Jedi Fallen Order Review - 7/10

There is a reason Electronic Arts was voted worst company not once but twice. Since managing to score exclusive publishing rights to Star Wars games a few years ago EA has done nothing but damage the franchise and their own reputation further with terrible games, and not very many of them either. One would think a publisher of the size of Electronic Arts with so many talented studios to call upon we would be having a new Star Wars game coming out two or three times a year. Instead gamers have gotten just two new Battlefront games, neither of which possessed the content or quality of the original Battlefront and Battlefront 2. In fact the new Battlefront 2 was so bad and so toxic in its monetization it launched an international scandal and backlash against microtransactions and loot-boxes in gaming. Not to mention the issues with EA cancelling several promising Star Wars game projects including one that was being developed by the lead on the award winning Uncharted series.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that when EA announced a new Star Wars game called Jedi Fallen Order and promised that it would have no microtransactions and no loot-boxes that this announcement was met with some serious skepticism. I myself have been burned by EA too often to have trusted this game enough to give it a pre-order or buy the Digital Deluxe edition. Instead I chose to pick up the standard version after release and reading through some reviews and now I want to put my two cents out there on this game.

In short, it's solid, it's good, in fact I might even say it's great. A cross between Force Unleashed and Tomb Raider the Jedi Fallen Order puts players in control of a Jedi Padawan and survivor of the Order 66 Jedi Purge named Cal Kestis. Cal starts out in hiding on a rain sodden planet named Bracca which has been dedicated to the breaking and salvaging ships left over from the Clone Wars. When a friend of Cal's life is in danger the Jedi survivor makes the risky decision to use the force to save him, a decision that puts his life in danger and kicks off the events of the game. From there the player embarks on a quest across multiple planets, facing dangers both Imperial and environmental in nature and making an assortment of diverse and interesting friends.

First and foremost I have to cover the combat. Cal is not nearly as powerful or destructive as Starkiller from the Force Unleashed, nor does he cut his way through enemy force users and cross lightsabers with as many enemies as Kyle Katarn. Instead the combat is more closely analogous to Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. Cal combines blocks, dodges, force powers and lightsaber combos to fight enemies that are competent, aggressive and varied. Even on the "normal" Jedi Knight difficulty it took me a while to master the combat system and I got kicked around quite a bit early on. After getting familiar with the system a veteran gamer should probably stick to the Jedi Master difficulty which nicely balances the challenge without slowing game progression to a crawl. Like some of the Souls-like games if Cal is defeated he loses any gathered experience and must regain that experience by hitting the enemy that defeated him previously. The game is saved and experience is spent at save-points called Meditation points. This system gives consequence to the combat system and to defeat and encourages players to think through combat encounters, learn the strengths and weaknesses of enemies and react accordingly.

While the combat is solid and enjoyable the other major gameplay feature of Jedi Fallen Order is the exploration. The levels in Jedi Fallen Order are complex mazes that a player will need to cross and crawl through multiple times to fully explore. As the player progresses through the environments new shortcuts and pathways will open. Locked doors can be opened from behind, ropes cut to drop down and connect levels, platforms lowered and shields turned off so that as a player progresses and obtains more skills and upgrades for BD-1 new areas of the map or convenient paths opened up. To aide in this exploration Cal's trusty droid companion, BD-1, can project a holomap at any time, allowing the player to rotate and zoom around a three dimensional depiction of the paths and obstacles in the area. New zone entrances will be highlighted in yellow, obstacles that cannot be bypassed yet are shown in red and obstacles that can be passed are shown in green. While potentially a bit clunky I found this map to be intuitive and useful during my two complete playthroughs of this game. Many times I found myself spinning the map and charting a course around obstacles and across areas looking for any remaining chests or force-echoes I had yet to find. Any player familiar with the Tomb Raider, Uncharted or even Arkham games will find the exploration in this game familiar and enjoyable.

As the player explores they will find a variety of collectibles and customization options. Cal possesses the rare ability to sense echoes of the past through the force and can find and collect these echoes throughout the game. In addition BD-1 can scan enemies and environmental objects to add further entries to Cal's database. Within chests scattered around the map Cal can find additional stim canisters for BD-1 that allow Cal to heal injuries in combat, increasing the starting two canisters to a maximum of ten. Other chests include customizations for the Mantis, the ship Cal travels on, outfit and poncho skins, and skins for BD-1, and components to customize and change the appearance of Cal's lightsaber.

Ultimately I can understand why some reviewers have found these customization options limited. The lightsaber upgrades are purely cosmetic, the poncho is not the best looking garment and the alternate outfits are all re-skins of Cal's basic scrapper attire. Personally I am fine with cosmetic lightsaber parts, while it could have been cool to have different emitters and switches change the effect of the lightsaber I would have disliked being stuck with an ugly lightsaber because the parts were the most effective. However I did find the outfit customizations a bit weak, I would much have preferred some options that actually changed Cal's outfit, a Jedi robe or bounty-hunter armor would have been great. There is even a bit in the game where the player can see Cal wearing Inquisitor armor and sporting a red lightsaber, neither of which are options the player can actually unlock and use though that would have been awesome. It is also not until late in the game that the player can equip their lightsaber with colors other than blue and green, or orange if you pre-ordered the game and it sucks that a popular lightsaber color is locked forever behind a pre-order. I am actually hoping that some enterprising community member mods this game on the PC to allow players some more freedom with their lightsaber colors and outfit selection but until then the options for Cal are rather limited.

Another big gripe I have is that Jedi Fallen Order lacks a new game plus. I would have loved to have the option to play through the game again and witness all the story-beats and boss-fights without having to re-acquire all the same skills, upgrades and customizations that I already got in a previous run through the game.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the game however was the plot. While somewhat generic Star Warsey the plot of Jedi Fallen Order is nevertheless a refreshing return to the thematic roots and character of the franchise that has been so sorely lacking in recent years. Cal is a generic but likeable protagonist, Cere, Greez and BD-1 are all solid companions, well voice-acted and with enjoyable dialogue. I very much liked exploring all the various dialogue interactions with these characters and listening to them converse with each other and Cal as we traveled between planets. Each character has their own back-story, motivations, character traits, strengths and (most importantly) weaknesses. All of these characters are scarred and traumatized by events in their past, they have their own issues and are not perfect or over-powered. I would happily take any or all of the characters from Jedi Fallen Order over anything else that Disney Star Wars has produced in recent years. Even the villains are largely sympathetic and tragic and the player is given reason to regret their situation and feel bad about having to fight and defeat them. I enjoyed hunting down echoes and database entries to further expand the background of each character and location and learn more about the rich world Jedi Fallen Order has constructed.

Graphically and performance wise Jedi Fallen Order is great, though not spectacular. Playing on an older PS4 I experienced some texture pop-in but overall it is a solid showing and I encountered only one error that crashed the game and zero bugs of any kind. Compared to the buggy mess of many tripple-A games released lately Jedi Fallen Order runs well and looks good. Blasters sound powerful, lightsabers look and feel fantastic and the environments and textures are detailed and well-crafted.
All in all I would say that Jedi Fallen Order is a good and very enjoyable game. I had a lot of fun playing through this game not once but twice and loved it. While far from perfect, the game could have been a little longer, the customizations could have been better, the graphics could be better, it is easily the best Star Wars game in years, one of the best Star Wars stories told in years and one of the best EA produced games from any franchise in years. I rate Jedi Fallen Order as a solid seven out of ten, a notably above-average game but just a bit short of an exceptional game. Still I really, really, really hope this game gets a sequel, it deserves it and Star Wars fans deserve more good games and more well-crafted characters and stories without the toxicity of live-service, microtransaction-crammed messes so common to EA. With any hope Electronic Arts will see Jedi Fallen Order for the win that it is and return to producing more single-player focused games without all the monetization. One can only hope.

P.S. If it wasn't already awesome enough thanks to Jedi Fallen Order the song Black Thunder by the Mongolian Metal band the Hu is now part of the Star Wars canon. I call that a win!