I'm an average Star Wars fan. I've only played a few Star Wars games such as KoTOR, Rogue Squadron 1 & 2, and Shadows of the Empire. RS2 is one of my favorite games, because of the way it made you feel like you were playing in the movies. So here again I got a similar immersive feel, which is what I love about the game.

The graphics are incredible, granted I usually don't play games for the graphics, so there isn't much to compare to. The backgrounds were visually stunning. The level design is probably the best I've ever played, and felt organic. The enemies were creative and fun to beat, especially the bounty hunters later in the game. Using force abilities to beat easy enemies was...expected I guess, but still fun. Exploring a dead Venator Cruiser was very enjoyable. The combat was mostly fun, with a lot of up-gradable abilities. It wasn't what you would call an open world game, but it was not linear either with extensive areas to explore, which is my preferred depth. The story was even moderately good, which filled the void left by the crappy stories of the sequel trilogies.

However, there was room for improvement. The map was very similar to the Metroid Prime series, which had a fantastic 3D map system. SWJ:FO had a detailed map with highlighted areas showing doors or areas that could be explored or not reachable yet, which made exploration much easier. However, if your not positioned correctly physical features might obstruct the map. Your ability to zoom is limited, and as a result the map can be very confusing in the late game.

The gameplay was very reminiscent of the Batman Arkham games, the Middle-Earth Shadow games, and Zelda BoTW. There is a very similar parry system here, but it can be less intuitive than those other games. You would often have multiple enemies attacking at once, which made parrying difficult, even late in the game. Other times, it was difficult to tell if you successfully parried at all. Maybe that's just the realism of having multiple enemies attack you simultaneously, which didn't happen often in the other games. Attacks that could not be parried made dodging more necessary. It was still very enjoyable though, just frustrating at times, as other games felt more fluid. Although it is possible to beat some harder enemies quickly if you know how to parry and attack them correctly. It was also difficult to master all the abilities compared to other similar games.

While the graphics were incredible, there were common lighting glitches. This could have been related to my computer graphics card, but everything else was perfectly smooth. While I love the level design, I have a pet peeve in games like these where endless pits are everywhere. Almost every level is on a massive plateau with canyons deeper than the grand canyon. However I can see how this was good for gameplay and to display the backgrounds.

I had very mixed feelings about exploration to find things in this game. Of the six different objects you could interact with the most common were superficial customization elements such as ship paint jobs, poncho styles, and lightsaber modifications.There are over a hundred of these, and dozens of lightsaber customizations that ultimately are kind of silly, because you can't even see them while your fighting, except the color of your lightsaber. I get the feeling these might have been intended as purchasable content before the debacle with Battlefront 2. The second most common finds are force echos which allow Cal to sense something that happened in the past. Most of them involve some random storm trooper dying or some cultural observation, which often seem silly except they provide varying amounts XP. Similarly, your droid can scan enemies and things with cultural relevance, but they provide no XP. BD can also find and collect a few seeds to plant on your ship. The last two finds are actually the most useful, and the most difficult to find. There are ten stim upgrades allowing you to heal a percentage of health. There are also at least 3 secrets on each planet. If you get 3 your max health or force is upgraded.

I have another minor pet peeve, which is the level of diversity in Star Wars on the whole. While Marvel has become increasingly diverse in recent years, Star Wars seems to have lagged behind. The cast itself is diverse, but the main Jedi's continue to be white men, with few exceptions. I don't read the books, so I don't count those, but if you include the video games and tv series there are at least 10 white men as leading jedi (Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Anikan, Luke, Cal, Starkiller, Revan, Ezra, Kanan) compared to 5 that aren't white men, only one of which is currently a leading character (Mace, Yoda, Ashoka, Bastila and Rey). We could discuss villains, but it doesn't get any better. It should not take any effort to make a woman, alien, or person of color into the lead character of a video game. This is supposed to be an incredibly diverse universe with thousands of different alien species. You would think that more of the leading Jedi and Sith (I understand that the Empire was xenophobic, but KoTOR does this too) for that matter could be alien.

Overall, its surprisingly good considering that it was produced by EA around the same time as the Battlefront games.

I had put off this game for a long time due to my disdain for anything published by EA as well as hearing how hard it could be. I finally threw in the towel with the Star Wars hype around the release of the Obi-Wan TV show on Disney+ and downloaded it.

For the record I played this on Story Mode on the Xbox Series X as I’m personally not someone who plays games for a challenge but for the experience instead. I was surprised how well the game played in terms of gameplay but the same could not be said for the graphics. I had the game set to quality mode to start and experienced a lot of graphics popping and high resolution textures not loading so I moved over to the performance mode because I wanted a smooth 60fps. I did experience a lot of fps stutters, audio/video sync issues in cutscenes as well as graphics popping still in this mode. There was also an issue of characters clipping through scenery. It was not always obvious what scenery you could climb as well which resulted in me jumping against invisible walls quite a bit.

I heard a lot of complaints from people about how useless the map was, and where I can maybe see where they were coming from. I never really had much of an issue with it personally. However a “Fast-travel back to ship” would be VERY adventitious.

I’m not a completionist of games and will only aim to seek out collectables in games if they are within reach rather than me going out of my way to find them. If you approach this game with the same methodology of other games in regards to hidden items being: “look behind you in a starting area” or “see that other path that’s not the objective marker? Go look down there” then you’re gonna find most of the item boxes. The level design of Jedi: Fallen Order is that when you are casually roaming around an area the item chests stand out as they have glowing lights on them. Meaning you just need to figure out how to get to them. Most of the chests are all cosmetic upgrades so don’t have a massive benefit to the overall game unless you’re a completionist. I never had Cal wear his conchos as I thought they looked ridiculous so poncho skins were wasted on me. What I did love however, was customising my own lightsaber. I don’t know what other Star Wars game lets you do this but this was a first for me. My lightsaber ended up being gold plated with a purple crystal.

I really enjoyed my time with the game, didn’t really get too repetitive (well maybe the combat a bit) and it didn’t overstay its welcome. There are only a handful of planets and each can be explored within a single playthrough. This is the length games should be and have people wanting to go back for more and explore New Game+ modes.

Fallen Order реально совсем безблагодатный. Вроде и все компоненты на месте: вот боевка с комбами, вот дерево прокачки, вот экзотические планеты, вот разветвленные уровни с кучей секретов, вот боссы, вот бессчетные опции кастомизации оружия, вот environment пазлы, вот спасение далекой галактики, наконец. А по сути все какое-то никакое. Типичное еа/юби. Взяли миллион фич, некоторые проработали нормально, некоторые на отвали, и слепили из них гигантский колобок, не особо заботясь о том, как эти фичи между собой стыкуются (никак) и нужны ли они вообще (не особо).

Планеты похожи друг на друга как близнецы, хоть лесной Кашик, хоть ледяной Илум - всюду одинаковые имперские базы с коридорами и лифтами. Кастомизация оружия сводится к выбору формы, цвета и материала гарды меча (при том что эта гарда всю игру прячется в ладони героя и вообще не видна). В сотнях секреток спрятаны сотни разноцветных пончо для героя (другой одежды он почему-то не носит). Боевая система сводится к тому, что можно спамить быструю слабую атаку и кувыркаться, а можно применять медленную сильную атаку, но она почему-то расходует полоску Силы и больше 2-3 раз ее не используешь. Зато быстрая атака и кувырок ничего не расходуют, поэтому кувыркаться вокруг врагов можно вечно. В изученные локации можно возвращаться - но там игрока ничто не ждет, кроме новых фасонов пончо.

При этом встречаются и очень клевые моменты. Например, здоровенные запутанные гробницы с акробатикой, пазлами и секретками - прямо как в ранних Tomb Raider (я про те, которые на PS1, не на PS4). Боссы местами довольно достойные. Финальная инквизиторша на харде прям дала жару, два вечера не мог совладать. Но в целом это такое типичное корпоративное ААА поделие, которое явно делали триста человек, при этом каждый делал что-то свое, без особой согласованности. Как у Райкина про костюм, "к пуговицам претензии есть? нет!"

Cюжет просто поразил. Всю игру герои ищут секретный документ, который поможет им в войне - и вот финал! Хорошие победили всех плохих и даже Дарта Вейдера (не до конца)! Документ в руках героев! Можно начинать войну! И тут герои смотрят друг на друга и такие - блин, это что ж, теперь воевать придется? неудобно как-то... люди погибнут... судьбы покалечатся... да ну нафиг, давайте лучше сожжем документ и сделаем вид, что так и было, а война... ну... да фиг с ней, в общем... Аллах (зачеркнуто) Сила как-нибудь все уладит. Финал, все обнимаются, титры, музыка. Мои ожидания от франшизы ЗВ в плане интеллектуальной нагрузки всегда были в районе ноля, но игре удалось таки удивить.

Короче, тот случай, когда игра не настолько хорошая, чтобы радовать, но и не настолько плохая, чтобы плюнуть и бросить. Вообще никакая. Безвкусная пластмассовая еда от ЕА/Диснея. Гадость.