I'm so happy that my friend picked Plo Koon and not one of the more conventional picks. He's half-baked with seemingly only one force power that sucks, but he has a really good combo that ends with him upper cutting the enemy into the air (which can knock them off cliffs). This half-bakedness is hilariously conveyed in the intro cinematic where you see each Jedi doing impressive acrobatics, then there's Plo Koon. He just kind of waddles around killing a few droids. It's very utilitarian but he gets the same results while having the face of a crab. What a legend.

I picked Mace Windu, who really highlights just how half baked (san upper cut) Plo Koon was. He has 3 force powers. But honestly only one. His light saber toss is absurdly good and fun to use. The only unfortunate aspect of our character choices is you need to beat the game as Qui-Gon Jinn to unlock Darth Maul. O well. Now we can't escort Annie on Tatooine to the air ship as Darth Maul.

This feels like an old school arcade game. You have credits. You have multiplayer. The levels are all self-contained. There is a scoring mechanic. There are respawn points. And gameplay is effectively a beat em up. If you've played any of the classic Capcom arcade games you will feel at home. Well except the controls are certainly a bit janky. Most the time, you're best off just mashing the light attack button. Particularly against Darth Maul. You can effectively stun lock him. What's a little silly about this is he has set damage thresholds where he runs away to a new location for the next phase. But you can endlessly beat him, preventing him from running away and locking you in that phase of the game. Once you break the combo for a moment, he will finally shuffle off to initiate the next phase. So yeah, combat is janky and borderline broken. But I would argue it's in a "so bad it's good" sort of way. My friend and I found ourselves laughing at the shoddiness more often than getting frustrated. There certainly are big exceptions.

Platforming is abundant and abundantly terrible. Honestly it is among the most challenging aspects of the game, but not in a good way. Fortunately with the Dreamcast version, you can use the D-pad to walk which helps significantly with the platforming (you can in the PS version too I believe, but you can turn around quickly in the dreamcast version but cannot turn around, without spinning in a 180 degree angle, on the PS version. Thus the Dreamcast version is unequivocally the better version in terms of game play and graphics). Growing up I only played the PS version. I remember playing it everytime I went over to my friend's house for a month or two. We were obsessed and this game was absurdly hard and punishing.

Even with the Dreamcasts improved controls, there are plenty of times where the camera angle will make the platforming actively more difficulty because it obscures where you need to jump... making it feel at times trial and error rather than a satisfying challenge. In addition, in Naboo you need to rescue these maidens. If you miss one and reach the level boss, you fail and need to start all over... pretty unforgiving. Most maidens are easy to find, but it's easy to miss a few of them. The tank driving sequence is also pretty tedious and silly. As far as I could tell, the tank was invincible. On one hand, I'm glad I couldn't fail on the other not being able to fail made it boring... what really sucked was not rescuing all the maidens and having to do the tank sequence again...

The level above also highlights just how thrown together this game was. Textures don't properly line up. You will have a corner of a window over layered on top of the upper window. Making it look like they quickly copy and pasted textures without giving it any thought or play testing. The game also does a poor job of creating a sense of realism within the game world. There are tons of hallways and paths that have invisible walls blocking them. Which just feels lazy. Why not paste a few more wall textures to at least communicate you can't go that way? There isn't much of an artistic direction anyways, so you really wouldn't lose anything and only gain clarity for the player.

The later levels certainly become more of a tedious slog as the game shifts to an increased focus on platforming. The pen Ultimate mission in particular is brutal. You are told to "save pilots" and you have a time limit. You start on a cliff and have no idea where you need to go. My friend and I frantically rushed ahead. Avoiding as many enemies as possible. Which was hard because the cliffs are lined with droids, flyers and rocket launchers. You have to scale down a large cliff face, then back up and then you finally can start entering doors (a mechanic the game never uses beforehand which made this confusing. We got lucky by accidentally stumbling into the door). We failed this multiple times. Even with rushing buck wild, you still barely have enough time to do this. In addition, the level is just so bland and repetitive. The first time we failed the mission, we even questioned if we started near the pilots and wasted a bunch of time because it all just looked the same. Turns out no. You just need to rush forward constantly or fail.

Then the last mission is a series of narrow platforms and difficult and janky platforming. That's the real last boss. Darth Maul you can just stun-lock by pincering him and smashing the light attack button. Remembering to stop beating his ass so he can activate the next phase. Fortunately in the final phase, he will awkwardly teleport to the pit and fall into it. Even if you are in the middle of beating his ass in a pincer maneuver.

Still, it's about the journey. We laughed a lot while playing this game. Sure it's janky AF and lazily cobbled together but it still manages to be a good time with a friend. Truth be told, single player I would rate lower. This game is bad, but with a friend I had a blast.