Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)

This title is a single-player action-adventure game from Respawn Entertainment that places players in the Star Wars universe shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The MC is called Cal Kestis, a young Jedi Padawan, as he struggles to survive while rebuilding the Jedi Order. The game delivers a strong narrative with emotional character interactions, particularly between Cal and his droid companion, BD-1. It really tries to make you like the characters involved in the plot, but I find it hard to like them, in general they are not quite as likable as other similar to most narrative Sony titles, for example, which has a similar approach to their characters.

The combat system is precise and challenging, emphasizing timing, strategy, and mastery of both lightsaber duels and Force abilities. Exploration is a key component, with interconnected worlds that encourage backtracking with new abilities to uncover secrets and fully experience each planet. This Metroidvania-style design makes progression rewarding and keeps players engaged throughout the adventure. Some people even consider this a Soulslike due to it's difficulty level, and while I agree with this, I also think this is more of an adventure title, than an RPG one, since it's RPG mechanics are way more limited than the traditional Soulslike, which you can experiment with different builds.

While the game excels in atmosphere and Star Wars authenticity, it has minor drawbacks. Some technical issues, such as inconsistent parrying mechanics and occasional frame drops, can disrupt the flow of combat. The story, although engaging, occasionally follows familiar Star Wars tropes, which may feel predictable to some players. Overall, this game is a captivating experience that successfully blends exploration, challenging combat, and narrative. Its immersive world and compelling gameplay make it a must-play for Star Wars fans and action-adventure enthusiasts alike.

As a Prequel kid, I grew up on all the classic early/mid-2000s Star Wars games. I loved Battlefront, Republic Commando, Jedi, KOTOR, Bounty Hunter, even up to The Force Unleashed in my teens. So when Fallen Order first came out, I was hyped and started playing Day One. Ultimately though, I got tired of the gameplay and found it to be frustrating to the point of putting it on hold. I had maybe finished half of the story.

Cut to 2022, and the announcement of its sequel Survivor reignited my interest to go back and finish it. This game is beautiful, and one of the better modern Star Wars stories told outside of the core saga. I took it for granted at the time, but I truly believe the second half of this game trumps the first. Don't be afraid to pick up games you've put down years ago!

Odd, playing this via Game Pass streaming seems to turn performance mode off in the local Series X copy. Every time I return to the game after playing via streaming, I have to toggle performance mode back on.

Also, given there is no performance mode in the menu of the streaming version, it seems *SWJ:FO” is not running on Series X blades. I wonder if that’s because it’s an EA Play game as opposed to something in the core Game Pass library.

This game had some really high points, and a few bad ones as well.

First, the good things.

• The skinning of the overall game felt 100% Star Wars. The powers were always fun. It didn't get old throwing your light saber or force pushing a trooper over an edge of a cliff.
• The plot was actually decent. As a mild fan of the universe, I felt like it fit in the Star Wars world pretty well. I don't know all the stuff apart from the movies, but it worked in my view....except why the hell Cal didn't destroy the cube the second he saw it
• The environments were beautiful and the art looked decent, even on my oldish computer.
• BD-1. Was. Awesome.
• mild plot spoiler: OMG that Vader appearance at the end was awesome!

And now, the bad points:

• The powers sometimes felt slow and clunky...how quickly you could do a force push and then move to a block or a dodge just felt lumbering and sluggish.
• The map was there....but it was just not as helpful as a droid-based map could be.
• Why in the world do bad guys (peons to bosses) have unblockable attacks, but I don't? I'm a damn Jedi!
• Cut scenes and credits should all be made skippable. I watched some of them multiple times and it was just frustrating.
• Load times were garbage, but I blame my computer and not the game hopefully.

Overall, I enjoyed the game, and don't regret buying or playing this as part of our game club...but I was ready to be done with it when it ended.

~David.

3.5 ⭐ actual rating.

A game filled with unique characters and some solid set pieces and beautiful worlds, that had me scratching me head a few times with the story.

Fallen Order is a pretty special game. We are finally in control of a lightsaber again, which we haven't had the chance to do since The Force Unleashed. And Cal Kestis is a great character to play as.

And the characters are definitely the highlight of this little story. Every single one of them is unique in their own right. And every one of them is likeable. From Greeze to Merrin. Even if Merrin didn't get enough screen time to make me happy.

I don't know what it is with Star Wars but no matter who is doing the story they always tend to nail the droid character. From R2 to BB8 to BD1 are always fantastic.

The gameplay was a lot of fun with very little hiccups. It took me a second to get into the combat as I thought it was going to be a bit more hack and slash-y, but it's not. It's more calculated and deliberate. You have to time your parry's and look for openings to attack. I really enjoyed it! Even if it was fairly difficult. But it felt like I was always getting better and with even more practice I could become a Jedi Master.

My only issue with the combat was the final boss. Now see, I died a few times in this game, no big deal, but that final boss? Over and over and over again I had to reload. It felt like absolute horse poop since I had nowhere near the amount of struggles up to that point. It felt disjointed and overly difficult.

The main baddie was cool though! Very cool. But that was another part of my problem was some story beats. I don't want to give spoilers so I'm gonna be vague. There were moments in the story that just didn't make sense. Like I don't think people would react to this or that I'm such a calm and understanding way. And while there were some genuinely touching moments, there were a couple that could have been incredible that ended up calling a little flat.

That being said, the story overall was good, And was very fun.

Overall I definitely recommend this game, especially to Star Wars fans.

I had pretty good time with this game it really did a good job of blending the great aspects of other games into a single product. It felt like a hybrid of Uncharted and God of War and whilst it didn't do the platforming, combat or puzzles quite as well as the previously mentioned games it did a very serviceable job and left us with a great product.

Unfortunately for the most part the story fell pretty flat though which was the most disappointing part of this game. In the interest of keeping things spoiler free I won't go to far into it but overall the story feels quite inconsequential in the grand scheme of the Star Wars universe and even the main characters arcs feel very vanilla.

Whilst it might sound contradictory I do need to say that the ending was amazing even if for only one unexpected twist. It was a pure hype moment and would get any Star Wars fans blood pumping.

Setting that aside though I still highly recommend this game. Its fun to play, looks great and does a great job of showing off the Star Wars universe and making feel like your playing the movies with its visuals and amazing musical score.

As a Star Wars fan, there is a lot for me to love about "Jedi: Fallen Order." It combines the platforming of "Uncharted", the combat of "Sekiro/Dark Souls", the exploration of "Metroid/Castlevania", the puzzle solving of "Legend of Zelda", and the lore of "Star Wars."

As you progress through the game, you are able to learn new abilities in the skill tree that allow you to either master the force, learn new lightsaber abilities, or better your chances of survival. Exploring each of the planets will reward you for making the effort by finding additional stims for BD-01 to give you or relics that will extend your Force/Life meter. With this being a metroidvana, you will be backtracking to each of the planets to open more pathways within the story,

The issues I had with the game were that the parry system can be hit or miss in boss fights and that on the PC version, I experienced many performance issues on a Ryzen 1700x, GTX 1070ti, and 16 GBs of RAM. These issues made me drop the game for a period of time until I was able to get the game running smoothly by limiting the CPU through third-party software.

Overall, this is one of the best "Star Wars" to come out in a while. I was disappointed in EA's treatment of the "Star Wars" license, but this game proves that EA can find a market for single-player games. I would love to see a sequel!

Had a really good time with this game, it is certainly something different and not what I expected. After the last two battlefront games by EA I had zero expectation that this would be good.

To my surprise the story was really good. I cared about the characters, and I felt this overwhelming urge to finish the game no matter how difficult it was. As they say, you just have to “git good.”

The one downside is definitely all of the stupid sliding sections and platform areas, it’s certainly not the game strong suit and I could’ve done without it. The climbing was fine but the sliding was so out of place and completely unnecessary.

Definitely looking forward to the next game, and I hope you get the choice to tap into the Dark Side, similar to Infamous.