Sure, they’re meant to be games for children, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Lego games. I had the original Lego Star Wars games, the Indiana Jones and Marvel ones, I feel like there was a Pirates of the Caribbean one I had on PSP, but that also feels like it may be a fever dream. Anywho, I was feeling nostalgic when I saw the release of the Skywalker Saga, and the shakeup to the regular Lego gameplay had my interest.
Let’s talk about the gameplay first. Usually Lego games are a somewhat top down affair where you run around beating up baddies and solving puzzles, and if you want to aim a ranged weapon a little cursor appears on the screen for you to mark targets with. Skywalker Saga opts for a more traditional 3rd person camera, like one you may see in an Uncharted game. Aiming is more connected to your character in that you actually aim over their shoulder. There are still plenty of occasions where the game has the classic Lego game style, especially in the open worlds. That’s another big thing here on display, you travel to a lot of iconic Star Wars planets and each one has a dedicated open world space to explore. Some are more robust than others, Tatooine has 3 different world hubs, where as Mustafar only has a small part of the lava factory to explore. The open world exploration offered is great, being able to just visit a planet outside of a story mission is nice. Each hub is dotted with plenty of activities in the shape of climbing challenges, puzzles, and side missions from humorous galactic citizens.
The way this game handles levels is a bit unique. As you play through each movie most of it is spent travelling between the hub worlds with special circumstances. I didn’t encounter my first proper “level” until I was driving the Gungan sub. And it does seem a lot of the levels are reserved for vehicle sections, at least for the prequel trilogy. The later movies had more traditional Lego levels. There’s also an uneven pacing between each movie. I felt like Episode I, III, IV went by quick, while Episodes II, VI, and IX had more content from their movies represented in the game. I get some of the movies are less action heavy than others, but I felt there were moments left out that would’ve made good levels, like the opening space battle of Episode III. Still overall, I felt I got a good abridged version of each film, and now I sorta know what happens in Episode IX.
Another thing Lego games are known for is their humor. As expected, it’s all kid friendly jokes that maybe got one or two laughs out of me. There are also plenty of funny Star Wars in-jokes and memes splattered through the game that did get a smile from me. One mission had you interview witnesses as to whether Han or Greedo shot first & every time you pick Palpatine in free play his intro line is “Has anyone ever told you the story of Darth Plageuis the Wise?”. Lowly rebels, clones, or droids have discussions about plot holes or weird oversights in the movies that also are kinda funny. All of your favorite characters have their personalities played up for laughs. I actually liked Lego Kylo Ren more than regular Kylo Ren, he had more personality. If you explore around you also can find crates full of the original Lego Star Wars games laying around in the world.
There’s plenty of characters and vehicles to unlock from the movies, TV shows, and extended universe. If there’s a character that’s your favorite you can likely play as them, except Uncle Owen. Some are unlocked by completing missions, others by side missions, or just challenges. One thing I appreciate over the Complete Saga, every character has some offensive capability, even if it’s just swing punches. They also handle things like having 40 different clone troopers better by using an outfit system. So instead of having 40 different characters that are just color swapped clones, there’s one clone trooper with a set of different colored outfits.
One thing I didn’t care for, but also understand, is that every character is sorted into one of several categories, like Jedi, Scoundrel, Bounty Hunter, or Extra. Each category has it’s own set of skills, so each character in that set plays the same. After Lego Marvel had a large set of diverse heroes that shared some powers, but never felt like copies of each other, this felt like a step down. The Fetts had their jetpacks neutered, which granted, if they did work right it would eliminate most of the platforming challenges. There’s also an upgrade system where you can increase your max health or melee damage, or unlock special skills for each of the different classes. It’s a fun, if not entirely required system, except the damage increases, those are helpful.
Being I got this game at release, there were a few technical hiccups. Namely it was just a lot of crashes. If I tried to travel somewhere too quickly, or just hit a button too quick it caused the game to crash back to the PS home screen. It happened about once or twice a session. It was annoying, but never frustrating.
All in all, this game is a comprehensive Star Wars experience. You can play through all the movies then explore all the planets in free roam to your heart’s content. It’s able to be this vast experience by being simplistic in presentation, due to the Lego aspect. It’s a fun nostalgic trip that made me realize, even if they are considered crappy movies, my favorite trilogy will always be the prequels because I grew up on them. If I may have a nitpicky Star Wars nerd moment, I was upset they got the sound of Jango’s pistols wrong. It’s a distinct sound, like many sounds in Star Wars, and they didn’t use it.
