A New Hope?
A third-person action-adventure Star Wars title from Respawn Entertainment. The Empire seeks to eradicate all Jedi after the execution of
Order 66. You, a Jedi Padawan-turned-fugitive, must fight for your survival as you explore the mysteries of a long-extinct civilization in hopes of rebuilding the Jedi Order. After narrowly escaping the Jedi purge, you’re on a quest to rebuild your fallen Order. Pick up the pieces of your shattered past and complete your Jedi training, all while staying one step ahead of the Empire and its deadly Inquisitors. Utilize your Jedi training to overcome your opponents and solve the mysteries that lay in your path. Use the Force to augment the way you explore, allowing you to traverse new paths and discover parts of locations you’ve been to before. Move quickly, though. The Empire is on your trail and won’t stop until every Jedi is exterminated.
Star Wars games of the past have had mixed responses from the superb likes of KOTOR and Rogue Leader to the negative impact of Battlefront II and it’s microtransactions. What gamers like me have been craving though is a single player experience which we’ve been lacking since The Force Unleashed II, but I never expected what we ended up getting in Fallen Order…
What we have is a Metroidvania style game with Dark Souls/Bloodborne style combat, which results in perhaps the best combination of gameplay I’ve seen in a Star Wars game and it works as you backtrack for treasure with newly acquired abilities or push forward and defeat Jedi hunters and behemoths that stand in your way. The story is also pretty decent and a good show from Cameron Monaghan who we all remember playing the not-Joker-but-so-obviously-Joker from the Gotham TV series.
You end up travelling via your ship to other planets from the Star Wars universe like Dathomir (Home of the legendary Darth Maul) to the Wookie homeworld Kashyyyk as you try and find the pieces to rebuilding the Jedi Order. The locations are well varied in visuals and design, some sporting nice open areas while others are full of caves and hidden nooks and crannies. You can explore by running across walls, which is a nice shoutout to Respawn’s past works with Titanfall and Apex Legends to using Force Powers to literally break open walls to new areas or just to push enemies to their doom.
Combat will take some getting used to if you haven’t played a Souls-like game in the past, but luckily you can play the game on any difficulty without risk of missing out on trophies. Having said that, even the easiest setting is no cakewalk.
Visually, Fallen Order is a superb looking game with stunning areas and character models. Voice-acting is well done and professional, while there are some great moments of banter between the crew on the ship. The soundtrack is also impressive, making for a pretty complete package overall.
The Verdict
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an incredible game that restores faith that EA can still produce single player games of amazing quality, plus it doesn’t try and shove microtransactions, DLC or a Season Pass down our throats. It’s a nice show of faith and one that is very, very welcome alongside what is easily the best Star Wars game I have ever played. Let’s hope there’s a sequel and that it too can carry on this high standard they’ve set themselves.