a Star Wars game for quite some time now is a story focused action RPG that lets you be a Jedi and fills in the gaps between films. This is exactly what Jedi: Fallen Order delivers. It's far from perfect and feels a little unfinished, but my god, this is still the best Star Wars game we've had in quite some time.
Taking place between episodes 3 and 4, it follows Kal Cestis, a young Padawan who has been in hiding for 5 years since the events of Order 66, but gets put into an adventure involving a list of all the force sensitive children in the universe and must find the list before the Empire do. Along the way you meet a droid BD-1 who is your companion for the whole ride and a rag tag crew in the form of an ex Jedi Cere and her shipmate Greez.
Story wise, I was very impressed, Kal is a very likeable and easy to like character with a very strong motion capture and voice performance from Cameron Monaghan. We follow Kal as he slowly relearns his force powers and gets stronger throughout the game. His journey is personal, involving him having to overcome his guilt and trauma over Order 66 and goes to many places new and familiar within the Star Wars universe, I won't spoil some of the franchise cameos, but there's a few and they fit in quite nicely. But with the 20 or so hours I spent on Kal's adventure I really did grow to like him and honestly would not mind seeing him pop up in other Star Wars material down the line. Which is the only reason I assume they didn't give you the option to make your own character, as they want to use him in future films/Disney+ content. The dynamic with his droid BD-1 really is the heart of the game too, as most of the conversations as you're exploring is with him and the little droid is both adorable and filled with personality.
Technical wise, this game is a bit all over the place. Visually, it is pretty gorgeous and brings the Star Wars universe to life with excellent character models, environments, classic score and incredible sound design. What really lets it down is just how unpolished it feels at times. It's no surprise (Especially from EA) that a game has been released that is quite buggy with the intention patching it down the line, but it is no excuse and has become a complete frustration with this generation of games. The game crashed on me a few times in the second half, I was constantly finding issues such as just falling through the map, enemy AI's not even reacting as I was attacking them and them just randomly spawning right in front of me as I was walking. It would be a minor thing if this only happened a couple of times, but it was happening consistently, which is no excuse for a game of this budget and from a AAA developer.
Onto the good and great though. The combat is excellent and requires patience and actually learning the enemies moves and making use of blocking and dodging. It was very similar to Dark Souls, but obviously not as unforgiving. That said though, there are quite a few difficulty spikes that come out of nowhere, where even I had to reduce the difficulty just get through an area where they throw so many different type of enemies at you, it was more frustrating than fun. When the difficulty is fair though, encounters can be very rewarding and satisfying as you feel Kal get stronger and more experienced as you do working through the game. Mixing lightsaber play and force powers makes for some great fun as you can annihilate faces-less hordes of Stormtroopers with ease.
The boss battles make for some really cinematic and interesting fights. Like the combat with everything else, you're encouraged to think while you're fighting these bosses and simply button mashing will only end with you dead. The variety of bosses range from some Sith lords in the form of The Emperors underlings called "Sisters", the rest of the bosses are mostly a range of big creatures that are pretty intimidating to encounter at first, but you soon begin to realise they are pretty simple to take down once you know what you're doing. There is also some minor bosses littered throughout with random Bounty Hunter encounters, who, if you're not expecting it, can mess you up pretty quickly.
I was pleasantly surprised how much the game implores you to actually explore the world in order to progress, I spent so much time trying to figure out puzzles and gathering all the collectables I could (You can't sweep up straight away though, you have to unlock new powers in order to reach other collectables later in the game). It was just so much fun just to explore these beautifully created areas as BD-1 would point out items and really help you out. The structure of collectables was very similar to the Tomb Raider reboot, which isn't a bad thing, they took elements and changed it just enough to feel unique to itself. The problem with clearing up though is that the map you use from BD-1 is a complete mess and borderline incomprehensible, making it impossible to clear up collectables later in the game when I wanted to return to areas. The Dark Souls esque resting stations also lacked a fast-travelling option, which would have made things so much easier and saved so much time as it does get a little tedious to constantly have to backtrack (Which you have to do a lot). I really wanted to 100% this thing, but when the game made it this frustrating to just get back to the area where the collectables were, I did not care enough.
It has its problems for sure, but honestly, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is one of the best Star Wars games I've played in such a long time. It might be unpolished and filled with glitches, but when things are going smoothly, it is a blast to play and my 20 hours with it flew by thanks to the satisfying combat, engaging story and great new characters that earn its place within the Star Wars canon. All my problems are things that could even potentially be fixed with updates down the line, but I've got to judge what we were given at launch and the results are flawed, but still fantastic for the most part. I really hope EA continue to follow path of Star Wars games that choose story over multiplayer. Hell, I'd also kill for a remaster of Republic Commando at some point. Star Wars games might actually have a bright future again.
8/10 Dans
Star Wars Fallen: Jedi Order is out now on PS4 and Xbox One
Watch the trailer below:
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Letterboxd: Dan
