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 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.

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