Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: A spark of hope in dark times

Disney’s handling of the Star Wars has been a mess. I know I’m not breaking new ground when I say that anyone even remotely paying attention to it can tell you the same thing. I won’t bore you with the details, instead I’ll hone in on the most relevant aspect of it in regards to this review, the videogames.

To their credit, Disney Lucas Film has done things on the videogame side of things worth praising. Namely making a lot of the older titles available on modern consoles. Even just looking at the Xbox’s backwards compatibility you can get both Force Awakens games, the old Battlefront games, and the Revenge of the Sith game. That’s awesome and that’s not even getting into the re-releases of Jedi Knight and Episode 1 Racer among others.

But when it comes to their new stuff, it’s been a bigger mixed bag than Haribo’s Starmix. Handing the license over to EA was one of the biggest mistakes Disney made. I mean it’s EA for God’s sake, the company so inept and corrupt not even FIFA want to work with them anymore. Handing them the Star Wars IP is like handing the louvre over to a bunch of sugared up children armed with crayons, you know how this will end.

And EA didn’t exactly put their best foot forward. Their reboot of the beloved Battlefront series was a massive disappointment. A live service shit show with none of the charm, fun or even content of the original. Don’t even get me started on the microtransactions and the resulting loot box fiasco. It was a complete disaster.

Then, something weird happened. Something that no one could have predicted in a thousand years. EA announced that they were making a single-player only Star War developed by Respawn Entertainment of Titanfall, and Apex Legends fame called Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Believe me, nobody could have seen this coming. Keep in mind this was around the time when companies like EA were saying that single player games were dead and live service multiplayer games were the future. So to see them not only make a single-player game, but a big budget one came as a shock.

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. The best part though was that the game ended up being really good. Being praised by both fans and critics as not only a great Star Wars game but an excellent game in general. Which in hindsight should NOT have been a surprise given the games director was Stig Asmussen who also directed God of War 3. Which is still the best God of War game, and no I will not budge from that position.

The game couldn’t have come at a better time either because Star Wars was arguably at its lowest point. Keep in mind that Fallen Order released a month before Rise of Skywalker. That’s how bad things were. Fallen Order was the one spark of hope that something good could come out of this series. Well, this and The Mandalorian, which debuted in the same month funnily enough.

I never played Fallen Order when it first came out. I was still burnt out of Star Wars with all the crap going on around it and just wasn’t interested in it. But with the sequel coming out very soon, I figured I’d look at it and see if the hype was warranted. Spoilers, it was. This is one of the best things to come out of Star Wars in a long time and I’m kicking myself for not playing it sooner.

Fallen Order takes place between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The Empire has already risen to power and subjugated the galaxy under its rule and the Jedi are wiped out save a few scant survivors.

One such survivor is the main character, Cal Kestis. A former padawan who never finished his training, Cal has been hiding out on the planet Bracca as a star ship scrapper. But when a routine job goes wrong, Cal is forced to use the Force to rescue his co-worker.

This draws the attention of the Inquisitors who arrive on Bracca to take Cal out forcing him to flee. Fortunately, he’s picked up by a ship called the Mantis piloted by Greez, an alien with a history of gambling, and Cere, a former Jedi who has cut herself off from the force due to a tragic incident.

Cere informs Cal that she knows of the location of a holocron that contains a list of force sensitive children across the galaxy. Cere wants Cal’s help to find it so they can use it to rebuild the Jedi Order. On investigating the vault where the holocron is contained Cal finds a droid named BD-1 who once belonged to Jedi Master Eno Cordova. A Jedi historian who originally hid the holocron in the vault to begin with.

So now Cal has to find a way to open the vault, get the holocron and hopefully rebuild the Jedi Order. Along the way he’ll visit various planets, confront his past, avoid clashes with the empire and become the Jedi he never got the chance to be.

Full disclosure, I am not a super hardcore Star Wars fan. I’ve watched the movies and played a few of the games and that’s about it. I haven’t played many of the original games like KOTOR or the Jedi Knight series or anything like that. All that is to say that I don’t know how this story stacks up to those.

So I’m simply judging the story on it’s merits, and on those merits, I really liked it. Jedi: Fallen Order is an underdog story. It’s a tale of a group of outcasts trying to make something of themselves. They all have their own baggage they need to work through, tragic pasts they need to confront and the like.

Cal himself is a very likable protagonist. His journey to prove himself was a satisfying one and I loved the relationship he developed with BD-1. It was very cute, one of the better bot bromances in Star Wars.

I also like that Cal is a regular guy, at least as far as Jedi are concerned. He isn’t an overpowered chosen one or some part of a lineage with a big connection to the force which is honestly very refreshing.

He is still competent. He can still fight with the Lightsabre and use the force like any other Jedi, but he isn’t some prodigy with it. He struggles and overcomes. Because he never completed his training this let’s us see the training first hand creating a plausible reason why we’re learning all these techniques in game.

It’s a much more satisfying character arc than just being really strong with the force because you’re related to some super powerful Sith Lord. Something I wish certain other Star Wars protagonists didn’t suffer from.

That said they do give Cal a unique ability in the form of sensing Force echoes. Essentially being able to see the history of an object through the Force. Unlike a lot of other new Force abilities, I don’t mind this. It works with what we know about the Force while introducing something new to it. Adding to the concept without completely breaking it.

The Force echoes also serve another purpose in adding some extra background and lore to the worlds we visit. Fallen Order takes a lot from Dark Souls as you’ll see later on, and one of the ways it does so is through the various lore snippets you’ll find.

Sometimes it’s about the planet you’re on, the culture of the natives or the local wildlife, other times it’s about the empire and their various evil activities. A bulk of the lore is spent on the Zeffo, an ancient alien race that built the vault the holocron is hidden in that were known to use the Force. Or as they called it the Life Wind.

That’s an interesting idea, that ancient races viewed the Force in different ways. Jedi: Fallen Order does try to expand on the core mythos of Star Wars in interesting ways while keeping things within logic and reason. It doesn’t just come up with some bullshit and try to shoehorn it in because it would be convenient to the plot.

One of the core themes of the story is failure and how it teaches us to get better and move forward. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s the same theme that was covered in The Last Jedi. The major difference between the two being Fallen Order does it well. It doesn’t ruin an established character to get the point across, the main character struggles and fails, and it doesn’t have inept dialogue or waste time with side plots that go fucking nowhere.

Ragging on Last Jedi aside, this is a recurring thing I noticed with Fallen Order. It takes ideas and concepts from other Star Wars media and does them, well I wouldn’t say better since that isn’t entirely fair, but it does make them its own.

You can tell the writers were fans of Star Wars. Taking elements they liked across the franchise and adding their own little spin on things. Combine that with well developed and likable characters, a plot with plenty of interesting twists and a fantastic main villain in The Second Sister, and you have a great story that keeps you engaged.

But it isn’t perfect. While I think the characters are all well developed, some of them are given more attention than others. Greez gets it the worst in my opinion. His entire story of being indebt to a crime syndicate gets dropped about halfway through with no real resolution. It honestly feels like it’s there just to establish the bounty hunter enemies late in the game.

There are also some character developments that happen so late in the game they can’t do anything interesting with them. I won’t give specifics since that would spoilers, but there was one character that I really liked but they brought into the main cast far too late, and you don’t get much interaction with them after that.

The game has a lot of optional dialogue that does help in this regard, but the problem with optional dialogue is it’s very easily missed. And if you’re a player like me who likes to get everything done as soon as possible, chances are you will miss a lot of that dialogue.

I think the game would have benefitted with some side quests. Just to give more chances to develop the characters further. What’s here is still good, I just think they could have done more with it.

It also goes without saying that a lot of your enjoyment is going to hinge on how much you like some of the more recent additions to Star Wars. I like the Second Sister as an antagonist, but I don’t like Inquisitors as a concept. I always felt they were a cheap addition just to have Lightsabre battles in an era where those wouldn’t happen.

On that note, I don’t like the whole idea of their being other Jedi that survived Order 66. It weakens that Luke was the last Jedi and makes certain lines in the original trilogy lose their impact.

I can’t blame on Fallen Order for this. This is stuff that’s plagued Star Wars for years. And to its credit, Fallen Order does these things well enough that they don’t bother me personally. But I know what Star Wars fans are like, and I know some won’t be nearly as forgiving as I am.

Still I think most would consider the story good, or at least decent. It’s certainly more entertaining than most of the recent films and tv shows have been. Faint praise I know, but it is something.

One thing that helps is that the acting is really damn good. The stand-out for me was Elizabeth Grullón as the Second Sister. A lot of what I like about Second Sister is down to Grullón. She has this perfect insidious voice and way of talking that gets into your head, like a female Hannibal Lecter.

But all the other actors do a good job too. They got a lot of professional screen actors from TV and film which makes it feel like a big Star Wars production. Kind of like a lost TV show or movie. They used a lot of motion capture for the animations. So you get a lot of the more subtle inflections you get from a live action performance.

The only actor I thought was a little off was Debra Wilson as Cere. Don’t get me wrong she does a great job, but there’s something about how she looks at you in certain scenes that makes me feel uncomfortable. With the way her eyes are, it makes it look like she’s about ready to choke me out at any opportunity. Which ironically makes sense given her arc, but I don’t think that was the intention.

Aside from that, and keep in mind that is a major nit-pick, the acting is phenomenal. Honest to god it’s better than a lot of the acting in the movies. The prequels obviously aren’t known for good acting, quite the opposite in fact, but even compared to the sequels I think it holds up better.

The overall presentation is good, but not great. It definitely manages to capture the look and feel of Star Wars. From the grittier aesthetics to the way the planets and aliens look, it all feels like Star Wars.

It just doesn’t look particularly spectacular. It looks like a standard AAA release, very polished and clean but there’s no particular style to it. I’ll give it credit for looking like Star Wars, and the levels themselves do have impressive scale to them, but nothing about it particularly wowed me.

Same with the music. Again, it isn’t bad and definitely fits with the kind of music expected from Star Wars, it just isn’t particularly memorable. It’s inoffensive background noise at the end of the day, neither distracting nor enhancing the material. It goes more for atmosphere and it succeeds at that, but nothing about it gets you pumped up.

That said, being more atmospheric does fit Fallen Order a lot more than if it was something more energetic. Fallen Order relies a lot on atmosphere to set the mood for the gameplay.

Because Fallen Order takes direct inspiration from Dark Souls and Metroid. Both of which are series that rely heavily on atmospherics for. But, more importantly, from a gameplay perspective what we have here is a Souls-Like combat, or more accurately Souls-Lite I’ll get to that in a bit, mixed with Search Action exploration and level design.

I’ve never played a Soulsbourne game before, but I have played and reviewed Search Action games in the past. So why don’t we look at that part of the game first.

As a Search Action game, Jedi: Fallen Order is ok. It has some of the same issues I criticised Lords of Shadow 2 for, namely the use of way points which discourages exploration to find your way forward. However, Fallen Order is a far better experience for a few key reasons.

For starters, you have a map. Holy shit what a novel concept. Who would have thought having a map in a game about exploration would have been useful.

It’s a good map too, shows you all the places you haven’t been yet, keeps track of things you can interact with even if you don’t yet have that ability, and it shows you how many collectables are in each area. It doesn’t mark collectables, but it does show how many there are, and it breaks up each map into areas so you have a general idea of where to look.

It can be a little tricky to read. It goes for a holographic look which fits the style, but it can look a little muddled at certain angles. Still simply having a map makes it much easier to get through.

Another improvement is that, while you are given a way point so you always know where to go, you still need to find your way there. Levels are fairly linear, but they do still have optional branches that contain collectables and it isn’t always clear which is which. So you’re still incentivised to look around and find your way there, to a certain extent anyway.

Exploration is rewarding since there’s plenty to find, and there are plenty of shortcuts to unlock that make backtracking a breeze. Platforming is also decent. You still need to climb around a lot, but it is snappy, and Cals moves at a decent pace. There are also very few moments where your stuck waiting around, so platforming sections aren’t a huge pace breaker.

The pacing in general is very good. There aren’t any moments that drag, or levels that overstay their welcome. Even when backtracking for things I missed I never felt bored because it never took that long to do. There were only a handful of sections that were a pain to get everything, and most of those were due to me missing something I wouldn’t have if I had paid more attention. So that was on me and not the game.

The levels themselves are also fairly condensed. They are still decently large, but not to an absurd degree. And yes, I have been saying levels plural, because instead of having one big map, you visit different planets across the Star Wars universe.

While I prefer Search Action games have one big map to explore, there is a benefit to doing it this way. It breaks the game into more digestible chunks which can make them easier to get into for beginners. The series that got me into Search Action games, Shantae, also uses this formula.

It also allows for better environmental variety. Games like Metroid and Castlevania do have decent variety in their environments, but there’s only so much they can do when their games take place in one location. Here the different planets are not only visually distinct, but each have their own unique obstacles and enemies to defeat. It gives them all their own unique identity.

If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll probably get a kick from some of this as you’ll visit fan favourite locations like Kashyyk and Dathomir. That’s not all, because there are also dungeons to explore. Yeah we’re getting some Zelda influences in here as well. They aren’t as intricate as Zelda dungeons, but they still have decent puzzles to solve which adds some gameplay variety.

In typical Search Action fashion, you’ll unlock new abilities which you can then use to reach areas you couldn’t before. The moves you get aren’t super interesting, it’s a lot of what you would expect like force pushing and a double jump, but it is always satisfying being able to reach places you couldn’t before.

As a Search Action game I think Fallen Order is a good time, but it has it’s issues. While exploration is rewarding with the collectables, a lot of them don’t amount to much. You’ll find things to increase your health or force meters, but the majority of the collectables are purely cosmetic.

Nothing terrible I suppose, but it would have been nice f they had some gameplay benefit like an improvement to your stats. You know, something that would getting them a bit more substantial.

The levels also become a little too linear near the end of the game. Early levels are linear but still open enough with a lot of side areas to explore. Later levels are a little too constricted and feel a bit too much like running down interconnected hallways.

It also does what I cardinal sin in games like this where it’ll force you into a gameplay section because of the story. You’ll be doing your own thing for a while, making your way to a collectable and then the game forces you into a boss fights which then leads you to an entirely different location you cannot leave until the game says.

I hate this. I hate being forced into things when I was in the middle of something else. I don’t mind this in cinematic games usually, and Fallen Order to its credit is very cinematic, but in a Search Action game it goes against the very core of its design.

Aside from those issues, judging purely as a Search Action game, Fallen Order is a good time. Though I’ve only covered the Search part of the equation. Because the Action part is when we get into the Dark Souls influences.

As I said earlier, I’ve never played a Souls game before. But from what I can gather, Souls games combat is about being more deliberate and methodical. A game where every hit counts and where every enemy is a potential threat. That certainly fits with Fallen Order.

The combat isn’t just about going ham with your Lightsabre. You have to think ahead, learn how to parry and how best to deal with enemies. Most small creature aren’t too difficult to deal with, one quick combo should take them out, but even they can quickly drain your health if you’re not too careful, and larger enemies will require you to learn their patterns if you want to survive.

The combat really comes alive when you fight human enemies. See these guys can block and parry your attacks just as you can with theirs. So the key is to hit them and parry their attacks enough to deplete their stagger gauge, which will leave them open for an attack. It’s all about getting those openings. It makes fights feel more like an actual duel.

That only covers close quarters combat. Some enemies will fight at a distance and you’ll need to find a way to get in close. You can hold block and get to them that way, but you can’t block forever. You also have a stagger gauge that goes down when you block, and when that empties, you’re in trouble. So sometimes the best option is to deflect their shot with a well-timed parry or use one of your force powers.

You start with a basic Lightsabre, but you can find a double-sided Lightsabre which is weaker but great for dealing with groups. No dual Lightsabres unfortunately, but there is a sort of dual Lightsabre in the form of an attack you get in the late game.

The two Lightsabre forms offer some variety in the combat. Both have clear strengths and weaknesses that make them fun to experiment with. Swapping between them can be a pain since you use the D-Pad for it, but there is a quick swap attack you unlock that mitigates this somewhat.

You also have a bunch of force powers to use like slowing down enemies or pushing and pulling things towards you which can come in handy. You can’t spam force abilities; you do have a meter that will deplete if you use them. Don’t worry about filling it back up though because it fills up quickly by defeating enemies. So you also need to play offensively to be able to use your powers.

If you want to get through the game you’ll need to find a balance between being defensive and offensive. It’s all about balance, which is what the Jedi are all about. That had to have been intentional, it’s too fitting for it not to have been

While you do fight a lot of the same Stormtrooper enemies over and over, there is a decent amount of variety in the foes you fight. Even Stormtroopers have various classes of weapons to deal with. And with each enemy having their own strategies it keeps the combat interesting.

You’ll unlock a variety of combat manoeuvres through experience points which you get from defeating enemies or finding force echoes. While I didn’t find every move useful, there was even one that wouldn’t work for me for some reason, the majority of them I did. This is one of those games where every ability has some useful utility behind it.

Like most action games the combat starts out slow, but once you start unlocking each move the combat gets more engaging. And once you master it, you’ll be cutting down hordes of enemies with style.

In true Souls like fashion though, this is easier said than done. Fallen Order is a tough game. Even weaker enemies can rip your health bar to pieces if you’re not careful, and the game loves to throw surprise attacks and ambushes at you.

To be clear, it isn’t as hard as Dark Souls. It has similar elements to it’s difficulty, like how healing leaves you vulnerable or how you lose all experience points on death and you need to get back to where you were to retrieve them, but it isn’t nearly as punishing. This is a Souls lite, it’s designed to be a more casual friendly Soulsbourne experience.

I played the game on normal and found it a challenging but somewhat comfortable experience. There are optional difficulties, so if you want an easier time, or if you want a bigger challenge, the option is there. There’s even an option for those who just want to experience the story, so a mode for games journalists basically.

The difficulty is fair, for the most part. There are some battles where it felt things were stacked against you. Mainly in sections with ranged attackers on higher levels, taking the Obi-Wan strategy basically. It was harder to parry them due to not being able to see them.

In fact, the camera itself was a constant annoyance. A lot of fights take place in cramped rooms where you can be easily pushed against the wall which causes the camera to spaz out. Maybe that was just on me for not adjusting my position enough, but it was still an annoyance that made fights harder than they should.

This was most noticeable in areas with large clusters of enemies. They can swarm you quickly and the camera is a little too closed in for you to keep track of them all. It got really bad when the zombies showed up. Yes, there are zombies in this game, and they are easily the worst enemy in the game. They always fight in groups, and they can no sell attacks. They’re fucking relentless and I hate them.

I also have to critique the surprise attacks. These are outright cheap. I don’t know if other Souls Likes do this, but if they do, why? This kind of trial-and-error bullshit should have been left behind in the NES era. Why is this still a thing?

I never found anything to be frustrating. Annoying at times yes, but I never got angry or wanted to rage quit. Once you adjust to the gameplay it’s a mostly comfortable experience. A challenging game, but not so challenging that casual players can’t enjoy.

One big highlight were the boss fights. The main bosses to be specific. These really test you on how well you know the combat system and are some of the game’s best fights.

Outside of the main bosses, there are also a few optional sub-bosses to encounter. These aren’t as interesting. The main bosses are all different with their own attack patterns and strategies, but the sub-bosses are just harder versions of regular enemies. There isn’t much to distinguish them from their regular counterparts either. Aside from having more health and maybe having slight move set they are the exact same as their normal counter parts.

The biggest disappointment was with the bounty hunters. These are random encounters that show up around halfway in. They aren’t bad fights, but there’s only 3 of them that get repeated. They have different names and designs, but in terms of the fights they’re the same thing over and over. Come on, with all the different Bounty Hunters in Star Wars you could only come up with 3.

I enjoyed the combat in Fallen Order. I couldn’t tell you how it compares to other Soulsbourne titles, but, judging on its own merits, it is very solid. At the very least it makes for a good beginner friendly entry to the genre.

So it’s a good Search Action game and a good Souls-Like. I’d say it’s pretty clear that Fallen Order is a good time.

There is one big dark spot on the whole thing that knocks it down a peg or two, this game is buggy as all hell. I ran into quite a few technical issues during my playthrough. Collision would sometimes glitch out and I’d fall through platforms, enemy AI would bug out, climbing would sometimes not track and I’d end up jumping to my death. The worst one was when the cutscene audio desynced. It was so distracting I had to reset the game just so I could watch them properly.

It's in these moments where you remember “oh yeah, EA”. Rushing out buggy messes is their thumbprint. It’s a good thing the game is fun. I can forgive technical issues so long as I enjoy the core experience, I did for Sonic Frontiers after all.

Is it a particularly original experience? Not really. As we’ve discussed it borrows a lot from different games, a little bit of Metroid here, a dash of Zelda there. But I don’t mind a game derivative so long as it does what it does well, and Fallen Order does what it does very well.

Even if it is derivative of other titles, a huge appeal of this game is going to be the fact that it is a Star Wars game. From the planets you visit, to the Lightsabre combat and Force powers, Fallen Order does a great job of making you feel like you’re in the Star Wars universe.

I can easily recommend this to fans of Star Wars. They are going to have a blast with it, especially with all the references and cameos. But even if you’re not a huge fan or just a filthy casual like moi, then Fallen Order is worth checking out as a solid Action Adventure game.

Star Wars Jed: Fallen Order was a great time. It’s an excellent blend of Search Action and Souls-Like combat with a really fun story on top of that. I know Star Wars isn’t what it used to be, but it’s things like Fallen Order that proves there’s still some life left in the series.

Hopefully for Jedi Survivor they can iron out the technical problems and improve on some of the game’s faults. It’s already looking great, it even has dual Lightsabres which already makes it better.

The only thing I worry about is the story. We don’t know much about it and recent Star Wars stories have been very hit and miss. For every Mandalorian and Andorr, there’s a Book of Boba Fett. So as long as they keep it consistent with this game, I’m sure it will be great. Just don’t pull a Last Jedi on us, we can’t take another one.