Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is a great story, with lovable characters, and a game with the best lightsaber combat I’ve seen yet. That said, some major flaws pull what could have been groundbreaking to just another average installment in a long line of Star Wars games.

By Scuttle Gamez

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The Game:

Fallen Order is at its heart a tomb raider style action/puzzler game. You’ll spend the majority of your time in the game running alongside walls, leaping platforms and swinging on ropes, using force powers to traverse obstacles, and searching for hidden ‘secrets’ and lore entries. Star Wars aside, if you’ve played Tomb Raider or Uncharted then you’ll know what to expect.

The set up is this, you’re playing Cal kestis – a Jedi Padawan in hiding about 5 years after the events of the Revenge of the Sith movie. The story needs to start somehow though, and to keep this spoiler free, you’re not all that hidden for very long.

Bam!

Cal is off to the races, handed a grand quest, new allies, and he’s in for a distinctively Star Wars story of dark temptations, what it means to be a Jedi, and saving the galaxy.

All of the main character actors of the game are played by real world counterparts captured in motion capture, and the list of those involved is fairly well known. There is Cameron Monaghan of Shameless, Liam McIntyre of Spartacus, and Debra Wilson from old school Mad TV and more. There more folks on the list that you might recognize too, but these are probably the tops.

Jedi Fallen Order was developed by Respawn Entertainment, and is available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox for $59.99. Or, alternatively, you can grab it as part of EA Origin’s $15 subscription model at no other cost.

The Good:

I really, like really, enjoyed the lightsaber combat in this game. It’s so-so against random enemies, but when fighting saber to saber there was nothing better. Seriously, I’ve played a lot of Star Wars games, and Fallen Order hands down has the best saber combat.

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Fighting in general in this game is great. It’s fluid with a lot of room for variation. You can fight fast, slow, with a single blade or go double, or hell, mix it up and switch back and forth between the two mid-fight.

I got bored sometimes when fighting critters or Storm Troopers, but any one of the three epic lightsaber battles more than made up for it. I wish there were more fights like those in the game, but I’ll take what I can get.

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Moving on, it was refreshing to have a linear story from EA for a change, and the gang of crew and characters Cal interacts with really grew on me. I felt myself grinning many a time when watching the group sit down and chat, and that’s an impressive feat to accomplish for a game.

One caveat on the story is that it was a bit hard for me to get invested beyond the characters. Since this tale takes place in the pre A New Hope years, there is very little impact that can actually be made on the universe as a whole. Due to this, in part, the main ‘quest’ of the game was not all that interesting to me. I have some issues with the main story overall though, but I’ll save a deeper look for the Mixed section of this review.

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Finally, the art direction and environments on display here are jaw dropping. The Wookie home work of Kashyyk in particular was simply majestic. I’d be more than willing to pay full game price to just go to an I-Max theater and watch some of the scenic views play-out from this game, they’re that good.

The Mixed:

Right out the gate there were not enough cool boss fights in the game. By that I mean specifically lightsaber against lightsaber battles. There are three main lightsaber fights in all, with a few little skirmishes. For a game with this good of a battle system that’s down right criminal. I get that you can’t have a boss battle every other moment, but to have 80% of the game not showing off the best part of it is no good either.

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Story was another problem for me, in that I found myself not really caring about the main quest all that much. As I said above, because of when the story takes place there is very little that can be accomplished or changed through the events of the game. At the end of the game, everything needs to be set so that the events of A New Hope are not altered in anyway.

Beyond that issue, the main story was simply not all that inspired. No spoilers, but there was a lot of mystery and potential wasted time and time again. Nothing really matters, nothing is delved into as much as it should be, and beyond the characters themselves I just did not care. One standout is that the Dathomir story was awesome. More of that please.

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Speaking of characters . . . . I wish video game developers would stop using motion capture for their protagonists. Or at the very least, pick lesser known actors for those roles. I don’t mind side-characters being in motion capture. Hell, I think it really worked here. But yeah, I 100% could not take the main character, Cal, seriously.

See, Cal is played by Cameron Monaghan. Monaghan is most known for his role as Ian Gallaghar, a gay bipolar youth struggling through angst and mental health issues as his family falls apart around him. He’s a good actor, don’t get me wrong, but I play video games, especially Star Wars ones, for the fantasy. It’s awfully hard to escape into that fantasy when the main character has a face you know, and is most known for characters very at odds with what is being played in the game. The Force Unleashed games did this as well with another well known actor. I had the same issue then.

To be clear, there are times where I think motion capture protagonists work well. Death Stranding and Normal Reedus is a great example. In that game, Reedus is playing a character that is very similar to what he is known for on TV. It works, and I can dig into it. Here with Monaghan not so much.

The Bad:

Boy, I don’t know if this was a rush job or what, but a ton of stuff in this game looks to be missing, cut, or simply unfinished.

Loot . . . . well, there is none. There are treasure boxes all over the place to find though, containing super bland poncho or lightsaber shaders. Do I want a yellow and grey poncho, or a blue and grey poncho? Oh my! The choices! You get the point.

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There is almost zero customization that means anything in this game. Skills are all easily obtained through normal play, outfits are bland and uninspired, and nothing to find beyond increasing your Stimpack capacity will matter. It’s all just so dull.

Along those same lines, the game play was very much not my thing. Easily 3/4 of the game is just running around platforming and solving puzzles. And a lot of that time is all just to find those mentioned boring shaders.

Well, that’s not quite true. There are lore entries to find! Whew, Star Wars and lore; it goes hand in hand. This will be good . . .

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Well, that was a let down.

Most lore entries in the game are tiny sentence long bits of nothing. This is freaking Star Wars. I mean, come on Respawn! This is just lame. It honestly feels like the game was unfinished and rushed, or that a lot of the lore and item mechanics were just thrown in because someone told the developers that they had to have them. This was a big let down.

Without any real incentive to explore, the puzzle and platform sections of the game quickly got on my nerves. There needs to be a reward for venturing into corners unknown. You will not find that here.

Okay, this has been my longest review yet, and I think I could probably rant for a while longer. Let’s just finish this now.

The Verdict:

I feel let down and disappointing in Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. Not because it’s a bad game, but rather because the parts that I enjoyed I freaking loved, but just so much of the game is not where it should be. The story is lacking, I did not enjoy the main character, and there is almost zero reason to explore the game world as the goodies to find are lame.

I still recommend this game if you love Star Wars, but just know that it’s not the best Star Wars game out there like some are saying. This is not an RPG either, so don’t go in thinking that.