It's already been several years since EA got their hands on the Star Wars license, but it can't be said that this acquisition has been a success, given recent releases.
Star Wars Battlefront has never failed to aggravate its community with every step, and with Bioware fully preoccupied with the car crash that is Anthem, it falls to Respawn Entertainment — developers of Apex Legends and Titanfall — to take a crack at the franchise.
- Genre: Action Adventure, Action RPG
- Release Date: November 15 2019
- Platform: PS4, PC, & Xbox One
- Developer: Respawn Entertainment
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Price: $59.99
- Played on: PC
Call of the Force
Our adventure takes place between films Episode III and Episode IV, five years after the Palplatine-orchestrated Great Jedi Purge. Cal Kestis is a surviving padawan who works as a scrapdealer on a waste planet. He is currently keeping a low profile, as the Empire is using the Inquisition to hunt down any survivors from the massacre.
Circumstance forces Cal to blow his cover and throw himself head-first into a grand quest. Backed by a rag-tag bunch of teammates, with the only notable face being the mascot BD-1, Cal must reestablish his link with the Force, then attempt to reform the Jedi order, all while battling past demons and the dark side of the Force.
Without saying too much, if you've seen the films, you'll know where this is heading.
The chosen time period unfortunately restricts the game from being ambitious or from taking liberties with the story. Don't expect to run into any familiar faces — and you certainly won't be cutting any of them down with your lightsaber.
By now you should be familiar with all there is to know about the Jedi; to go over their story again would merely be overkill. Your enemies, however, will tell you their life stories, given half a chance.
Fallen Order offers the player a set story, so forget all about your dream to become the next Sith Lord. Well, at least the gameplay seems good, right?
Star Wars-borne
As previously mentioned, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order makes no secret of the heavy influence that From Software's titles (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) have on its gameplay. Combat is not easy, with a healthy blend of action (parries, rolls, abilities) and RPG mechanics (talent points).
In keeping with the Soulsborne formula, Bonfires and Estus Flasks have been replaced by Meditation Circles and Stim Canisters. Meditating at a circle will not only heal you, but will also cause all defeated enemies to respawn.
On death, you will return to your previous Meditation Circle and drop your experience, which can be recovered by finding your corpse or defeating the enemy that killed you.
To be more specific, the game is especially reminiscent of Sekiro, which came out earlier this year. It's hard to say whether this is an unfortunate coincide or not, as both Cal and his enemies have health bars, as well as posture bars, which are depleted by blocking.
Both Fallen Order and Sekiro are more concerned with blocking and timing your parries, rather than rolling around all over the place, at least in theory. Blocking will expose you to follow-up attacks, and breaking a boss' guard will allow you to deal a devastating blow.
Unfortunately, in this case, the pupil is a long way from surpassing the master. In its current state, blocking and parrying feels wonky and impractical. It's nigh-on impossible to parry multiple blows or to alternate between parrying and attacking.
Your enemies also have access to heavy blows which will cause them to flash red. These attacks can't be parried and must instead be dodged. Cal has the unfortunate tendency of being forced to block during an enemy's combo and being unable to react, which forces the player to rely on dodging and rolling rather than blocking.
In order to perform a roll, you must hit the dodge button twice, which quickly becomes exhausting and frustrating when fighting bosses, where a moment's hesitation can be fatal. Thankfully, there are different difficulty settings which let the player tailor their experience to their skill-level, even if the game tends to be tricky for all the wrong reasons.
The fact that a large number of the hitboxes are deceptive and poorly aligned is just one of many ways that the game creates artificial difficulty for its players.
The range of enemies is quite varied, though you should get used to fighting waves of opponents at the same time, which separates Fallen Order from other Souls-likes.
Between battalions of Stormtroopers, elite platoons of Inquisition soldiers, the local wildlife, and hordes of bounty hunters, you also have to deal with challenging bosses.
The game encourages you to seek out your enemies weaknesses and use the right Force ability to exploit it, which often allows you to completely turn a fight around through mastery of the Force. The talent tree helps you with this, even if it lacks variety and originality, and appears to have more depth than it truly does.
The absence of post-combat loot or rewards is rather underwhelming, even more so after struggling through a particularly difficult encounter.
On the other hand, you can modify your lightsaber through several extreme adjustments, like giving yourself a double-bladed lightsaber, reminiscent of Darth Maul, or even dual-wielding lightsabers (but only temporarily — it seems like Cal would rather handicap himself).
Even if the balance and gameplay aren't perfect, Fallen Order is entertaining and generally satisfying. It's just a shame that, deep down, the experience isn't more than that.
In a Metroidvania Far, Far Away
It has to be said that Fallen Order's tutorial is visually stunning from the get-go, as its interaction with the environment makes you want to jump right into the action. Cal is very agile and is able to climb, jump, and sneak throughout the landscape in a very satisfying manner.
When things start to go wrong, the player really feels like they've been dropped into one of the series' hallmark action scenes. Everything happens very quickly; things explode, blaster shots go everywhere, and lightsabers quickly dance across the screen. It all takes place in a literal corridor, but it all happens so fast you don't have time to take a breath, let alone get sick of it.
Unfortunately, this also happens to be the best action sequence in the game.
After you flee in your spaceship towards an abandoned planet, things start to go wrong. The map is slightly too open, but you constantly find your path blocked by insurmountable objects, which can't be moved until you learn the requisite Force power later in the story.
It's even more annoying when, after a difficult optional mini-boss, you can't reach the chest they are guarding as you're still waiting to be given the appropriate power.
Each planet contains a multitude of different hidden chests, which have the irritating trend of only containing cosmetic rewards. Your spaceship, your droid, and even your cloak can be customised. Even your lightsaber can be personalised, though it has no bearing on gameplay or stats.
We've got nothing against cosmetics in games that make the most of them. But to implement them in a short single-player game is clearly a ploy to artificially extend the game's lifetime to 20-30 hours instead of the realistic 10 or less.
There are indeed chests that reward the player with increased healing, more HP, and a larger Force capacity, but they are few and far between, hidden in a sea of useless cosmetics.
A 3D map helps you to identify previously inaccessible pathways, but it sadly does not mark chest locations, nor does it let you fast travel. This makes travelling on some planets a real chore, with giant one-way slides and clunky elevators taking the fun out of exploration.
You rapidly begin to regret having wasted hours scouring the map and backtracking, with nothing to show for it but three new hideous colours for your cloak and a new metal covering for your lightsaber.
