Beat in slow motion mode, and even that was too fast at times. The rom said it was a beta so I don't know how well it matched the final game. I made it to the Wampa boss in the 1st level and managed to jump up to a high ledge where it could not hurt me. Its hp bar was not budging at all while I shot so I wondered if I was doing something wrong. Check a walkthrough, oh I missed the lightsaber. So I loaded state from before the boss and back tracked the entire level. I also got back on the mount, which was useful because it tanked for Luke. The 2D platforming levels were a bit Metroidvania with powerups to find, though most things were just hp and mp restore. The platforming was awkward because this game had more realistic jumping mechanics, like not being able to change direction in mid air and needing some momentum to jump. It was functional though and the jumps were not too difficult. High jump was performed by holding down for a few seconds and the charge held for a few seconds more. There were no other characters to swap to like in the previous game, but the force powers more than made up for that. Select switched between blaster and lightsaber and they could be aimed in 8 directions, a significant improvement. Start opened the force power menu, which consumed various amounts of mp for useful effects. Jump turned the regular jump into the super jump without needing to charge up, and was cheap to boot. My most used power. Speed made Luke run faster, which was how to get past those ridiculously durable blue spiders in the jungle. It was good for getting around too, and cheap. Levitate allowed full flight but was expensive. Heal traded mp for hp, and deflect passively protected from enemy shots though not sure if it only worked with the lightsaber. There was a mind power that I was not sure what it did until I checked a different walkthrough. It was mind trick and functioned like invisibility, but was expensive. It would have come in handy. The last 2 powers improved weapon damage and were absolutely needed to beat most enemies with a visible hp bar.

The biggest problem I had with this game was how little damage Luke did to those enemies with hp bars. The weak normal enemies were fine, like stormtroopers, baby wampas, slugs and such, but everything else felt like he was shooting nerf darts and hitting with a plastic sword. That 1st wampa boss took dozens of lightsaber hits to take down. I had thought I was doing something wrong but no they screwed up enemy hp that badly. The booster powers helped but used too much mp to be used on every strong enemy. The levels were too big and samey looking to not have an in game map. I've said it before and I'll say it again many times; any game with level design more complicated than Super Mario 1 needs an effective in game map. After 2 ice stages was a side scrolling shooter in a snow speeder to take down AT ATs. I liked how you could turn around and go either direction, but the whole thing was rather simple. There were no AT STs or other enemies. It was all about using the limited tow cables to insta kill half of them, then speeding behind the rest to slowly whittle them down with blasters. I got shot down before I could kill them all, then it turned into on foot vs stormtroopers until finding another speeder. I wonder how many extra speeders there were. The walkthrough mentioned it was possible to kill the ATs while on foot like in the movie. I tried but could not figure it out.

At the Hoth base I ended up restarting because I missed an optional power. Easier than back tracking. I got to drive an AT ST, which was very cool and absolutely wrecked enemies. It also ignored hazards and it was hilarious seeing it do platforming. There would definitely be some useful tactical applications for a walking vehicle that can jump like that, but I don't think that is canon. Wish there was more vehicle fun and a boss fight while driving the walker. Then there were the jungle stages with Yoda. For some reason I found them a bit easier to navigate than the other stages, but there were a lot of powerful enemies that were best skipped rather than killed. Jump, speed and levitate were key here. Then another shooter stage dog fighting in an X wing. It was the same as the AT AT stage only moving up and down was useful to avoid enemy fire. It was rather easy and would have been cool to see a full shoot em up game using these mechanics as a base. There was another shooter battle just before the end of the game against Boba's ship but that was very easy. Unlike the previous game this game's flying stages were a reprieve from the merciless difficulty. The final stages were in cloud city and I almost got stuck a couple times. The walkthrough talked about exploring a glitch causing invincibility frames after getting shot to make it through beam barriers, but I could not get it to work. Instead I had to get past a few orange guys in between conveyor belts, and they were way too difficult to kill, and the walkthrough did not even bother cover this part. I killed 1 with boosted blaster then ran out of mp with more orange guys to get past. I tried many times to kill them but without mp to use the damage boosts it took way too long, and without mp for super jumps or deflection there was no way to survive. At this point I wished there was passive mp regen. I managed to scrape past them by jumping, and killed the bastards on the way back with my sweet ass AT ST. Mind trick probably would be the best way to get past this part. Then the boss fight with Fett, which was the best in the game by far because it actually had mechanics. I killed 1 orange guy by super jumping over most of his shots as I slowly whittled him down with blaster fire, while others and a multi armed boss I killed by levitating up to a ledge and firing down for about 10 minutes. Yawn, such exciting boss design. The final boss fight against Vader was the other point where I got stuck. I tried being tactical, doing hit and run, and trying to avoid his attacks. The winning tactic though was just stand still mashing attack and hope his hp depleted faster than mine.

I really liked most aspects of this game, but the ridiculous hp of those tough enemies really hurt the experience. It was better than NES Star Wars and felt more like a SNES game. Been too long since I played the SNES Star Wars trilogy to properly compare them to this but I'm going to rate it similar.

7.5/10