This article originally ran under a different banner/website in December of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! LEND ME YOUR EARS!!! DO JOURNALISTS NOT HAVE ANY PRIDE IN THEIR WORK? As I, the Video Game Doomsayer, glance through reviews of Jedi: Fallen Order, my eyes instantly roll in disgust when I see the phrase “makes you feel like a Jedi.” Such a sloppy and lazy phrase that reminds me of when reviewers said Marvel’s Spider-Man makes you feel like Spider-Man. A hollow phrase that leans too heavily into hoping your audience is already familiar with the material. While I would hazard a guess everyone is familiar with the space opera that is Star Wars, I refuse to accept the phrase as anything but tired. NO MORE, I EXCLAIM, NO MORE!!! I, the Video Game Doomsayer, will provide you the review of Jedi: Fallen Order that you want. NO!!! THAT YOU NEED!!! Much like my Marvel’s Spider-Man review, I will review Jedi: Fallen Order without that lazy tiring phrase. So let’s begin.
Five years after the infamous Order 66, a young padawan, Cal Kestis, is hiding out as a member of a Scrapper Guild. While working to take apart a fallen spaceship from the Clone Wars, Cal is forced to use the Force to save his father figure Prauf from falling to his death. The Imperial Inquisition catches wind of a potential Jedi hiding among the Scrappers and threatens to murder the whole Guild if they don’t give up the fugitive. Immediately, Prauf tells off the Inquisition and the Empire, leading to the main antagonist, Second Sister, stabbing him with her lightsaber. Cal strikes at her with his hidden lightsaber, only to have Second Sister extend the second end of her double lightsaber to parry his strike. She force pushes him to into a massive orange brute, the Ninth Sister, who drops Cal onto an Imperial railcar.
After cutting his way through Stormtroopers aboard the train, Cal is eventually rescued by ex-Jedi Cere Junda and Captain Greez Dritus aboard the ship, The Mantis. They travel to Bogano as it was home to Cere’s old master. Cal then discovers a potential list of Force-sensitive children that help rebuild the Jedi Order. Kickstarting a very standard Star Wars plot of a novice Jedi, a battle-scarred master, and sarcastic space pilot traveling around the galaxy following the instructions left on a droid.
While the plot seems to be the same recycled plot Star Wars treads over and over, I didn’t find myself rolling my eyes in annoyance. A fact that I am going to attribute to characters rather than the plot. Minus Cal Kestis of course. Meaning no offense to the writers and actor for Cal, but he very much feels like the character that we are supposed to project ourselves onto. A pair of pants some might say. A criticism that’s also aimed at Luke Skywalker, but unlike the rest of the Jedi: Fallen Order crew is on par with the Star Wars: A New Hope cast. Cere has an equally tragic backstory in comparison to Obi-Wan. Greez’s offbeat personality makes him just as enjoyable as Han Solo. However, BD-1 is the best sidekick droid in the whole Star Wars universe. Nothing is more joyous than watching BD-1 dance around when you discover another crate with a health stim he can toss you in battle. YOU CAN TAKE THAT RIDICULOUS BB-8 AND THROW HIM IN THE TRASH. I RATHER HAVE A BD-1 DROID RIDING ON MY SHOULDER!!!
However engaging characters don’t mean much if the gameplay melts your controller into a hot slag of metal. Historically, Star Wars games have ranged from turned-based RPGs to first-person shooters to racing games. So what is Jedi: Fallen Order? The word Soulslike is being batted around like a blaster shot being fired at a lightsaber. While it is true Jedi: Fallen Order has many Soulslike qualities like challenging gameplay, experience lost on death, and enemies respawning at checkpoints, I am more reminded of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Naturally, the space religion that incorporates samurai-style combat would be similar to FromSoftware’s samurai RPG. While it seems obvious, it doesn’t become apparent until your fighting tougher enemies like Purge troopers or the Inquisition.
Much like Sekiro: Shadow Die Twice every enemy has a block meter. Attacking an enemy does drain the meter but leaves you open to counterattacks. Parrying an enemy’s attack not only doesn’t drain your own block meter but depletes some of your enemy’s meter. Encouraging the rhythmic parrying Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was aiming for. Once you whittle down the enemy’s block meter, they are left dazed and vulnerable. If they’re low, Cal will usually pull off a stylish Bayonetta-like finisher. Lightsaber fights become a frantic game of timing those parries, getting in quick jabs, and avoiding unblockable moves with a dodge. Very much similar to Sekiro: Shadow Die Twice, however Jedi: Fallen Order has difficulty levels that affect the window you have to parry, incoming damage, and enemy aggression. As I look at the various difficulties, I can’t help but lean over to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and yell this was all that I wanted, surely you could have done something like this.
Once the combat clicks boss fights become an exhilarating rush of energy. The pings and hums of lightsabers clashing race through the speakers. The crackling of sabers fires off as you and your opponent clash in an attempt to overpower one another. You channel the spirit of a samurai as you masterfully weave in between your opponent’s attacks. Your heart races as you parry and dodges various blows. It completely captures the energy that came from watching Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader duel it out, but frankly enhances it by making it your fight. Your duel with rogue Jedi who turned to the Darkside. Your duel with the hulking Ninth Sister. Your duel with the dark Second Sister. We all have imagined ourselves in epic lightsaber duels, and now Jedi: Fallen Order allows that dream to become a reality.
Along with the clashing of lightsabers, you are given various Force powers. I found them to be kind of niche in boss fights, but joyful to use on the wimpy Stormtroopers. While it is effortless to parry and slice up Stormtroopers, it is more cathartic to Force pull a helpless Stormtrooper and launch him off a cliff. If Storm Troopers didn’t want to be Force pushed off the ledge, I urge them to not stand too close to the edge. You also have a Force slow that allows you to stop those blaster shots or attacking Storm Troopers mid-swing. You can even slow a blaster shot and force pull a Storm Trooper into his shot if you are bored of merely reflecting shots back at Storm Troopers. The force powers and cannon fodder Storm Trooper allow one to blow off steam after traversing challenging zones.
Part of those challenging sections frankly comes from a shocking awful lock-on system. It isn’t a problem in the epic one on one lightsaber duels, but as soon as multiple enemies come on screen, the camera becomes your greatest liability. At a certain point in Jedi: Fallen Order, you are captured by a bounty hunter and brought to a gladiatorial arena. You’re pitted against waves of hostile creatures that you had faced along your journey, with the last wave being a giant spider and an ice troll. The lock-on system would flail back and forth between the two creatures at the worst moments. I locked on to the spider gearing up to strike, as soon as I was ready to parry, the camera swings over to the troll hobbling over to me. Allowing the spider to slice off a large chunk of my health. This gauntlet was frankly harder than any of the boss fights, not because Respawn Entertainment designed it to be hard, but the camera has been seduced by the Darkside.
When you’re not cursing out the camera for not focusing on the one Strom Trooper with the rocket launcher, you will be exploring four Metrovaina style planets with the exploration revolving around Uncharted system climbing sections. Since Cal spent five-year climbing around ruined ships in order to scrap them, he is able to climb various walls and ledges. Jedi: Fallen Order is able to overcome the traditional 3D action game problem of not knowing to go with excellent signposting. BD-1 is equipped with a 3d hologram map that highlights ways you can and can’t go. Where you need to climb is fairly obvious and while the slides initially reminded me of the nightmare slides in Alice Madness Returns, they are not as bad as I thought. Sometimes the physics have a brainfart that results in Cal not grabbing a ledge or an enemy floating in the air. However, the overall Uncharted-inspired sections don’t make me scream in rage as the camera does.
The Metrovania influences are on displayed as we gain our Force powers. Bridges need to be Force pushed down, ropes need to Force pulled to reach, and some ledges require a Force jump, which is a fancy name for a double jump. You can also upgrade BD-1 to allow you to slide up and down zip lines and splice through obstacles like locked doors and forcefields. You can also use the Force to allow you to wall run, and as some of you can imagine, I was excited to learn about this. The wall running in Titanfall 2 gave a sense of freedom and agility that has only been matched by Marvel’s Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the wall run in Jedi: Fallen Order doesn’t have the same sense of mobility as Titanfall 2. Jedi: Fallen Order doesn’t take advantage of it as Titanfall 2’s Effect and Cause level, where I wall ran a whole hallway while using a device to flip between two time periods to avoid various hazards. In Jedi: Fallen Order, you jump, Cal runs a predetermined arch along the way, you jump to get off. Respawn Entertainment are masters of mobility, surely they could do more than this.
The main purpose of the exploration is to find various customization options for Cal, BD-1, the Mantis, and of course your lightsaber. While most of the time, you can barely see the details of your lightsabers as you make Storm Troopers quiver in fear, I cannot deny I got weirdly into customizing my lightsaber. Naturally, when I caught wind of being able to unlock a double-ended lightsaber if I was willing to venture to a hostile alien planet. I, without question, banged my head against of wall of challenging enemies until I had my very own green double-ended lightsabers. Very much worth the extra hour spent trying to achieve the dream of being a hero-version of Darth Maul.
The final ingredient to this mixture of Sekiro: Shadow Die Twice, Uncharted, and Metro Prime is Tomb Raider. You will occasionally enter fallen temples in the hope of gaining more information on these Force-sensitive kids. The temples will have grand puzzles usually based around one of the Force powers, like using Force push to push giant metal spheres into various holes. Not terribly original, but I found it to be a perfect downtime activity after fighting a legion of Strom Troopers.
I, like many of you, was a child at one point. I am sure many of you had your imagination arrested by one of the many Star Wars films. No doubt, you would immediately grab a pair of toy lightsabers and have duels with a sibling or friend. You make lightsaber clashing sounds as you imagine those John William horns are blaring in the background. You weave in and out the rickety jungle gym as your sibling opponent’s slashes push you back. Jumping onto the swings and slashing at each other as we pass. Racing down the slide because you saw it done in Indiana Jones and you think it would be a great addition to your fantasy adventure. You race across the monkey bars as if they were over a vast bottomless pit. Finally, as you have nowhere left to run, you skillful take down your sibling just before they run off to Mom. Jedi: Fallen Order captures this same imaginative spark that came from these playground adventures. It starts as a Star Wars adventure, but you slowly begin to slowly pull influences from other movies, just as Respawn has done. Some might say it is unoriginal, but much like your Star Wars adventure, Jedi Fallen Order captures that exciting rollercoaster ride that has been missing from Star Wars in a long time. It does an amazing job making you feel like a Jedi. Oh, shoot, not again.