I have been holding out for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for a very long time, fully expecting it to be yet another western attempt at a challenging Souls-like title that will annoy me more than entertain. Besides, the timing of the game couldn’t have been more unfortunate, being somewhat tied in with the worst Star Wars feature film, released a month later and overshadowing all Star Wars news for a while. And I’m also one that always craved for stories that distance themselves from the two original movie trilogy timelines, preferring something like the Old Republic over yet another chance to shoehorn the poor Skywalkers into a new story. But the reviews of the game were positive enough for me to be at least vaguely interested and, with low expectations, I sat down to play the game. I was most impressed.
Mechanically, Jedi: Fallen Order plays like a mix of the platforming-heavy action adventures (think Legacy of Kain, or more recently, Darksiders), character hack and slash action titles and a more Souls-like pace to the combat. You get a lot of traversal abilities, and keep getting and upgrading them as the game moves along, opening new ways both for the future areas and for backtracking and exploration. And you get a lot of combat abilities, a lot of which will be familiar if you’ve played other Star Wars-based games in the past, perhaps most notably Jedi Knight or Force Unleashed. You get experience from combat or finding force echoes of past events which nets you skill points as well, which also improves your combat, sometimes adding new moves and abilities, sometimes just improving your basic stats.
Perhaps, most surprising was the decision to make the majority of the exploration rewards purely cosmetic. That’s right – while you can find lots and lots of, essentially, “treasure chests” around the locations, all of them contain cosmetic upgrades which have no effect on the gameplay at all. And only some types of rewards have things that make your life easier, like more healing items per rest or extensions for health and force. It’s a very curious choice that I personally liked a lot, since for me exploration is always rewarding in itself and besides the cosmetics are genuinely nice. Yet, I won’t be surprised if someone finds this decision not to their liking.
I’d argue, that this choice was also there to balance the combat more, yet… I can’t say that the challenge of the combat is well balanced in general. The game defaults to the second from the start difficulty, while the “balanced” one is the third one from the start. And I would advise starting the game at that second difficulty myself. You can switch it at any point, but in my opinion, the controls, the responsiveness, the camera and the balancing of the encounters in this game isn’t good enough for a more “punishing” difficulty, at least not until you learn the mechanics better and unlock more abilities. I started the game with the “balanced” option and quickly got frustrated, while the default option turned out to be just the right spot for motivating you to be smart and no mash buttons, but not punishing enough to get frustrating. It gets quite easy by the end of the game, if you don’t switch, but even there, I felt like it fit the fantasy of the Jedi better anyway.
And speaking of the Jedi, the story in the game, while not fantastic, is really well delivered. The characters are extremely likeable and interesting, even if a bit predictable for the setting, and the storytelling is really well done. Some interesting characters get introduced way too late into the story, unfortunately, and I wish you’d meet them sooner and have their stories cook a bit longer, but even as is they turned out to be fun. The tale is delivered across several planets you get to visit, some of which will be familiar for those into the SW universe. And visually the game is a joy to behold, full of really beautiful locations, both in terms of art direction and in terms of how they get rendered on screen. The music is… well, it’s Star Wars music, sadly no unique takes here, but it serves the needs of the story well enough.
Time and time again I was catching myself trying to criticize the game for things it got wrong really harshly and simply being unable to. Realizing that, while the criticism was very much valid and the game could’ve been even better, I still loved playing it. It’s an action adventure that is extremely enjoyable to play through and while it’s not comparable in terms of story and world building, I’ve not enjoyed a game like this as much since the last several Legacy of Kain titles. Which… reminds me that there was meant to be a Star Wars game developed by Visceral Games and Amy Hennig until EA unceremoniously canned it… And we’ll never know if it could’ve been better than what we got with Jedi: Fallen Order. But… what we did get with Jedi: Fallen Order is really really good and I loved playing it. If you’re aching for a fun adventure with a solid story in a Star Wars universe, definitely give this game a chance.