Review #722: Star Wars Jedi - Fallen Order

 The Force is strong in this one.

 A few years after running the Star Wars license through the mud and cancelling the promising Star Wars 1313, Disney and EA have teamed up to produce another Star Wars game. And, despite how bland the new Trilogy is(The third part can't save it now), Star Wars Jedi - Fallen Order is a fantastic game that is sure to please most people, whether you like Star Wars or not.

 The story follows Jedi Padawan Cal Kestis, a survivor of the Jedi massacre who's spent his time hiding in a space scrapyard working as a mechanic. After a freak accident forces Cal to use the Force in order to save his friend, now the entire Empire is looking for him. Thankfully, before he meets his maker, ex-Jedi Ceres and pilot Greeze rescue him, and with the promise of rebuilding the Jedi Order, Cal Kestis joins them on a quest to find a list of force-sensitive younglings, the future of the Jedi. Taking place before A New Hope we already know that Cal Kestis' quest is fruitless, but it doesn't really matter. The game is about a Padawan fixing his connection to the Force and coming to terms with what his destiny is and not hiding any more. The story is entertaining, while the game leans heavily into Metroidvania territory, and most of the game is exploring, there are cutscenes spread here and there that allows Cal, his enemies and his allies time to shine. By the end of the game it's impossible not to like Cal and his crew. That said, near the end of the game, another character joins the cast, and this character is fairly interesting, sadly, since it's the end of the game, you don't get to spend much time with them. Despite the exploratory focus of the gameplay, there are some very exciting set pieces every now and then, the game makes a fantastic first impression with the Empire chasing Cal through a train. It's awesome.

 Metroidvania meets Dark Souls is the best way to describe the game. Played in third person, as Cal you'll have to explore five main planets in order to find hints that'll lead him towards his objective, but worlds are rather large, with tons of secrets to find. Of course, being a Metroidvania means that a lot of stuff will be out of your reach when you first come across it. As you go through the game, Cal will slowly rebuild his connection to the Force, unlocking skills such as Stasis, Pull and Push, as well as more mundane abilities such as running on walls, that he can use to traverse the environment and reach new areas. You'll also find upgrades for your robotic partner, BD-1, that will also help Cal reach new areas, such as climbing on zip-lines, interact with switches or hack doors... heck, he gets a few combat upgrades that'll let BD-1 hack enemy droids in order to help him. Needless to say, exploring is a ton of fun, I frequently revisited planets, as soon as I got new upgrades, in order to collect whatever I missed.

 Most of the rewards you'll find are cosmetic, and that's perfectly fine. You'll find new Ponchos for Cal to wear, a few different outfit colors, new paintjobs for your ship, the Mantis as well as paint jobs for BD-1. There are also hidden XP bundles, HP and Force upgrades, more Stim Canisters(Healing!) and... Lightsaber pieces. This game went all out with something as trivial as customizing your saber. You can customize the hilt by mixing and matching the Emitter, Switch and Sleeve parts, as well as giving it various different metallic colors. Of course you can also change your saber's color, but you're stuck with Green and Blue for most of the game, it's not until you finally reach the fifth planet that you gain access to Purple, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta and Indigo, which is sorta lame. I WANTED MY YELLOW SABER, DAMMIT, and by now there's very little game left! There's no new game+ either, which is understandable, but this means that you barely get to enjoy a Saber colored the way you like.

 If the Metroidvania elements falter somewhere, it's with the map. It's in 3-D and you can rotate it freely, but it does a poor job at conveying a few connections between rooms. Also, while the Map will mark in Red obstacles you can't clear at the moment, and turn them green the moment you can, it won't keep track of chests you might've come across, and there's no way to leave marks on the map, which could've helped with that. That said, the map does tell you how many chests and secrets are left in every area of a planet. A way to fast travel, at least between savespots, could've been a good addition as well. Planets are rather large, and while you can open up shortcuts between areas, some roads are longer than others, and sometimes you might just want to skip all the obstacles you've cleared a hundred times before and just get back on the ship.

 When not exploring you'll be fighting, and here the game takes after the Souls series. I hate the Souls series. Thankfully, there are four different difficulty settings so that you can tailor the experience to your liking. Hate difficult games? Pick Story difficulty and play a power fantasy in which you curb-stomp every enemy in the game. You can change the difficulty at any moment in the game, provided you're not in a fight. The game has a very nasty beginner's trap at the start of the game, as earl as 10 minutes into the first world, after the prologue, if you are an avid spelunker, such as myself, you can come across a really tough optional boss. You have no health upgrades, so little room for mistakes, as well as no healing upgrades. You've nothing! And, if it kills you, it'll steal your XP points, like any Souls game. I tried about 10 times on the Jedi Master difficulty. Tried twice in Jedi Knight, and then went to story mode and completely wrecked him, because enemies in Story difficulty like spending their time getting hit. My point is... if you hate hard games, don't worry, you can play in Story difficulty and be just fine. As for me, after I recovered my XP, I went into Jedi Knight difficulty setting and had fun. It wasn't too hard nor too easy, it felt right. So, even if you hate hard games, even if you hate Souls games(Like me!), that should not deter you from trying out Fallen Order.

 As an aside, I like how the suggested Jedi Master difficulty setting, the second highest, actually ties with the game's plot. The game is supposed to be hard, Cal is supposed to struggle, because he is a Padawan that never completed his training. There are about two hopeless boss fights that you are supposed to lose. There are fights that end before you can defeat your enemy. And they make sense, Cal is a Padawan fighting Sith Masters. He is way out of his depth. That said, the loading times when respawning can be murderous, which really puts a damper on the whole "Rise again and try again", because eventually you'll just want to get on with the game.

 Regardless, combat is fairly simple. Square performs your basic attacks, while triangle is a stronger, force-consuming, downward slash. X jumps and Circle dodges, or rolls if you double tap. You can hold L1 to block, as much as your stamina allows, or tap L1 before getting hit in order to parry the enemy, some enemies require multiple parries in a row to stagger, parrying is also how you deflect laser shots right back at the attacker. You can press Up on the D-pad to use a Stim Pack, a healing item, which refill as soon as you rest at a savepoint. Resting also respawns every enemy, sans bosses and optional bosses, so keep that in mind! Early in the game if you visit Dathomir, or later if you decided the easy route, you can find a double-bladed upgrade which lets you fight with a double bladed lightsaber. It's weaker than a single blade, but great for crowd control. Lastly, you can use the Force in order to freeze, pull or push enemies around. Stamina refills with time, while Force refills by landing hits on the enemies. I think the combat is fine, it's slower-paced than what you'd expect out of a Jedi videogame, but it works well. Fighting feels pretty good.

 You can use your hard-earned XP points at any savepoint in order to unlock new skills. They can be passive upgrades, such as extra life or strengthen healing items, simple abilities such as a delayed strike or even force-consuming skills, like throwing your blade or any triangle-based strike. It's a nice system, but it's a bit restricted at the start, you only gain the ability to unlock new skills as Cal fixes his connection to the force, so, once again, if you explore a lot, like me, you'll be amassing tons of levels that you can't use until you progress with the story.

 I'd be remiss not to talk about the game's performance. There were a few reports of bugs and glitches, but the only issue I came about was a crash when I was rescuing BD-1. The framerate is a bit jumpy at times, on base PS4 at least, but it's not bad. I turned off Motion Blur and chromatic aberration just in case, though. There were a few weird performance issues to. For instance, exploring some planets is pretty much seamless, while others may freeze every now and then to give time to load whatever comes next. It's pretty weird. The biggest issue would be the long loading times when respawning after death, since the game is supposed to be hard, but if having to respawn is so tedious it goes from hard to annoying. There are a few other technical shortcomings such as textures taking a while to load, so you might find the environment around gaining more detail as you explore it! It's usually a specific texture every now and then, but it's impossible not to notice. Oh! And T-poses! Sometimes, usually if you are too quick after resting or respawning, the game won't have had time to load the enemies, so they'll fly at you in their most glorious T-Poses. Some might not even snap out of the T-pose until you hit them!

 I loved Star Wars Jedi - Fallen Order. I mean, I'm love Metroidvanias so I am biased, but this is a good one. Combat is satisfying, and there are so many tangible rewards laying around for the player to find. Sure, cosmetics are just alternate colors, but they are still fun to play around with! The game's performance is a bit jittery, but its technical issues don't get in its way, the game is fun regardless. Fallen Order is easily the best thing to have come out of Star Wars since Republic Commando.
 9.0 out of 10