If you were wondering, you play as a Jedi in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Unlike the past “good” Star Wars games though, neither are you free to choose a path between Sith and Jedi, neither do you play a generic Padawan green under the ears fresh out of the academy. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order offers a linear story set between the original prequel trilogy and the new prequels (if you can wrap your head around that). But there hasn’t been a good Star Wars game in a while, and it’s published by EA, and its made by multiplayer specialist Respawn. So is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order any good, let’s find out.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order feels like a lot of games at different times. It’s most certainly Uncharted that it has these amazing exploration-based set-pieces which have you crawling, jumping, sliding, swinging and running into puzzles for just about enough as to not feel overwhelmed by them. It feels like Metroid when you open the map, and you see areas blocked off at one time but accessible when you later return to them with new skills. It also feels a lot like Titanfall 2, especially when you are using the wall run ability. Sometimes it feels like Mass Effect in the way it handles loading times between planet to planet, letting you fiddle around in the Mantis (your space ride this time) loading the planet in the background, as you customize your lightsaber. At others, it can feel like God Of War, when your companion the droid BD-1 leaves your side and attracts your attention to point of interests, something which is proliferated across the planets, and are deeply dipped in the Star Wars sauce.

But Star Wars Jedi: Fall Order takes its biggest inspiration from Dark Souls. Its combat, its checkpoint, and its way of handling death is clearly inspired by the brutal slow and steady action RPG. In fact, the best way to describe Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for the lack of a better term is Souls-Lite. Let me explain why. The game is full of Meditation points, which work the same way as bonfires in Dark Souls, you can upgrade yourself there (and skill points once collected cannot be lost) or you can heal yourself respawning all the enemies in the area. So far so good. If you die while you are jumping off a cliff, or during a set-piece, you immediately respawn and start from the nearest checkpoint (which more often than not is the place where you actually chocked). However, if you die in combat you will have to respawn at the last Meditation Point and continue the assault. You do lose all your exp that you had accumulated till that point for your next skill point, but it does mark your nemesis in a golden color, and if you are able to strike him once you get all your health, all your force, and all your exp back. So Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is like Dark Souls but more forgiving, hence Souls-Lite.

Even in combat, the influence of Dark Souls is clear. Your lightsaber is the only weapon, you will ever have throughout the game, but it falls into the Plasma Cutter (from Dead Space) category in the way that its really good, and more importantly feels like a lightsaber when you are using it. Using a lightsaber though means most of your attacks are melee-based which basically translates to the formula of blocking, dodging, telegraphing moves and attacking when the opening presents itself. As you level up and obtain more skills, combat will become more fun and varied especially with grunts, who can be pushed off a ledge, pulled towards you and slowed down at the press of a button, but against stronger opponents and indeed Sith fighters, you will be utilizing your entire repertoire of skills.

Respawn however does make those tougher fights feel more rewarding. Just like the way they are able to make exploration rewarding when you are able to string together your Jedi skills to an otherwise blocked area. Critically speaking the Jedi powers on offer aren’t too varied, but they are mixed and matched together in such interesting ways that they feel significantly more diverse and yet easy to execute.

Story & Narrative

What Respawn lands the best though is the pacing of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. The puzzles never overstay their welcome, the combat never feels as if it’s going on forever, and even exploration is carefully stunted so you are never too far away from the critical path. Kickstarted, by what Jay called one of the best mixes of storytelling and tutorial he has seen in a while. All of this is underlined by the search of an ancient relic developed by an extinct alien race, lost to time, and the only hope for the Jedis in their war against the Inquisition (Mass Effect or Anthem, basically any space opera ever).

The Star Wars storyline can feel a little too cramped sometimes, with almost every day of each week mapped out. However, Respawn does find a space and places it between 2 events that I think sit the best in Star Wars fan’s heart, The Clone Wars and Episode 4. There is also a special appearance by Saw Gerrera which again pulls the thread of both old fans and new. This also lets them fill the game world out with easter eggs, and build a story around how the Jedi order suffered since Order 66, told through echoes and scan entries which build up a world around you. And it’s not a small world either, playing through just the story mission, should clock your adventure at around 20 hours. But exploring all the planets, discovering all the secrets, and unlocking all the echoes, which I highly recommend should bump up your game time to 30.

Through those 20-30 hours, the story of inquisition and victimhood shows the clearest in Cal Kestis’s mentor Cere Junda, and her estranged Padawan Trilla. As both present contrasting narratives to similar pressures. Cal himself though, while reasonably well-acted by Cameron Monaghan never develops more than a 2 dimensional cookie-cutter Jedi. In fact its the constant chatter and the relationship between BD-1 and Cal which feels more developed and well implemented.

Graphics Performance & Sound

Most of it is down to BD-1 itself. The droid like most things in the game feels as if it has belonged to the world of Star Wars forever. The sound effects of the little robot are on point, and if you are an old fan those beeps and boops will take you back. Beyond the BD-1 the Mantis, the planets, the Storm Troopers, the Inquisition, the Partisans, the bounty hunters and even the Wookies make the game feels like a smaller story in a larger narrative than the more common Save The Universe from Annihilation. And that’s a good thing because the visuals depend more on how they fit than how they look when they try to impress you. Especially for someone like me who was coming from playing the excellent looking Call Of Duty Modern Warfare, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order just didn’t look that great.

There are other issues too. There is visible stuttering when you enter new areas, and sometimes the framerates go for a toss, when the fight gets a little hairy, with too many lightsabers swashing around. After about 15 hours into the game, there were just giant blank spaces popping into the game and just kept increasing as I moved forward. I had to shut down the game and restart it to fix the issue, but that’s still a big black spot in an otherwise decently made game.

The game also made a mockery of the PS4 share button, taking a screenshot seconds after I had pressed the button, but observing that that has been the case with most new games recently, I am not going to hold it against Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

VERDICT

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the best Star Wars game to come out this decade. It just mashes all the good ingredients from these great games together, puts them into this Star Wars shaped cup and just creates this amazing smoothie of a game, that you just can’t afford missing out on. Whatever your biases are for EA, Disney or even Respawn throw them out the window and pick up Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.