This review contains spoilers
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is a game developed by Aspyr Studios for 360/PS3 era game systems and the obvious sequel to the first Force Unleashed game; now I haven't heard much beforehand about this game other than it was supposedly shorter as well as worse than the first one. My feeling having beaten this game is that yes and no, in certain ways.
The Story is worse than the first one, it mainly consists of you [spoiler]escaping from Darth Vader as a clone of the original Starkiller (I don't even remember if he died in the first game but this clone s h i t is kind of confusing to be honest), saving the Jedi Master (Peter Stormare, who for the love of god I love him but when he repeats dialogue to you sounds like a whiny child and it's sad because I love his work. EDIT: Turns out it wasn't Peter Stormare, it's a guy named Cully Fredricksen whom I didn't recognize because he sounds really similar to Peter in Until Dawn, my mistake. Pretty good VA if I couldn't recognize him) from the last game, stopping off for a quick glorified cameo by Yoda and a bite to eat (which is just a funny a s s hallucination inside of some tree which made me giggle a bit) in Dagobah, fighting in space than going back to Darth Vader for a final showdown to rescue your love interest. [/spoiler] Of course, like the first game, there's [spoiler] a Dark Side choice and a Light Side choice in which the Light Side you get a good ending with a Boba Fett tease (which I chose) and the Dark Side ending everyone dies and your super evil clone goes and kills the Rebellion I guess, but this clone doesn't appear in the Light Side logically speaking and it feels inconsistent as hell.[/spoiler] I'll be honest with you, the story was painfully rushed and you can tell just by how brief the game is. It still feels like fanfiction except fanfiction that the author hated, wanted to salvage and just chopped up. Most of the character development you would get would be in the first one, this doesn't really have much in the way of story and mostly feels like it would've been DLC but the budget got too big and Lucas was like "Make it a full game to recoup the budget".
As for the DLC, it's not included in the game and I don't care enough about this game to really bother downloading patches to get whatever. At the end I'll post some links to hopefully point those in the right direction for those who want to play it.
The main reason why I'm giving this an upvote is for this reason alone: the gameplay for the most part feels a tad bit on the improved side whereas in the original I played on Steam it felt way worse. I'm not sure what exactly it was that made me feel it played better but my guess is it was just general improvements to feel a bit more powerful, you clip less in jumping (though you still do) and the fact that the run time is significantly less. My guess is the game is like 3-4 hours long depending on how often you die? I'm just surprised I had more fun this time around than the first one. Also my advice would be to turn up the camera sensitivity just because it felt a tad bit slow.
To break out the art design, graphics, sound design, etc: The graphics look better than the first one though the first level looked like it was smeared a bit with vaseline; although I do like the glass effects from Chapter 2-4 when they break and shatter. It's still Star Wars "Voom Voom" sounds, though I also wanna address that this game is still a tad bit on the glitchy side with numerous times where graphical pop ins were noticable, with one big example being I walked into a hallway and all the graphics disappeared from the hallway going forward except the floor which was lit up with lights. I fixed it by going back to the previous hallway then going back in and it was fine but it was still kind of weird.
I guess to finish off my thoughts, this game feels unfinished and cobbled together, a footnote of a footnote to something probably greater than what it was. It's ok, definitely wait for a sale and look into patches and such just to make it work better. Even then keep in mind that your experience will be short and you'll play through basically everything really quick. There are better Star Wars games to play out there, and I guess I'm just surprised that the flaws from the first one were fixed in this one, only for the flaws in this game having been addressed in the first one. It's weird and honestly I have no feelings about this game whatsoever other bits and pieces and it's kind of sad to be honest. Buy it on sale if you really want to get it but just know that this thumbs up is kind of pushing it a tad bit.
Also shoutout to the Big G for getting me this game!
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121445637
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Unleashed_II
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The Story is worse than the first one, it mainly consists of you [spoiler]escaping from Darth Vader as a clone of the original Starkiller (I don't even remember if he died in the first game but this clone s h i t is kind of confusing to be honest), saving the Jedi Master (Peter Stormare, who for the love of god I love him but when he repeats dialogue to you sounds like a whiny child and it's sad because I love his work. EDIT: Turns out it wasn't Peter Stormare, it's a guy named Cully Fredricksen whom I didn't recognize because he sounds really similar to Peter in Until Dawn, my mistake. Pretty good VA if I couldn't recognize him) from the last game, stopping off for a quick glorified cameo by Yoda and a bite to eat (which is just a funny a s s hallucination inside of some tree which made me giggle a bit) in Dagobah, fighting in space than going back to Darth Vader for a final showdown to rescue your love interest. [/spoiler] Of course, like the first game, there's [spoiler] a Dark Side choice and a Light Side choice in which the Light Side you get a good ending with a Boba Fett tease (which I chose) and the Dark Side ending everyone dies and your super evil clone goes and kills the Rebellion I guess, but this clone doesn't appear in the Light Side logically speaking and it feels inconsistent as hell.[/spoiler] I'll be honest with you, the story was painfully rushed and you can tell just by how brief the game is. It still feels like fanfiction except fanfiction that the author hated, wanted to salvage and just chopped up. Most of the character development you would get would be in the first one, this doesn't really have much in the way of story and mostly feels like it would've been DLC but the budget got too big and Lucas was like "Make it a full game to recoup the budget".
As for the DLC, it's not included in the game and I don't care enough about this game to really bother downloading patches to get whatever. At the end I'll post some links to hopefully point those in the right direction for those who want to play it.
The main reason why I'm giving this an upvote is for this reason alone: the gameplay for the most part feels a tad bit on the improved side whereas in the original I played on Steam it felt way worse. I'm not sure what exactly it was that made me feel it played better but my guess is it was just general improvements to feel a bit more powerful, you clip less in jumping (though you still do) and the fact that the run time is significantly less. My guess is the game is like 3-4 hours long depending on how often you die? I'm just surprised I had more fun this time around than the first one. Also my advice would be to turn up the camera sensitivity just because it felt a tad bit slow.
To break out the art design, graphics, sound design, etc: The graphics look better than the first one though the first level looked like it was smeared a bit with vaseline; although I do like the glass effects from Chapter 2-4 when they break and shatter. It's still Star Wars "Voom Voom" sounds, though I also wanna address that this game is still a tad bit on the glitchy side with numerous times where graphical pop ins were noticable, with one big example being I walked into a hallway and all the graphics disappeared from the hallway going forward except the floor which was lit up with lights. I fixed it by going back to the previous hallway then going back in and it was fine but it was still kind of weird.
I guess to finish off my thoughts, this game feels unfinished and cobbled together, a footnote of a footnote to something probably greater than what it was. It's ok, definitely wait for a sale and look into patches and such just to make it work better. Even then keep in mind that your experience will be short and you'll play through basically everything really quick. There are better Star Wars games to play out there, and I guess I'm just surprised that the flaws from the first one were fixed in this one, only for the flaws in this game having been addressed in the first one. It's weird and honestly I have no feelings about this game whatsoever other bits and pieces and it's kind of sad to be honest. Buy it on sale if you really want to get it but just know that this thumbs up is kind of pushing it a tad bit.
Also shoutout to the Big G for getting me this game!
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121445637
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Unleashed_II
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/