After years of Star Wars games ranging from decent to mediocre and on the rare occasion, outright bad, 2019 gave us a Star Wars game that really changed the status quo...almost.
Star Wars : Jedi Fallen Order is by far the most superior of Star Wars games across the board and especially under the EA banner and thats ultimately down to the fact that this game isn't developed by EA but instead, is the first Star Wars game created by Respawn Entertainment who were behind the ever popular Titanfall games and Apex Legends. That however, doesn't mean its a perfect Star Wars game and in my opinion, it still leaves a lot to be desired.
Months of secrecy shrouded the game at first other than the fact that it would be entirely story based & would be developed by Respawn with EA simply distributing the game. This was enough to generate a lot of excitement and that was only heightened when the game was revealed in full and marketing and promotion begun. Playing as a Jedi who looks and sounds like 'Gotham' alum Cameron Monaghan in a story set only five years after the events of Revenge Of The Sith was an instant selling point for many of us, myself included and in that respect, it certainly lives up to the hype. Between the array of easter eggs and direct connections to my favourite of the prequels, i had a lot of fun.
Yet, it still falls short.
I wish i could say that Jedi Fallen Order's shortcomings are merely trivial but unfortunately, that wouldn't be close to the truth. This game has a lot of shortcomings and they're deeply rooted. First off, the actual story.
The story is far too short in my opinion with only about 15 hours worth of gameplay in it across less than a half a dozen planets. Considering the time spent in development, i expected a big, bulked out game with at least 20-30 hours of gameplay as that is pretty much the standard for major titles in this day and age so i was surprised how quickly i was able to complete it and if that wasn't enough, the story came to such an abrupt and unnatural ending, leaving no real sense of achievement or fulfilment. Both these issues could of course be rendered null with any kind of future DLC addition. Anything is possible.
Secondly, boss fights. This might be my biggest gripe with Jedi Fallen Order. There are several 'bosses' in the game but unfortunately, there's only two real opportunities for a full and honest fight where you defeat the opponent and walk away with that sense of accomplishment. Every other boss fight in the game absolutely robs you of that which i'd say is a rather negative aspect. Even the final surprise boss, Darth Vader only gives you the opportunity to get in a single lightsaber strike before you're forced to retreat and escape from the scenario. There are several other mini bosses in the game such as taking down AT-ST's as well as various creatures, droids and bounty hunters, all of which you have to defeat in their entirety which makes up for the bigger boss fights. Still, it would've been good to properly throw down with Vader, even though by canon it wouldn't have been possible to defeat him fully.
My third and final issue with the game is more of a trivial and material problem. There's a lot of freezing and texture warping in certain parts of the game as well as drops in the frame rate which can be frustrating and occasionally causes you to fall through the map rather unexpectedly, leading to a requirement for respawning unnecessarily and can give bosses an advantage if you can't move for several seconds and given the Dark Souls level mechanics and difficulty, thats definitely a less than helpful feature. Once again, these issues could easily be fixed by the developers in any future updates (which considering how new the game still is, will likely be a thing of the past for new players).
Overall
Despite my own reservations on the game, i can still recognise that it is the strongest and most enjoyable Star Wars game in recent years and has a lot of potential for expansion in the future. It perhaps could've used more time in the development process to iron out any performance issues but i've seen much worse in games that were in development for a lot longer. Its great fun to explore new planets, collecting various rewards and upgrades and there's some amazing visuals throughout and thats before you even start slicing up stormtroopers and imperial astromech droids with a double sided custom lightsaber. I'd absolutely recommend it to any Star Wars fan, whether you're an original trilogy, prequel or sequel fan. Star Wars : Jedi Fallen Order gets a 7/10.
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