In 2015, Disney subsidiary Lucas Films released Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. A retelling of '77s A New Hope with flashier special effects and bombastic cinematography. Despite this new coat of paint, The Force Awakens struggles to juggle both a decades old, tried and true legacy and a handful of contemporary tropes to bring Star Wars into the modern age. Almost in parody of the infamous "Ring Theory", Travelers Tales have suffered much the same fate.
LEGO™ Star Wars™: The Skywalker™ Saga is an overproduced and overdemanding game. Crunch has always been an issue with game development, but with The Skywalker™ Saga we see a new result of crunch, that being a game with several unneccesarily added brand new mechanics which both don't mix with the tried and true LEGO™ format, as well as add hours upon hours of monotony to this new entry in the already notorious backlog of lengthy games.
One of the many new features is the addition of Skill Trees: both a core upgrade tree for all characters, and a smaller tree for each of the 9 classes present in the game. Frankly, I forgot these existed. Any given combat upgrade is rendered meaningless by the inherrent low difficulty of the game. This isn't an insult to the game itself, branded LEGO™ games have been firmly planted in the casual catagory since 2005, but the new skill trees aim to improve an unbroken problem.
On the subject of half-baked mechanics, the game now also includes a meaningless choice system. On multiple occasions, you the player can choose to build either a stealth option or a combat option. For example, The first level of Episode 4 brings players to a hallway with two doors and two building options. The first is a turret facing a corridor full of Stormtroopers™, the other is an emptier corridor of conveniently the same length used to simply walk around the troopers. The only difference between the two is that the fighting option gives you a headstart, as the corridors both lead to the same room and the Stormtroopers™ are likely to spot you as you walk around behind them.
Everything has been gamified to comical levels. Opening a door requires inputting a password into a terminal, and getting that password requires going to a different terminal and finishing a button mash minigame. After the 50th "Rotate the Wheels" puzzle, I found myself missing the good old days when R2D2 used to just open the door all on his own like a big boy.
Not all changes are for the worse, however. Some of the core upgrades take the place of what were once extras, things such as Stud Magnets or faster build speeds. The concept of a whole universe sandbox also is a fun one. I always enjoy when Star Wars™ games acknowledge the huge universe of planets and it would be great traveling around them all if not that every planet has the same thing to offer, which is more collectables.
Despite the majority of this review being negative, I don't actually hate LEGO™ Star Wars™. Sometimes I enjoyed it, sometimes I was bored by it. I mostly just found the similarities between my attitude towards this game and my attitude towards the new trilogy to be interesting. I would definitely recommend only finishing the story mode though, collecting everything optional would be an act of self harm.
LEGO™ Star Wars™: The Skywalker™ Saga is an overproduced and overdemanding game. Crunch has always been an issue with game development, but with The Skywalker™ Saga we see a new result of crunch, that being a game with several unneccesarily added brand new mechanics which both don't mix with the tried and true LEGO™ format, as well as add hours upon hours of monotony to this new entry in the already notorious backlog of lengthy games.
One of the many new features is the addition of Skill Trees: both a core upgrade tree for all characters, and a smaller tree for each of the 9 classes present in the game. Frankly, I forgot these existed. Any given combat upgrade is rendered meaningless by the inherrent low difficulty of the game. This isn't an insult to the game itself, branded LEGO™ games have been firmly planted in the casual catagory since 2005, but the new skill trees aim to improve an unbroken problem.
On the subject of half-baked mechanics, the game now also includes a meaningless choice system. On multiple occasions, you the player can choose to build either a stealth option or a combat option. For example, The first level of Episode 4 brings players to a hallway with two doors and two building options. The first is a turret facing a corridor full of Stormtroopers™, the other is an emptier corridor of conveniently the same length used to simply walk around the troopers. The only difference between the two is that the fighting option gives you a headstart, as the corridors both lead to the same room and the Stormtroopers™ are likely to spot you as you walk around behind them.
Everything has been gamified to comical levels. Opening a door requires inputting a password into a terminal, and getting that password requires going to a different terminal and finishing a button mash minigame. After the 50th "Rotate the Wheels" puzzle, I found myself missing the good old days when R2D2 used to just open the door all on his own like a big boy.
Not all changes are for the worse, however. Some of the core upgrades take the place of what were once extras, things such as Stud Magnets or faster build speeds. The concept of a whole universe sandbox also is a fun one. I always enjoy when Star Wars™ games acknowledge the huge universe of planets and it would be great traveling around them all if not that every planet has the same thing to offer, which is more collectables.
Despite the majority of this review being negative, I don't actually hate LEGO™ Star Wars™. Sometimes I enjoyed it, sometimes I was bored by it. I mostly just found the similarities between my attitude towards this game and my attitude towards the new trilogy to be interesting. I would definitely recommend only finishing the story mode though, collecting everything optional would be an act of self harm.