Much conflict in this one, there is.
Among Star Wars games, one that gets quite a bit of praise is Revenge of the Sith for both Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, they are
pretty much the same exact game. Ubisoft is no stranger to beat'em ups, having developed the
exquisite TMNT on the Gameboy Advance and later down the line, Scott Pilgrim VS the World. I wish I could say that I echoed the sentiments of most people... but I don't, the force isn't very strong in this one.
The game follows the plot from the movie of the same name, although it's a pretty lackluster retelling that skimps a lot on detail, as a matter of fact, Darth Grievious doesn't even get four lightsabers. You can choose to play the game as either Anakin or Obi-Wan, both characters
only sharing about 3 of their total 13 stages.
Weirdly, you can't change characters unless you reset the console. I think the game did the best it could, as far as following the plot, and since most people that are gonna play the game
probably watched the movie first, it doesn't need to be so faithful. The game has a decent presentation, although the sprite work is a bit weird... Anakin and Obi-Wan look like digitalized sprites, while every other character and enemy is a simple 2-D sprite with no shadowing, which makes both heroes look very out of place.
A jumps, B is your light saber, L is used to block and the R button, alongside
any other button produces any of six different force powers. Anakin and Obi-Wan have different attack animations, but for all intents and purposes, they behave the same. Their Force powers are a
bit different though, Anakin getting force chokes and force power ups, while Obi-Wan gets to heal or improve his speed, both characters can pull and push enemies and objects, however. There's a
third gauge, besides your health and force power gauges, that fills up as you fight enemies, and you can spend energy from that gauge to produce super moves by pressing L+R and another button. It doesn't work very well since it's not very responsive,
thankfully, you have all four moves mapped to the touchscreen.
Exclusive to the Nintendo DS version are six fully 3-D ship stages, each character getting three of them, in which you must either defeat every enemy on a medium sized environment or get to the end of an obstacle course. They are a bit... out of place here, so much so that it's
almost like a wasted opportunity, since these stages are so short, yet controls and movement has an unusual amount of care put in... they
could've done so much more with them. These stages don't detract from the game too much, but it could've been nice to get the option to skip them, since I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't care about space dogfights on a beat'em up game.
As for the game itself, it's kind of a
mixed bag. Stages are quite boring, and a bit unfairly hard. Y'see, your life counter doesn't reset after each stage, so sometimes it's better to just kill yourself after starting a stage so that you can reset the life counter to 2(Or 5, on easy). It's a
silly design choice. The stages themselves aren't too hard with a full life stock though, although I wasn't pressed to use my force powers. Combat grew so boring that after the third stage, on my first playthrough, I just wanted the game to end, so I played very
sporadically until the end. Bosses are the
worst of the bunch, as you have to guess how the boss is gonna attack, block, and then counterattack. Over and over again as you chip their health away. Waiting games are
NEVER fun.
Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith is decent at best and boring at worst. It just isn't very fun, not is it nice to look at, since better art could've made the game more endearing. There're much better Star Wars games out there, so don't bother with it until you're out of the good ones.
5.0 out of 10
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