After the conclusion of The Book of Boba Fett I was left somewhat wanting, looking for something to cleanse my palette and renew my faith in Star Wars. For a few weeks I’d been considering getting into gaming, so I booted up Steam and searched for Star Wars games. As luck would have it, Jedi: Fallen Order, Battlefront 1 and 2, and Squadrons were all on sale. After a few hours of debate on whether I should go with Fallen Order or Battlefront, I settled on Fallen Order. As much as I want to experience the story in Battlefront 2, my interests are single player and I had a hard time justifying the money on the few hours of the Battlefront single player story.
I’m basically brand new to ‘gaming’ as most people would understand the term. For a few years I have done sim racing with a VR racing rig, and as a kid I played off and on, but up until Fallen Order I’d never got into anything with an actual story, objectives, etc. This was a totally new experience for me, and I anticipated quite a learning curve.
So, once I bought Fallen Order I downloaded the game and booted it up. For a couple days I played around getting graphics settings tweaked and things running nicely on my system, getting a feel for the mechanics of the game, etc. For this period I was playing with a mouse and keyboard. Once I got things sorted out I bought a proper controller, started a new journey, and set off on completing the story. Prior to this moment I had about 8 hours of playtime and made it past the initial Bracca intro level and moved onto Bogano and did some exploring there.
Upon starting my main playthrough with controller I pretty quickly moved through Bracca and got down to business on Bogano. The first mission on Bogano went pretty quickly, then I moved onto the next mission on Zeffo. I loved Zeffo to start, the village is beautiful and charming. Those sentiments changed pretty quickly once I got down into the vaults. I pretty quickly got to the Tomb Guardian, beat him, thought I’d completed my objective and started to try and find my way out. After several hours I was hopelessly lost and kept ending up back where I began. The next day I resumed trying to find my way out, to no avail. I didn’t realize that my objective wasn’t complete, and I still had puzzles to solve and objectives to complete before the game would allow me to leave. This realization only fully formed after I got some hints from the game and confirmed my suspicions online. All well, I figured out what had to be done and finished things up. On to Dathomir.
Dathomir was probably the most challenging section of the game as far as enemies were concerned. It was also probably the least enjoyable planet for me. I’m personally not big on zombies, monsters, the undead, and evil vibes, so the planet doesn’t have much to offer for me. Ironically, Darth Maul is one of my favourite Star Wars characters. I enjoyed the challenge of fighting the night brothers though, and the planet is home to one of the more interesting characters in the game in the shape of Merrin.
From here I believe I went back to Zeffo on a mission to explore the wreckage of the Venator. The wreckage was impressive and intricate. During this mission we end up underground in what I believe is a cave system where you get arrested. After breaking out you end up in an arena and have to fight wild beasts for the entertainment of others, Roman style. I enjoyed this scene, and loved the music that plays over the opening of it.
Moving on, I landed on Kashyyyk next. Taking over the walker and taking down the Imperial base was pretty cool. I sure do wish we had occasion to ride that speeder bike though. The opening sections of Kashyyyk were pretty cool, but I didn’t enjoy the darker parts of planet with all the vicious plants and various things trying to kill you. I was hoping for more tree tops and beach adventures on this planet.
The fight against the 9th sister was extremely challenging and took me a long time to complete, probably 4-5 hours over the course of 2 days.
Onward to Illum, and it was a neat planet. Snow and ice looks quite good in this game engine. On the way back to the Mantis I spent a lot of time in camera mode checking out the landscape and photographing the walkers against the snowy landscape.
From here I believe I moved on to the final destination, Nur, and the Fortress Inquisitorius. I quickly made my way through the beginning and found myself at the final fight against Trilla. She was far and away the hardest fight of the entire game. After many hours of trying, I finally beat her, and that’s where things started going down hill. After defeating her, and the cutscenes that follow finish, I believe my game started to have some bugs that kind of ruined the end of the game for me. First, once Vader appeared on scene and dispatched Trilla, he takes hold of you in a force choke. I had a prompt on screen that showed using one of the sticks to aim, but I got like 1-2 degrees of movement on the screen from the sticks, and it wasn’t clear what I was supposed to be aiming. He’d kill me, I’d re-enter the room, get force choked to death again, then rinse and repeat. This cycle went on 3-4 times before I was told to run. I did, exited the building, took the side catwalk to jump over onto the remaining section of the bridge where I was promptly repelled from the surface and sent plunging to my death once again.
This too happened 3-4 times before I was able to get proper purchase on the bridge, jump across and to the safety of the elevator. Once inside, I activate it, and promptly fall through the floor of the elevator and die. Once again I run from Vader, across the bridges, and to the elevator. This time I didn’t fall through the floor, and from this point it seems the game began functioning normally again. Things were only on the fritz for maybe 10 minutes total, but it was enough to ruin what should have been the most tense and pivotal moments of the entire story and it left me feeling kind of empty. After this I quickly finished off the story and returned to my ship.
On the whole, I thought this was an amazing game, even considering the issues I experienced at the end. It was thoroughly engaging, and the story was very good. I played through on the Jedi Night difficulty level and it took me about 40 hours to finish the story with a total completion of about 85%.
Jedi Night felt like a good difficulty level for someone like me with no experience in this type of gaming. The combat took me a long time to get the hang of, and it was only near the very end of the game I started to gain any competency in that arena. The fight against Malicos was a turning point for me in learning the intricacies of the system. The puzzles were fun and engaging. Some of the fights and puzzles were quite difficult and took a lot of time and attempts, but at no point did I find myself getting truly frustrated, or annoyed to the point that it turned me off the game. On the contrary, each time I’d take a break I found myself quickly booting back into the game for another go.
I really enjoyed the story heavy element of the game, and felt the story was quite good. Merrin is very interesting and I hope her story will be more flushed out in future titles, she was a nice addition to the crew. I really liked Greeze and hope we’ll see more of him. I was a bit less sold on Cere. I don’t think her story was quite as coherent or compelling as it could have been. She left me unsure of what exactly her motivations were, and unsure even of her story. First we learn that she was captured by Imperials and gave up her Padawan under duress, but then later we see her come face to face with Trilla as an Inquisitor while still under Imperial detainment. Did they really turn and train Trilla that quickly, or are there inconsistencies and things left untold in Cere’s story? Either way, I felt she could have been handled better. Rather then being left curious to know more about her, I was left a bit annoyed by and suspicious of her.
The adventurous nature of the story, combined with the focus on the exploration of the history and mystery of the force gave me some serious Rebels vibes. Rebels is one of my favourite Star Wars series for exactly those reasons, so this game sat rather well with me.
Going into the game I knew a lot of the major beats of the story as I never thought I’d play it, so didn’t avoid spoilers. After I began playing some more elements were spoiled for me, as I was watching content related to the game. This didn’t really ruin anything for me, but I do look forward to the various single player Star Wars stories coming in the future and playing them without spoilers from the outset.
Hopefully we’ll get a formal announcement of the next title in the ‘Jedi:’ franchise at one of the upcoming events, and maybe some early details of other titles in the works. Next time Battlefront 2 goes on sale I’ll be picking up a copy and playing through the story mode. Lego Star Wars Skywalker Saga looks to be next on the slate and I’m debating picking that up on release, though I’m painfully cheap and the thought of buying it at release for full price hurts. We’ll see when the time comes, it certainly does look like fun.
All said and done, I loved the game and I’m happy I took the plunge into this type of gaming.
Review by Lewis Pohles.
[lasso box=”B09GQJRGB1″ id=”169506″ link_id=”40113″ ref=”amzn-star-wars-racer-and-commando-combo-nintendo-switch”]