Developer: Respawn Entertainment, 2019
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Available: X-Box One, Playstation 4, PC (Origin)
Star Wars is a franchise that I have a pretty weird relationship with. Early on, I ended up kind of despising it because of my own mother. During a time where my video game time was super restricted to one hour, between two days in the week, because of the Super Nintendo was hooked up in the living room and I didn’t have a television in my own bedroom until later, Star Wars ended up making me lose that precious game time more often than not because the USA or TBS television networks for whatever reason always had a Star Wars marathon of the original trilogy to come on television. I think she was a massive Han Solo, rather Harrison Ford, fan and didn’t care if Han shot first or not. From there, however, realizing I was kind of really needing to blame my own mother than Star Wars, I ended up accepting the franchise as…well, something to watch, I guess. Even the prequel trilogy that came out incidentally enough. I wasn’t a die-hard fan or anything of such and that haven’t necessarily changed to this day.
Though having this p***k kill the invested mood of two-thirds of the scenes in Episode 1 wasn’t doing any favors.
Star Wars games on the other hand I felt was their own beast. I haven’t played that many of them growing up. I used to play the SNES titles that came out back at a cousin’s house of mine, and despite it being on the easiest setting, it was still tough as nails to beat. Shadows of the Empire for the N64 was also a tough one to get through, though I never really beaten that one at all since the game wasn’t mine to begin with either. That would probably be the extent of my Star Wars gaming. In fact most of the Star Wars games I haven’t really got into playing until after long after I moved out of my parents house and incidentally enough, after I got curious and joined in an on-going Star Wars table-top roleplay game along with Mitch, Crystal, Reno, and Sol. It’d probably be because of playing the roleplay game where I eventually took the dive in video games like Knights of the Old Republic and The Force Unleashed…where their canonicity now is…dubious, thanks to Disney now holding the rights to Star Wars and many other franchises that the House of Mouse got its rich mitts on.
Come E3 of 2018, a new Star Wars game was announced by EA, stating that it would be a third-person action adventure, single player title which would be named Star Wars – Jedi Fallen Order. That in and of itself was jaw-dropping coming out of EA because for the longest of time, EA was hell bent on staying in the position that there was no market for that sort of thing, despite evidence to the contrary, and EA was already looking in dire-straights by cranking out the same yearly sports game and dealing with the massive debacle of Star Wars: Battlefront II and the loot boxes that came with it. While published by EA, the development would be headed by Respawn Entertainment, primarily known for the Titanfall games and the free-to-play battle royal game Apex Legends.
Respawn Entertainment was wanting this game to stand out in its own way. Fast forward to E3 2019, and a 15-minute demo was shown off, showing the game having elements of a Metroidvania when it comes to map traversal, Dark Souls as far as progression is concerned, and all of which is wrapped up in a Star Wars skin. I was honestly interested in the game for the longest of time, but originally the game was only going to be for the PS4 and X-Box One. Until it wasn’t. News came soon after that it was going to be out for PC. But given this was EA, Origin was going to be involved, which didn’t help the mood much. But then, a miracle. It was coming out for Steam! But then, not really…
Will you quit stringing me along!?
Resigned to the fact that if I wanted to play this thing, I’d have to download Origin, and perhaps getting it for cheaper allowed me not to take that much of a sting due to receiving an Amazon gift card from my workplace Christmas Party to buy a download code for it, I took the dive, waited two hours to download, and went to have at it. So, at the end of the day, is it worth taking another trip to a galaxy far, far away? Find out.
Story:
Five years ago, the Emperor told a great number of clone solders to “Execute Order 66”. The command would turn the clones against their Jedi commanders, purging a great deal of Jedi from the galaxy, leaving the likes of the up and coming empire next to no opposition to its formation and subsequent rule. The few Jedi that would escape would be Cal Kestis, a mere Jedi Padawan, a student if you will, who went into hiding on a planet known as Bracca, and there he stayed in hiding for those few years. This planet was one gigantic scrapyard, where the workers would be tasked in disassembling the ships at the end of the Republic era from both sides of the war and repurpose the metal and parts for new ships for a grand new empire. Cal would blend in with the various workers, performing the various tasks asked of him. That would all change when he and a friend of his gets caught up in an accident which Cal saves his life by using the Force, exposing himself to the empire at large, and soon after found himself being hunted down relentlessly by the Imperial Inquisition, a group dedicated to hunting down force sensitives, Jedi or not.
Yes, you will expect the inquisition.
Cal immediately flees and ends up being rescued by a former Jedi Knight named Cere Junda and her partner pilot, Greez. The bunch would then flee to a planet named Bogano, a planet that isn’t on any star map of any kind, where Cal would end up finding himself a new purpose in life. Rebuilding the now fallen Jedi Order. And to do that, they would need to somehow access a vault on Bogano which was being studied by Cere’s former teacher. Within it contains a list and location of every force sensitive child known in the galaxy. However, knowing the empire would be delighted to get their hands on such information, Cal, Cere, and Greez would have to be discreet in their methods to obtaining this prize, otherwise they lose everything.
The story will unfold over the span of several planets: from the silent, peaceful crags of Bogano, to the thick jungles of Kashyyyk where the Wookies roam, to the seemingly uninhabitable planet of Dathomir. Each place has their own troubles, but yet, with their own pieces to the proverbial overall puzzle that is getting the list of force sensitive children from the vault on Bogano. One will see how Cal and Cere copes with the various tasks at hand and see how they start to change as the story progresses, such as how Cal and Cere tries to overcome their past hardships. Unfortunately, the character development is only generally limited to them. Some characters in this game are general one-offs, such as Saw Gerrera who shows up in this game, though his story may be better figured out within the likes of the Star Wars animated shows or the Rogue One movie. That much wasn’t important. Others that you are with the entire time throughout the game, however, such as Greez, doesn’t get much development. The most you get out of him is his love for his great grandmother, the fact that he had a very unfortunate dealing with a criminal organization called the Haxion Brood, his love for plants in a terrarium instead of out in nature, and cooking. And only one aspect of his story, the Haxion Brood, which stops you midway through the story, comes off as a footnote at best. This game had plenty to go on to delve into in some fashion and they didn’t really quite jump on it. Cere’s teacher, whose notes and discoveries you end up encountering throughout the game in trying to gain access to the vault, seemed like he got more development, than Greez did, and it felt like it missed a fair bit of potential.
Seriously, you get this guy to take you all over the galaxy. Throw him a bone already.
The game’s lore however does get expanded. Like in Metroid Prime, for example, there are a plethora of designated areas that allows you to listen into a Force Echo, a spot that allows you to listen to the history of some object or some spot. Furthermore, early on in the game, you get another partner, a tiny droid named BD-1. BD-1 has various functions within gameplay, one of which will be scanning various objects as well to give you some sort of data as to what you are contending with, or will contend with again in the future. Each echo and scannable object gives depth to what planet you are exploring and to recap on what you listened in on and what you scanned, it’s all available in your pause menu to see.
Overall, the story was fine and it puts the setting for the franchise as a whole at this time frame into a general good enough view, all the while doing so in Star Wars space-opera like fashion. Empire is gaining steam and because of which every planet you visit is essentially a crapshoot. Except Dathomir, because…that place probably always was a crapshoot even before the Empire was thought of. You get quips here and there just how it affects those beyond the planets you visit on just how everything works and what it may mean should you succeed and fail your mission in obtaining the list of force sensitives.
Gameplay:
The game play is as advertised. Take one part Metroidvania, One Part Dark Souls, and one part Star Wars. Blend thoroughly. Now for the purposes of this review, I played this on PC, using an X-Box One controller plugged into my USB port. As such, allow me to break this down quickly.
First, every button is used in some fashion in this game. Left Stick is general movement, with pressing down on the stick allows you to run, right stick is your camera, and pressing down on it gives you a lock on to an enemy should he be in range. X is a basic attack, Y is a Strong attack, A to Jump, B is Dodge, and Left Bumper is guard. You get these initially and as you progress through the game, the other buttons open up, namely to the force powers that Cal re-learns as he continues his journey. The controls are simple as can be, which I always praise to be a godsend.
Now, as far as the game itself, let’s break down the parts. The Dark Souls aspects are in full force. Now, I know nowadays people are tired of everything being compared to Dark Souls, namely because of the games seemingly borderline unfair difficulty they cite to. Unfortunately for the general masses, Respawn Entertainment specifically said Dark Souls was one of their inspirations for this game and it very well shows. Regardless, difficulty isn’t the only thing that Dark Souls was all about and unfortunately it’s rather annoying that that’s all that many thinks about. Dark Souls was a game that was also known for its various enemies and the maps you traversed. The game punished you for trying to just simply walk into an area and tried to be the juggernaut and brute force your way through the various enemies. The game had an intuitive combat mechanic that emphasized you had to be careful at every step of the way, know what you were capable of, and if you weren’t capable, emphasized that you’d be better off going another way, if not outright retreat, instead of fruitlessly bashing your head against the proverbial wall, unless said wall was an outright boss you had to kill. Stats and equipment subverted your expectations of being a walking death machine, it instead otherwise meant you possibly died just a hair slower. The game emphasized for you to watch your adversary, look for the various tells, and react accordingly. Don’t rush.
The motions which I described is essentially like being a Jedi. Jedi didn’t go out of their way to look for a fight and should they had to get into conflict, they are out to defend, not slaughter. For that matter, you don’t have a multitude of force powers at your disposal, and what ones you have you cannot just spam all over the place and expect to come out fine.
You’re not this guy. Don’t try it.
Pressing your X Button or whatever your attack button is in a frantic pace will more often than not get you killed. Likewise, being too timid and hiding behind your guard is also bound to doom you due to the fact that your guard is dictated by a stamina meter, which is shown as a white meter above your force meter. Simply guarding to shield yourself from blaster fire or swings of a melee weapon by a foe will decrease the meter until your guard is broken and you take a fair amount of damage. Worse is that most enemies have an unblockable attack, indicated by foes flashing red just before the attack, which you won’ be able to guard at all. Timing your guard right, however, will allow you to parry to no penalty to your stamina meter. This more often than not opens up enemies to be staggered if they are melee based since most enemies also have a stamina meter and can have their guard crushed by you parrying. This won’t work on unblockable attacks, however, but they can still be dodged out of the way by pressing your dodge button. Unlike in Dark Souls however, you don’t have a grand amount of invincibility at all, if any, and you’re not going to be simply able to roll through your enemies to get out of trouble. You have to position yourself just right. Like you would see in the movies, timing your parry against a ranged attack, read blaster fire, you can reflect and return back to sender much to your foes’ disdain. Likewise, managing your Force is also needed to be kept in mind. As mentioned, you cannot spam them at a frantic pace. Its only means to regenerate is attacking an enemy and landing clean hits. Granted, you’ll eventually get the means to regenerate force even if foes guard against you, but it’s still all a pittance and shouldn’t be relied upon. Your attack and defense needs to be at a balance.
Everything needs to be approached with caution. Read the situation before you and act appropriately. As a great Jedi Master one said “There are alternatives to fighting.” Enemies will react to you and those around them and the environment around them. If you see a whole bunch of Stormtroopers for example but they’re not focused on you because they’re trying not to get mauled by the local wildlife? Stand back and watch the show. Let the numbers thin out then pick off the rest. Better than getting the ire of everything under the sun and get taken out. Soldiers blocking off an elevator you need to get to? Who’s there and where? Any enemy you know is going to be problematic? Is there anything that you can take advantage of? Take everything into consideration before igniting that lightsaber of yours and going to town.
Heed these words and you’ll be a master in no time.
Also like in Dark Souls, it takes a page from its bonfire mechanic. Only this time, instead of a bonfire it’s a meditation circle. Taking a stop at these circles and choosing to rest not only heals you, recover your force powers, and replenish your means of healing, it also respawns every last enemy that was slain by your hands or not since your last rest. These mediation circles also doubles as your checkpoints, so even if you don’t choose to rest, simply sitting down at them allows you to come back to that circle should you perish to blaster fire or some other unfortunate end. It would also be at these meditation circles where you can take skill points that you accumulated through your journey and invest them. You gain experience by defeating enemies as well as taking in the various points in lore the game provides out to you in some fashion, namely the Force Echoes and scans by BD-1 that you’ll surely find along the way. The skill tree isn’t going to be all that large at first, but as you continue through the story, you’ll eventually unlock more and more new things to help you on your path.
It doesn’t look like much now, but like any tree, it needs time to grow.
Finally like in Dark Souls, should you have amassed a good chunk of experience and end up getting bashed in the face by a Purge Trooper’s stun baton to your defeat, you’ll lose that accumulated experience. Take note, however, unlike Dark Souls, that the only experience you lose is the experience between Skill Points. Should you already have one banked and at the ready to be spent, you will not lose those, so losing to a foe isn’t outright crippling. Regardless, to get that experience back, you go back to the one that killed you and land at least one successful hit on your target. Then feel free to actually defeat him or just run for it if you can.
The Metroidvania aspect also is in effect for this game. There will come many times where you come across an area that you cannot traverse because you do not have the right ability to proceed. You will be able to go back to the area in question at any time so you’re not truly able to miss out on any hidden secrets there may be in this game or for that matter be able to progress through the story. Incidentally, the map feature provided to you by your droid companion, BD-1, will be able to point out areas that you have yet to traverse, or if you’ve been in the immediate area, but wasn’t able to traverse it before, will be able to show you that you can or still can’t, all in color coordinated fashion. The game rewards exploration instead of blazing through the game. And in a bit of anti-frustration features being in play, as long as you are not in combat, you have free reign to use any and all force powers available to you should you need them. Furthermore, like specifically in the Metroid Prime series, the game will give you an objective for you to go to for the story instead of leaving you lost to wonder planet after planet wondering where the heck you need to go. Finally, like in a Metroidvania, the new abilities that you get your hands on, rather it be through the skill tree or that new nifty Force power that you get, you’re free to experiment with them however you see fit. See how enemies react, how does the environment react, and so on. Doing so will probably allow you to stumble upon shortcuts to get you from one destination to the next in short order, which will be necessary since there is no fast travel option in this game, even if it could be localized to just the planet you’re on.
What sets Jedi Fallen Order apart a bit from those two genres however is the difficulty system. It’s not your standard run of the mill system where the harder the game is, the more hits enemies will soak up and how cheap they can be. While the harder the difficulty will dictate how much damage you take should you screw up, it instead dictates how aggressive your foes will be and your capability to guard attacks, namely the window of opportunity to parry your foe. The higher it is, the more relentless your foes will be and the time to parry will only be mere frames instead having extremely timid enemies and having at least a second or two on the lower difficulty to parry an enemy. You have four difficulty settings to choose from: “Story” which emphasize you just wanting to see the story and little involvement in combat, to Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, then finally Jedi Grandmaster, which is the hardest setting. The difference between each difficulty setting is pretty staggering so go with caution should you seek the harder difficulties.
Overall, in practice, the game plays just fine. The controls are generally tight and responsive and everything is generally fair. You need to mind your positioning and your situation and everything will come out fine. It’s not as cruel as Dark Souls, even on the hardest difficulties, but it will make you think twice before you think you can go Leeroy Jenkins to a mob carrying blasters.
Audio/Visuals
The audio is pretty good, dynamic even. From the serene to the most tense, everything that you encounter tends to mix the audio up in some fashion on the spot. The music was composed by the likes of Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton, the former of who worked on the Knights of the Old Republic series as well as Star Wars Battlefront and the latter of whom who worked on the Titanfall franchise. They employed the services of the London Symphony Orchestra (of John Williams Star Wars fame) and the Bach Choir of London. Because of which, it actually sounded like if you were listening to a John Williams orchestral score. Sound effects are on point as well, from the various background noises traveling Kashyyyk or simply the ignition of a lightsaber. Everything is within crystal clarity and helps gets you in the mood of what your doing.
Visuals on the other hand is going to be a point of contention for this review. The game is demanding, with most of the requirements requiring current generation computer hardware (at least as of this review). Hardware that I don’t have and probably have no intention of getting for at least another couple of years if my computer will allow it. I ended up reading that having so demanding computer needs such as these just to meet recommended specs is a sign of poor optimization on part of the developer. I ended up having to turn down the visuals quite a bit, even down to reducing the frame rate some just for the game to function. And as a just in case notion, I even closed a bunch of other unneeded background processes just so I have that bit more RAM just so my computer doesn’t whine in submission. Even then, there were on occasions where the game did lag at spots. Fortunately, it didn’t do it at the most critical times, like a major fight of some kind. So small victory there, I suppose. However, looking in on videos of the other versions and those who could meet the PC specifications, the visuals for me and what was on the videos were practically night and day. Granted, the visuals looked fine even when I had them turned down as I did, but they were nothing compared to what I watched on Youtube.
The solace in all of this is the gameplay was generally unaffected by the general quality of the game with the settings turned down and playing it was still a fun time. You could probably end up forgetting eventually about the toned down graphical settings, but if you hold the visuals as high as you would gameplay, unless your computer is the absolute top of the line rig, you may want to consider the PS4 or X-Box One versions.
The Side Notes:
Unfortunately, there’s not much to do beyond the story for Jedi Fallen Order. There are 39 Achievements for you to attempt to get, and at least 1/4 of them is simply your standard “Reach this part in the story” kind of achievement. Others will take a little work, but nothing too outrageous. Some of them you may achieve in your run through naturally, like deflecting a certain number of blaster shots back at enemies. None of the achievements require any particular difficulty to achieve, either, so that could either be a blessing or problem depending on your point of view.
Possibly also problematic is that there isn’t anything to do apart from the main story anyways. There are no side quests, rather they be major or minor, to do while you are planet hopping to finish your quest to achieve the list of force sensitive children. It goes from one major conflict to the next with nothing in between. While this can simply be praised for not artificially inflating the game in that light, it can however be knocked on because of the next point…
While the game rewards you with thorough exploration, the majority of it has no impact on gameplay whatsoever other than perhaps the pacing of the game, that is to say really slow it down. There are storage containers littered throughout the game, some of which you will not be able to open until you get an upgrade for your droid companion. Yellow containers are the most valuable ones, since they provide you with healing stims, which is your means to recover health between meditation circles. Finding each one gives you more opportunities to heal later. However all the other containers contain nothing more than cosmetic changes for yourself, your robot companion, your lightsaber, and the ship you fly around in. Granted these changes can be seen during game play and in cut scenes, they have no impact whatsoever during gameplay. The Force Echoes, while they give experience to add up towards skill points, and some give more points than others for some reason, the real prize are the ones that actually expand your health and force meters, to which they are extremely few and far between. The rest of the echoes could potentially be made up for by simply defeating enemies. With all being said however, a couple of the achievements are tied into getting the force echoes and data scans from BD-1, let alone getting all of the storage containers and obtaining the cosmetic changes. Not helping the proverbial hollow victory in finding these, there is not a new game+ of any sort to actually play around with these cosmetics say if you wanted to start another run through of the game. And with EA already stating there is no DLC campaigns or anything of the sort planned for Jedi Fallen Order, it makes it all the more not worth the time in the long term. The only comfort in all of this, EA did fulfill one of the promises that this game would not be littered with pay-to-win loot boxes and such just as they did with Battlefront II. If there was something that you could do in the process of trying to find these storage containers, again, like some sort of side quest to give you that little incentive to explore a particular area of some kind instead of just banking on a players curiosity, or if the things you found in storage containers provided some sort, if albeit minor, benefit of some kind, then it might be more worth finding that poncho for Cal or different paint job for your ship.
The Final Say:
So, at the end of the day, Star Wars – Jedi Fallen Order is an engaging experience. In a way, it’s Dark Souls lite. While it has the engaging combat like the infamous game, it’s not as punishing as it, leaving it open for all players alike. The story is great, even if you are not one who particularly keeps up with the canonical lore of the franchise. However, players will find that while the game is fun and the story is in depth for who it involves most, the only thing you got in it is the main story. The incentives to explore the dangerous, unknown off-beaten paths, are hampered once one figures out that most of the things you find is cosmetic. Granted, the exploration could uncover shortcuts to get from one destination to the next on any given planet, which will be needed since there is no fast travel option of any sort, it doesn’t take really any of the sting out of it if you’re are set trying to find one particular container in one particular area or maybe a Force Echo that might be one piece to a set to expand either your life or force meter. The visuals, even toned down, are pretty good, but if you want the best visual experience, you’ll end up having to invest in the hardware which depending on your wallet will not be worth it. Past all of the negatives however, one will find a roughly 20 hour fun romp through the galaxy. Star Wars – Jedi Fallen Order gets a 8 out of 10.
Force Yeet. *Wilhelm Scream*