Admittedly one of the reasons I got this game, besides the prospect of a good single-player Star Wars game-story, was the comparisons to a Souls-like that the game kept getting. Being recently obsessed with Bloodborne, those comparisons made Fallen Order very appealing to me. And I gotta say, a lot of the characteristics of those games are present here indeed, albeit on a more accessible fashion. However, in order to get a similar level of challenge/difficulty you have to play on the Jedi Grand Master difficulty level. I also remapped some buttons so the main attacks were done on the right triggers.

On a technical level, the game feels somewhat unpolished; noticeably long loading times that still don’t prevent from very bad character models pop-ins (sometimes they even pop in t-poses) and late texture loads as well and regular frame rate jankiness all add up to an less than great experience that I’m honestly not used to, coming from mostly playing Playstation Studio’s games.

The worse thing are these desperately long loading times after you’re killed. It feels like a punishment and a (bad and unintentional) incentive for really striving to stay alive. And while dying at this highest difficulty level, just like on the Souls games, is expected to be a regular thing, the horrible loading times makes it really frustrating overall.

Those were not the only technical issue I’ve found with the game, I’m afraid; on one cutscene, whenever there was a camera switch there was full 1-second pause of the scene, and there were a lot of switches. It was pretty jarring. Elsewhere, after respawning (which again, takes close to a minute of loading) the enemies were not shown for a good 3 seconds and then suddenly they’d just pop up; what the hell was all that previous loading time for?! The very first time this happened, I assumed the area no longer had enemies, went forward, and then suddenly I was surrounded by a bunch of troopers. It was bad.

It’s a shame the game is plagued with so many technical hiccups. But I guess I’m patient and also a sucker for Star Wars, so I got over those problems and manage to enjoy everything else the game offers, which happens to be great (it also helped that I got the game on a very good PSN sale at most than half the normal price).

Everything else the game has to offer is excellent.

The characters are fantastic; funny, charming, and are well-developed throughout the story. Cal is a great protagonist, and BD-1 is super lovely - quickly becoming my favourite Star Wars droid. Greez, even a secondary character, is also great.

The story is full is of nice turn and great, emotional surprises, and it keeps escalating in excitement and stakes all the way to the end - oh and what an ending.

Overall it’s a deeply well written Star Wars story that respects and expands the mythos in interesting and rewarding ways.

Finally, the gameplay is fun and challenging. It’s a combination of metroidvanias - with level design where paths are blocked by yet-unlocked-abilities and rewarding of inquisitive exploration - and Soulsborne games - tight, parry-based combat; respawning enemies, and challenging but satisfying enemy gauntlets and boss fights - which works very nicely when put all together.

There’s a couple of things design-wise that didn’t feel right to me, however; first is that every time you ‘rest’ in a meditation spot to fully heal, all the enemies in the world are respawned. Although this might make sense from a gameplay point of view, it just doesn’t make any sense from a lore perspective; it might be fine for the Souls-game but it doesn’t particularly fit within Star Wars. Second was that the Force bar gets depleted and only way to recover it is by perfect-parrying, and later on perfect-dodging or healing. This also feels wrong within Star Wars becase Jedi don’t just run out of “force-juice”, and it’s even weirder because Cal can force-push, pull, and slow things as much as he likes, but the moment it does it on an enemy, there’s suddenly a limit to it. It would have made more sense to at least treat it as stamina somehow. Admittedly these are all minor, maybe nitpicky things, though.

All in all, Jedi: Fallen Order is a great Star Wars game, with an excellent and emotional story, memorable characters, stunning worlds, and gameplay that does an fantastic job at giving you the powers of a Jedi. But it’s ultimately bogged down by some egregious lack of technical polish.

Still, looking forward to the sequel and seeing more of BD-1!

Reviewed on Dec 31, 2020


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