Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I've been wanting to play this game since it first came out. All the reviews I have read say that this is a mixture of Star Wars and Uncharted. Right up my alley! This is the first time I have played this game, so I don't really have any nostalgic feelings to talk about. On with the review!
Story:
Jedi Fallen Order tells the story of Cal Kestis, a survivor of the Empire's infamous Order 66 massacre. Cal is laying low and working as a salvage tech when he accidentally uses his Force powers to save a friend in trouble. The incident is noticed by the Empire, and they send a fearsome attack squad out to capture him. Cal escapes with the help of Cere, a former Jedi who just so happens to be looking for an actual Jedi to help her gain access to some ancient ruins. Cal enters these ruins and becomes caught up in a planet-to-planet race in order to find a Holocron that has the names and locations of all the Force sensitive children in the galaxy. Along the way, Cal clashes with Trilla, Ceres' former apprentice who has turned to the dark side. Eventually the Holocron is recovered, Darth Vader shows up in a surprise twist and scares the shit out of everyone, and Cal and Cere escape and destroy the Holocron to protect the identities of the innocent children. The end.
I mean, it is an okay story. Kinda inconsequential in the grand scheme of the Star Wars universe. I was never too interested in it. I was more interested in the world of the game, if anything. Anything set in the Star Wars universe has my attention, particularly anything set in that area between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Seeing Darth Vader was awesome and unexpected. But If I had to pick, the most interesting thing to me would be Trilla and her relationship with Cere. Cal himself is kind of a bland character, although I found the relationship with his droid BD-1 to be quite endearing.
Gameplay:
Uncharted meets Star Wars is a very lazy way to describe this game. Sure, you do a lot of climbing and flipping and swinging from ropes and sliding down embankments and solving puzzles and that kind of thing, but I found this to be more of a cheap Dark Souls imitation than anything else. The lightsaber acts as your main weapon. You have to strategically block and parry. You can use your Force powers to slow time and push or pull your enemies. When you rest at a save point, it respawns all the enemies on the map. Each enemy you kill gives you experience, which leads to you gaining Skill Points. Use these skill points at a save point to level up your character's abilities.
Each area's map is wide open, filled with things to unearth and discover. Some areas you cannot access until you gain specific powers later in the game, and then you have to remember where they are and come back to them. Just like Blaster Master on the NES.
This is a very easy game to get the hang of.
Graphics:
This is an amazing looking game. Seeing the world of Star Wars brought to life with such beautiful graphics is a really big treat for such a mega dork like me. I love the color scheme of this game - all the sunsets and the varied landscapes you encounter. I don't know how to describe this, but I love the dark hallways and corridors with the blinking red and white lights that have that classic Star Wars "Imperial" look to them. I often felt like I was walking through areas that you might see in the bowels of a Star Destroyer in one of the original trilogy movies. If that makes sense.
And this will probably be a weird compliment but I love how the stormtroopers look in this game. For the first time in Star Wars video game history, I really felt like I was fighting against an accurate representation of stormtroopers from the original trilogy.
Character models look okay. Not perfect, as sometimes peoples' hair can look really bizarre and out of place, but overall, still pretty good. Trella is hot in that intense, crazy-eyed kind of way. What makes this title truly a wonder to look at though is not the characters, however, it is its beautiful setting and landscapes.
Sound:
Has there ever been a Star Wars game with a poor musical score? Not to my knowledge. While this game doesn't use any music from the movies (that I was able to recognize), the spirit of that music is alive and kicking in this game's soundtrack. A lot of these songs sound like they'd fit right in at some point in the original movie trilogy.
Sound effects are great too. As I played this game, I constantly drew my lightsaber and put it away over and over again because of how satisfying that hiss sound is. The sound of blaster fire, the sound of TIE fighters racing by overhead - everything is authentic to the Star Wars universe. Voice acting is good too. The banter between stormtroopers reminds me (yet again) of something you'd hear in the original Star Wars movie trilogy. All in all, just really fantastic in the sound department.
Overall:
While overall I would say I enjoyed this game, it has a lot of flaws. Combat seems a bit unpolished at times. You can only lock on to one enemy at a time, but often large groups of enemies will attack you. It is really hard to switch your target back and forth in the middle of a battle, often making combat a disorienting and confusing affair. Often during boss fights you can lose your lock on the enemy and end up not being able to see anything in front of you because the camera got turned around.
World maps are enormous and often confusing to decipher. When you complete a mission, you don't fast travel back to your ship; you have to hike ALL the way back through the area you just cleared one more time. It is such a tedious chore. Due to the large size of these maps and all the different branching paths, returning to your ship can be a lot tougher than it sounds. I got lost SO many times playing this game.
Frame rate can be a bit sluggish at times too. I'd be running along and things would slow down and get super choppy. it didn't destroy my enjoyment of the game, but it was a minor nuisance off and on as I continued to play. More of a game-wrecker is this title's load times. How on earth can a game this new have such egregious load times? Expect to wait at least 30 seconds for your character to respawn after he died. And this is a game where you die a lot. Sheesh!
As I said before, I didn't find the game's story to be very interesting. In fact, it was very run of the mill. The only characters I had any interest in were Cere and Trilla. Everyone else is just so bland. As far as this game's story goes, I don't even care if this game has a sequel or not. I could never see these characters again and I would be completely okay with that.
This game's saving grace is that it is fun to play. I will admit that after my first session with this game (which lasted about 1 or 2 hours), I came away from it less than impressed. But the more I played, the more and more I started to let this game sink its claws into me. There's so much to see and so much to explore. The combat is just the right mix of challenging and forgiving. Although this title does a bit to emulate the gameplay of Dark Souls, it definitely does NOT match its difficulty level. That's not to say I didn't die a healthy number of times while playing this. Aside from a few boss fights, this game never feels too frustrating or unfair. Throw in some A+ production values and Jedi Fallen Order is a lot more entertaining than it probably has any business being.
This is a good, solid game. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed by it. And when I say little I mean a little. I feel that with better characters, a better story, and some slight gameplay improvements this could have been a GREAT game. As it stands, it is just a good game. Will I ever come back to this title again? Probably not. But am I glad I played it? Yes. Definitely yes.
Final Score:
B
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