Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)

I want to be done with Star Wars. I have tried to quit it many times, but it is an inescapable franchise. I hate its fan service, and I hate what it has become under Disney. I hate the Force, Darth Vader, the Empire, Stormtroopers, Jedi— all of it. But, damn, they sure are fun to play with.

I won't get into why I got back into Star Wars (cough cough girlfriend cough), but despite the glut of movies and miniseries, I have remained a fan of Star Wars video games. I think all Star Wars fans want to live in that world, and video games are the closest we can get to that. Tired concepts like the Force, Rebels vs. Imperials, Light vs. Dark, lightsabres, and blasters can all feel fresh in a well-made game. To be fair, they can also feel fresh in a well-made film or miniseries, but it’s just harder.

I'm a fan of good souls-likes and a begrudging fan of Star Wars, so I was interested in Jedi: Fallen Order.

Story: Jedi: Fallen Order's story is the usual slop—arguably the worst indulgences of the franchise—because it cannot move past the Skywalker saga. It is set between Episodes 3 and 4, like many, many, maaany other stories in Star Wars. The story revolves around a MacGuffin the ragtag team of misfits has to track down while the Empire is also on the hunt, leading to revelations about each of the characters along the way. Boy, that sounds generic when I type it out. That’s because it is.

What elevates Jedi: Fallen Order is the acting and character interactions, which give us a real sense of who these characters are and allow us to enjoy spending time with them. Plus, BD-1 is cute.

Gameplay: It’s a Metroidvania, souls-like, Sekiro-like action-adventure game with skill trees, scanning, backtracking, bonfires, estus flasks, counters, blocks, breaks, and various Force powers, along with light platforming and puzzle solving.

Personally, I like all those things, and Fallen Order does a good job with its level design—minus the fact that you can't fast travel—which keeps you engaged and exploring to find all those treasures and lore bits.

Combat is easy—super easy. I was playing on hard mode and only occasionally found it difficult. But it was fun mowing down enemies, occasionally sparring with tougher foes, and duelling with the Second Sister.

Sound: It's a Star Wars game, so sound is about 90% of the experience. The score does a good job of imitating John Williams. It’s very appropriate, but I can't recall anything from it off the top of my head. The sound effects are amazing; I can't tell you how many times I just turned the lightsabre off and on to hear it go beeyoom and see the animation.

Technical: It's your modern, motion-captured actors with ray tracing and AAA visuals that look nice. The designs of the characters look appropriately Star Wars; sometimes environments are breathtaking for their beauty or scale. Fallen Order ran fine for me in 2024 (my NVIDIA 3040 handled it with ease in 1440).

There are some technical glitches, like models snapping to each other or not appearing, but that’s infrequent. The running animation would occasionally look very odd going downhill, where Cal would become super bowlegged, and it always made me laugh.

Other: I was really on board for most of Jedi: Fallen Order. It's a solid 8/10 experience that didn't rub me the wrong way... until the end where Darth Vader shows up, and I could feel the collective Star Wars fan base creaming in their stretchy pants. It is SO pandering and SO out of place that it really left a sour note finishing the game. Make mention of it, but don't show it. We don't need that.

Jedi: Fallen Order is solid, and if you are a fan of Star Wars, you will enjoy it because it’s accessible to all levels. If you like souls-likes, it's one of the best in the subgenre because it avoids the trappings of being unfavorably compared to the best of the genre while still being its own thing.

This is the only Star Wars associated media I’ve ever been interested in. It definitely has the AAA trappings, some flawed map and some bad game design, but it still has excellent combat and gameplay variety, fun exploration, and a decent story.

It is a 3D Metroidvania, BUT it really fails at it in a couple of ways. Backtracking is horrible. The levels are not well designed to allow quick access to older areas, so trying to pick up missed collectibles is an absolute chore. On top of that, the collectives are completely worthless cosmetic items. You have to really be in it for the journey to care about any of it (which I was). The actual map itself is super confusing, worse than Metroid Prime in its clarity.

Despite that, it has really fun combat, some great set pieces and gameplay variety, the level design is solid in a linear action-adventure sense, and the story was interesting enough to keep my attention.

I had fun, but it’s not the best. In fact I’ve yet to play any 3D Metroidvania that I didn’t have deep issues with.

I was truly drawn in to the world and felt like this game was a great balance of action along with amazing story telling. I really liked how my thoughts and opinions of characters grew and changed as I got to know each one. It was also really interesting to see how "generic" auto responses showed the growth of friendship between Cal and BD-1. The amount of depth that went into this game is great and helped to bring the story alive.

While the story was a huge selling point for me, I can't neglect the gameplay. This game never felt frustrating to play. The extra items in the game were so much fun to hunt down and find. I really enjoyed getting a new ability and going back to various different places to find additional hidden items. Really the only thing that I disliked was that there is no fast travelling on a planet from check point to check point. While it was a minor hitch in play it was not a deal breaker for me.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone and especially recommend to those that love the Star Wars universe.

Good:

• Borrows a lot of good stuff from the Star Wars universe without being overly derivative, lots of fun little touches and imaginative pieces of storytelling
• Simple story but well-told
• It's a relatively short game that doesn't outstay its welcome
• Alternates between being overly cinematic and overly video-gamey but does both well
• Personally I like that most of the collectibles in the overworld were cosmetics that you could safely ignore since it streamlines things, but I'm sure it's not everyone's preference
• Stormtroopers killing each other is always hilarious

Neutral:

• The combat is surprisingly hard, especially for the major bosses. Frustrating to have to re-do the fights multiple times, but satisfying to eventually complete them without having to turn down the difficulty.

Bad:

• Lots of annoying little bugs/glitches (randomly falling through the ground on Dathomir, unsynced audio in key cutscenes, floating enemies etc.)
• Some of the faces look absolutely terrible...minor characters are mostly ok but for some reason the two main human characters look absolutely hideous and it really took me out of the game
• Wonky controls mean I fell to my death a lot
• If there was a more functional map and fast travel system I probably would have tracked down the remaining chests and areas...as it is, it's not worth the trouble

Overall, this exceeded my expectations! It's really beautiful, the characters are endearing and expertly portrayed, and I enjoyed the platforming and exploration elements a lot. In some ways it feels like a modern big-budget throwback to the single-player action-adventure games that had their heyday in the sixth and seventh generation of home consoles (Metroid Prime, Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, etc.)... I'm here for it!

I do wish the backtracking didn't feel like such a chore, because I'd love to see every collectible... it's a drag to keep getting stuck deep in a level without a way to fast travel back to my ship. And I'm not a fan of the Souls-inspired combat... it was tolerable thanks to the "story" difficulty, and eventually I became pretty overpowered so I could just kinda button mash my way through, but I'd take more of an Arkham or Spider-Man feel any day of the week.

I was pretty skeptical that this Cal Kestis guy could hold my interest for a whole game, but consider me won over. Looking forward to the sequel!

Good times all around. Despite being quite buggy on Series X, Star Wars: Fallen Order was a lot of fun. It reminded me of what I enjoy about Star Wars and didn’t get too bogged down by connections to the mainline series.

I’ll echo what I’ve said in comments, despite the obvious influences pulled from Soulsbornes, Uncharted/Tomb Raider and Respawn’s own games, the game series I thought of most while playing was Ratchet & Clank. Something about hopping back and forth between planets, unlocking new gear that opens up new paths on previous planets, a tiny robot buddy, a hunt for lost people like the protagonist, the very platforming nature of the game and the fact that most secrets to collect were cosmetics for your self, ship and little buddy left me frequently thinking of Ratchet & Clank. The only thing missing are wacky weapons but I suppose the force powers could be the stand in. I know it’s a tenuous link, and I’m probably way off base but I did feel a slight nostalgia for R&C while playing.

The game does have its share of problems from severe audio desync during cutscenes to enemies that randomly launch straight up into the air, to significant frame stutters and getting trapped in terrain. But surprisingly none of that prevented me from enjoying the game overall because the simple yet effective story fit well within the Star Wars universe and combat and platforming were both pretty enjoyable. Neither were particularly deep or challenging, and perhaps the game could do with slightly more mechanical complexity, but I had fun regardless. It’s a fun, but sometimes flawed game, that I had a great time playing.

I just not gonna stop ranting about how the deepfaked version of Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett was bad, so I'm gonna use my "review" o Jedi: Fallen Order, a game I really, really enjoyed, to continue doing that.

I think Cal Kestis is kind of the 'antithesis' of what Luke was doing on those series. He understood that it wasn't his place to take kids away from their parents to turn them into soldiers, but Luke is convinced that is some kind of destiny to fulfill.

Anyway, here's my article about that in spanish.

Play Fallen Order if you're a Star Wars fan like me. Its great. Probably the best video game based on the franchise.

PROS

• A solid Star Wars action/adventure that keeps the EA bullshit to a minimum
• Weaves elements of Dark Souls, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, and Metroid Prime together to make an appealing experience, even for Star Wars haters like myself
• High-quality art direction
• Exceptional facial and motion capture
• One time I double jumped in front of an enemy and they commented something along the lines of: "Oh you think you're cool because you can jump really high?" which I thought was nifty
• BD-1 is a dope sidekick

CONS

• Imprecise controls and animations create a consistent feeling of wonkiness that never, ever lets up
• Complicated, set piece-oriented level design makes exploring and backtracking an obnoxious chore
• Combat can't decide if it wants to be Souls-like tough-but-precise or Batman-esque loose-and-flashy, landing at a kinda shitty in between
• Platforming is boring, like practically all AAA games. Dear AAA developers: platforming sequences should be just as challenging and suspenseful as combat sequences, why is that so hard to understand?!
• Absurdly buggy and unpolished, at least on PS5 -- even the cutscenes have bugs for Pete's sake!
• The majority of the loot is boring cosmetic stuff
• Uninteresting, clumsily told story

When I started playing this game I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but It didn't feel very Star Wars. I'm kind of jumping and climbing like in Uncharted and then there's a bit of Souls bonfire stuff going on and The Force is a metroidvania mechanism.

But I just kept playing. And I kept enjoying it. The story and the locations hooked me and as my powers increased the game just got more and more engaging. And I didn't really care if it wasn't really Star Wars.

This is the first game I have played where I wasn't looking forward to finishing it so I could start the next game. Honestly, I feel like if the game just kept adding more locations and missions I would never have stopped playing.

Of course, that's not to say the game is flawless. The combat is empowering rather than challenging, but force-pushing troopers off cliffs never gets old. Even more enjoyable than kicking Spartans off cliffs in AC: Odyssey. Just like in Uncharted, climbing/swinging/jumping etc. isn't hard or full of tricky decisions, but it is still fun and the locations make exploration (or progress, I should say) very engaging. I did get lost a couple of times and the level design isn't as well done as in the Fromsoft games for sure. The "shortcuts" you unlock occasionally are basically useless, whereas I almost cried every time I found one in Bloodborne.

Despite the flaws, I loved this game and I really hope there is a follow-up or some DLC. If you are feeling reluctant because it's Star Wars or because it's "not really proper Star Wars", put your cynicism aside - you won't regret it.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is a Souls-like action game. You play as Cal Kestis, a former Padawan who has been in hiding from the despotic Galactic Empire for years. When he is forced to use his psychic Force powers to save the life of a co-worker, he is pursued by the Imperial Inquisitors, only to be rescued by a couple of rebels with the goal of resurrecting the Jedi Order.

The plot of this game is nicely self-contained, but also suffers from a significant flaw - this game is set between the prequels and the original trilogy, so anyone who has seen the movies knows that they will fail in their quest to resurrect the Jedi Order. Gameplay wise, the core combat works quite well. Cal has a reasonable set of telekinetic and combat-based Force powers that expand over time, and while they are rather simple they work well enough and are mostly satisfying to use on enemies.

Ironically, the game's biggest letdown is the lightsaber itself. While there is some nice variety in the swings and the animations are solid, the actual fighting with it feels wimpy. In the movies, these are deadly weapons, but in the game, it is basically just a normal video game sword. The hits with it don't really give that deadly destructive feel, and the death animations greatly downplay the whole "chopping people up" aspect.

That said, it does work well enough from a mechanical point of view, at least at first. This gets into the other problem with the game: repetition. You go to almost all of the planets you visit at least twice due to backtracking during the plot. The same applies to the terrain – while it looks different outwardly, it ends up following a small number of tropes over and over, making the exploration feel a bit less exciting once you realize it is mostly the same thing, albeit with attractive skins. It doesn't help that there's no fast travel. Overall, If you are in the market for a Star Wars game where you play as a Jedi, this is likely something you’ll enjoy, and it is amazing.

I see glimpses of a good game in the level design, the combat, the visuals, the story... but nothing has come together smoothly. Nothing has the polish of their other games.

The rush is in the animations and the jerky movements. The way I have to restart my game because it will keep crashing or hanging when I do certain things. I think the recent patch made it better but the game still feels like it needed a six-month polish pass.

Also, making the levels "souls-like" without addressing it in the story and Star Wars universe ends up feeling silly and awkward. The story would have been more precise if they had done a more Uncharted style game flow.

The story is also mostly uninteresting. Towards the end, there are some interesting ideas about the nature of Jedi and how maybe "Space Cops" is not something the Universe even needs. It discards the ideas too quickly for flashy twists.

I started playing this game because my boyfriend bought it and it was already downloaded in my ps4. I had just finished Yakuza Kiwami and was looking for something to play. Since it was already there, I decided to give it try.

I must admit, that it is a very good game even if you are not that familiar with star wars. I'm not a super fan of the star wars deep lore, but this game was very easy to follow and understand. Big plus points for that. The game looks great, the music is awesome and the voice acting and script are on point.

The gameplay was my favorite aspect of the game. It was super smooth and easy to understand. The battles were challenging enough, and did not get to the point of despair and frustration (like the souls games...).

I would give it five stars, but there was one thing I didn't enjoy at all: exploring the tombs and solving puzzles. It took away the flow of the game. Mostly it's my fault because I just suck at puzzles, but it was super annoying. I didn't have the patience for it.

This review is spoiler-free. In 3 sentences:

1. The game plays like dark souls/sekiro (save points where resting respawns enemies, high risk high reward combat) meets prince of persia/tomb raider/uncharted (lots of climbing, revisiting maps to explore new areas, secrets and such).
2. It took me 19 hours to complete on highest difficulty, but I switched after about 60% of the game, because I'm impatient and bossfights are based on not making mistakes.
3. Save points are sometimes weirdly positioned, but what the game lacks in innovation and creativity, it makes up for in atmospheric immersion and cinematic storytelling.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an absolutely amazing game! It has effectively restored my love for Star Wars and made me hopeful for future Star Wars video games! I love the story, Dark Souls like combat, and the exploration in the visually appealing worlds. I really hope they continue to make single player Star Wars games like these.

Now I'm working through Grandmaster difficulty...

5/5