Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Xbox One)

Likes

• “Feels” like Star Wars
• Combat is well balanced
• Good Story
• Characters have depth

Dislikes

• I still suck at timing
• Graphical glitches
• Sometimes feels too much like a movie

Review

Imagine if you took the “Return of the Jedi” and smashed it together with a “Tomb Raider” game, and a little bit of “Jedi Academy” sprinkled in for flavor. You’d have “Jedi: Fallen Order.” One of the newest Star Wars games in the franchise, Jedi: Fallen Order really hits a homerun. I haven’t had this much fun playing a Star Wars game or been this invested since Knights of the Old Republic (1 and 2).

The game really “feels” like a Star Wars movie that you just so happen to control the protagonist. Generally that’s a good thing. It comes down to little visual details, like how the screen pans down or left to right like the movies. Or how the ship warps as you jaunt around the galaxy. The soundtrack, while not done by John Williams, really sounds like he composed it. There are a lot of shared musical themes that are also in the movies, and part of what makes Star Wars is the soundtrack. That being said, sometimes it feels like the player has very little choice in the game and the fact that it is “on rails” really jumps out.

The game centers around Cal Kestis, a young Jedi in training who survived the Jedi purge (Order 66) and has been in hiding for a few years on a junker planet where old battle cruisers are disassembled. The time frame of the game is shortly after “Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith” and at least a decade before “Episode 4: A New Hope”. You get to see remnants of the old republic, such as battlefields where clone trooper bodies still lay, and old republic ships have crashed. There are constant reminders that the Empire has taken over, but it’s not the vast and powerful Empire we’ve seen in the movies yet. There are still parts of the galaxy it hasn’t touched.

Through a set of unfortunate circumstances, Cal is hunted down on the junker planet and is forced to flee. The main antagonist is called the 2nd Sister, and she’s from an order called the Order of Inquisitors. The Inquisitors are basically ex-Jedi and force users who are trained to hunt down the remaining Jedi that survived the purge. Cal is of course rescued by a mysterious ship with a strange crew, and he finds out that there’s a chance to re-form the Jedi order.

The game then follows Cal and crew from a few planets following a Jedi breadcrumb trail to find a Holocron with a list of all the known force-sensitive children in the galaxy and their locations. The game has you go from one planet to acquire a new ability, such as force push or force pull, and sometimes has you go back to a previously visited planet to get to a previously unreachable location. You can’t really decide to go to one planet over another unless you have the correct abilities.

Cal also has a skill tree for Force, Survival, and Lightsaber. As Cal gets more experience you get points that can be used to improve those various areas. Some options don’t open up until after getting an ability, so you also can’t really “plan” a build ahead of time on first playthrough, but I’ve already almost filled up every skill from fighting.

Combat is generally good. Cal can block blaster bolts and if you block at the perfect time you can send them back to take out the enemy. Cal can also parry physical attacks by timing a block right as they almost hit him. This breaks the attacker’s guard and you can swing a few times. There’s also a “block” gauge that get’s depleted as you just block. Eventually your block is broken and you can take some pretty serious damage. Blocking and parrying correctly are essential to doing well in combat.

Healing happens through Stims or through meditation. You only have so many Stims and must rest through meditation to replenish them. Meditation serves as both the save point, the skill level menu, and the rest menu. When you rest at meditation, it completely heals you and refills all your Stims, but all your enemies respawn, much like a bloodmoon in “Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.”

The biggest issue is that the game is very linear, and I don’t foresee any replay-ability. Much of the game relies on the story, which is very much a Star Wars story. Sometimes to a fault. The antagonist is similar to Darth Vader and Kylo Ren, and some of the twists are very predictable (like who the 2nd sister really is). The game itself also has some rendering issues with clipping and characters disappearing. This was played on an Xbox One S, so your experience may be different depending on the platform.

I really enjoyed my playthrough, and strongly recommend giving it a try. Right now it’s on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play, so if you subscribe to either of those you absolutely must take advantage and play it.