I’ll start this by stating that I am a massive Star Wars nerd, I’ve got far too many lego Star Wars models, too many books and comics and I’ve started my Star Wars tattoo sleeve, so I’m hoping that I’m not going to be too biased just because this is a game based on my favourite galaxy far far away. That being said, on the other end I’ve had bad experience with games from EA, Star Wars battlefront 2, although great a year later was a shambles when it released. This game unfortunately has a similar problem.
I picked this up about 5 days after release while shopping for my kids and decided I also deserved a gift. I fired it up and was instantly blown away by the beauty, new brutality and the story. While being as spoiler free as possible, this game starts with your classic tutorial section showcasing the new abilities while reminding you of the abilities from the first game. One thing to mention on this is that you don’t re-learn old things, it’s all brand new stuff and I really appreciate this. It’s much better than your character forgetting everything from before and having to re unlock abilities, and learning more advanced versions instead makes more lore based sense, with cal Learning these new moves and developing as a Jedi knight. This leads into your first boss fight and shows just how far Cal has come in the last 5 years. You fight an enemy from the previous game that was a fairly difficult boss fight, in this game however Cal absolutely destroys them. This is all great story telling and shows more character development that the entire sequel trilogy ( I had to get one in).
I wont talk too much more about story because I don’t want to spoil anything but it’s spectacular, it’s even a better story than Fallen Order which I really enjoyed. It’s around 20 hours long which isn’t to shabby and if you go for platinum like me, your looking 50-60 which isn’t too bad. I will admit that although Jedda and Koboh are massive maps and are brilliantly fleshed out, that I would have liked a few more planets. You get these 2 Hub worlds, 2 decent little planets, 1 small space station and another planet with no collectibles.
I’d have added maybe 2 more medium size worlds to fill in the gaps, maybe Jakku to tie into the new trilogy and something like Felucia to show off the bright colour range in glorious 4k.
Speaking of 4k, this game is beautiful, all the locations look great, the characters look great and so do the lightsabers. This game gives you 9 different colours in the base game and an extra one on new game plus, as well as 5 stances. Double bladed and Crossguard were my go to, double is great for defence from blasters and crowd control while Cross guard was slow but powerful, your classic two handed weapon. Limb dismembered is accurate and with the occasional decapitation this feels more accurate and brutal than the first game.
Now unfortunately we get on to the bad bits and, there’s only really one, but it is a big problem. The frame rate during most of the game is fine and it all flows, but try and fight some storms troopers in a stream and it’s all over. I’m not sure you get much over 2 fps and combat slows to a grinding halt. This also happens during some of the faster cutscenes, some of which would be spectacular if it wasn’t for dropping you out of the immersive experience. This said, it may have improved through more recent updates, which I hope it does because this game is a contender for GOTY even with these issues.
Another mention for issues I had were centred around hammy controls when it came to using the force on certain puzzles. There was a part where I could see a force echo ripe for the reaping and could see how to get there, but couldn’t because instead of force pulling platforms, it decided to do some heavy attack and launch me into the abyss. After this happening several times I abandoned it, but after an update I went back later in the game and it worked immediately so I can only presume the update fixed the problem.
Overall I fully enjoyed this game and would rate it 10/10 if it wasn’t for those problems. So with consideration I’d give this game 8/10, a highly tasty game. This is hard for me, as I said I’m a Star Wars fan and wanted to give it higher but they are real issues. I’d also have liked it to be a bit longer (I’ve heard that before), but I can’t rate it down too much for this because those hub worlds are rather large.
Review by MoonHead.
Released 28th April, Sony PlayStation 5
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