We are in peak Star Wars renaissance right now. Disney+ just hit the internet with pretty much every (Disney-owned) Star Wars property you could imagine available at your fingertips. The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show, is finally here and it’s amazing. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters in a month. And in addition to all that Respawn, developers of Titanfall and Apex Legends, has bestowed upon us Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, a game that was on track to be one of the best Star Wars games of all time. But is it?
I believe the best thing this game has to offer is its story. Jedi Fallen Order offers a great and truly unique story to add to the Star Wars mythos. Taking place five years after Order 66 (elimination of all Jedi), the story focuses on Cal Kestis, a young padawan on the run from the Empire. Another thing this game gets right is the voice performances. Pretty much everyone on the voice cast does a really good job. Standouts include Gotham’s Cameron Monaghan (Cal Kestis), Daniel Roebuck (Greez Dritus), and Elizabeth Grullon (the Second Sister).
The combat took a little bit of getting used to, but once I did, I found it to be a lot of fun. Cal’s combat abilities change and improve throughout the game so getting the opportunity to develop your own unique fighting style with the multitudes of combat moves was a treat. The way the game handled Cal learning his various force powers was done in a pretty interesting way as well. The game didn’t want to give you everything at the beginning, and I thought the way they spread out learning these powers was unique. One of the most enjoyable areas of gameplay also proved to be one of the more frustrating parts, that being the puzzles. They can be really frustrating at first, but once you get into the swing of things you’ll be feeling like Einstein in no time…Jed-einstein, it works.
It's the weekend. Clear your to-do list. Go become a Jedi. #JediFallenOrder pic.twitter.com/WWy1XL3oNy
— EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) November 23, 2019
With a lot of things (definitely Star Wars) I’m a real sucker for cool character or set design. Lucky for me, this game gives me plenty of that. Jedi Fallen Order does a great job giving us unique character designs without having to lean on already established characters or species. Take Greez Dritus for example. You knew exactly what kind of character the little Latero would be before he even opened up his sarcastic mouth, just by the way the character was designed and acted. A lot of the baddies looked awesome too. The Second Sister with her double-bladed spinning lightsaber, the Purge Troopers, even the hulking brute Ninth Sister, it’s awesome seeing such an immense character wield a lightsaber.
With the good always comes the bad, so I’ll get the big doozy out of the way. This is probably one of the worst performing games I’ve played in quite a while, which really is a shame because the game’s performance really did hinder a lot of the enjoyment I could have had. There are glitches galore; characters glitching through walls, characters floating on nothing, characters disappearing/popping in randomly, etc. Those kinds of glitches I can almost forgive, but what I didn’t like were the frame drops and lag. At times where the framerate drops or lag got really bad (most of the time where tons of stuff is happening like in COMBAT), it made the game borderline unplayable.
While frame rate drops and lag can be excusable (to an extent, the game did JUST come out), what can’t be excused is the amount of loading this game has. The worst case of this is in the middle of battle. The game will randomly freeze to load in new textures in the middle of a fight which will almost always result in Cal getting a baton/blaster bolt upside the head. To make matters worse, when the game reloads when you respawn after you die (which will happen a lot), the game can take up to 1-2 minutes (I kept track) to load back in. I would wager that per hour of gameplay, 5-10 minutes of that is load times and in 2019 that is unacceptable.
Related: ‘Gears 5’ Offers a Compelling Narrative at the Expense of Gameplay
While the cutscenes themselves didn’t look too bad, there were tons of graphical bugs during them. Characters jittering in the background, facial features not rendering properly, mouths not moving, you name it. In-game had its fair share of issues graphics-wise as textures can take an awfully long time to load in. I know a lot of my points can be seen as nitpicky, but when it’s 2019 and games cost $80 (Canada yay) I kind of expect games to look better than mid-life Xbox 360 titles.
A few smaller things I had issues with in Jedi Fallen Order is the map. It’s over-complicated and a pain in the butt to use, so I just don’t unless I’m utterly lost. As I said earlier in my review, the combat is pretty fun, but using the lightsaber itself is pretty dissatisfying. The lightsaber is one of the most powerful weapons in science fiction but I felt like what I was using was just a sword with LEDs around it. Lastly, if you beat up on an enemy enough, or parry a move perfectly, you’ll have the opportunity to perform an execution which gets its own little animation. If there are enemies around while you’re performing said execution they can totally attack and damage you and you’re helpless to do anything while mid-animation.
Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order was without a doubt the game I was most hyped for this year, so writing this review was rather heartbreaking. With all the issues the game has currently, it’s the most disappointed I’ve been with a game in quite a while. The game is just too buggy right now for me to properly enjoy, but I am sure once a patch is released the game will get much better. With the story, great characters and performance, and fun puzzles and combat, I do believe under all the bugs, glitches, lag, and load times there is a great game waiting for me. Bring on the patch.
Related Article: The Mandalorian Chapter 3 Spoilers and Speculation
