Jedi Fallen Order Review

2nd June 202029th March 2021 Dillon Van Der Putten Disney, EA, Game Review, Jedi Fallen Order, Star Wars, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Review

I have to say that as soon as Jedi Fallen Order was announced, I was SUPER excited, I mean it’s another Star Wars game, after the disappointment of Star Wars 1313 I was extremely happy and a little worried at the same time. What was it gonna be like? Were they going to cancel this too? Who were you going to play as? And I have to say that when it finally came out, it exceeded almost all of my expectations.

I’ll start with the downside. The only downside for this game is that the story was ok, just ok. It wasn’t anything special, I mean it still flowed pretty well, and you even had a sense of choosing your own adventure but especially with how the story ended, it left me asking, “Oh well why did I go through that trouble?”

You play as a character named Cal Kestis who was a padawan when order 66 occurred, but escaped and is now working on downed starships scrapping them for parts. However your buddy, Prauf, has an accident and you end up saving him using the force. The problem is that the Inquisitors catch wind there is a Jedi there and end up finding you, so you have to run. You end up getting saved by some random lady and a 4 armed alien who supposedly know a little bit about what’s going on. They end up taking you to a planet where you have to make it into a certain temple where you find a recording of a guy telling you that there is a holocron with the information detailing the next generation of Jedi. So you set off, the three of you, to find this Holocron before the Inquisitors do, to use it and rebuild the Jedi Order.

Where this game excels though is almost everywhere apart from the story. From the very beginning of the game you get some absolutely stunning scenery of crashed ships, ships passing by, vibrant planets, it’s amazing. However not only was the scenery amazing but the characters, the enemies, monsters and your lightsaber. Everything was crisp and precise and I found myself just sitting there admiring everything around me just as much as actually playing the game.

Now onto gameplay. It has been likened to both Dark Souls and Sekiro style gameplay. Which I would agree with, even though I think it slides more towards Sekiro than Dark Souls, cuz it has more to do with dodging away from combat than through combat. Combat is pretty simple and straightforward, certain buttons to attack and use force abilities and so on. However it also relies quite heavily on your reactions and reflexes to be able to parry both melee enemies and stormtroopers who shoot at you (and yes they can hit you). The great thing though is that isn’t the only to beat enemies and that you have to have different tactics for different enemies. You have your regular enemies which are mostly stormtroopers, who shoot at you and you can easily dispatch them by parrying the bolts back at them by blocking just before they hit you. You have bigger enemies like monsters and such that you have to dodge because you can’t block their attacks and you also have enemies where you have to work your way behind them because they recover from your parry before you can attack them. This means it’s not just another hack and slash, you have to use the right tactic for the right enemy, and I love it.

The other thing I love about this game is the way you get certain things as you make your way through the game. As you go along Cal keeps remembering past teachings which will give you new abilities, not just force abilities but abilities like wall running as well. The other feature you get as you go along is the ability to improve your lightsaber. At first, the only ‘improvement’ you can make is to aesthetically change your lightsaber, however there are certain points in the game where you can go to a double bladed lightsaber and then to a double bladed lightsaber that you can split into 2 single lightsabers. This was an awesome feature because everyone has a different style with different preferences and it allowed you to fight how you wanted with the color you want with the hilt you wanted, an absolutely awesome feature in an absolutely awesome game.

With all of these visuals, gameplay, tactics, Star Wars content and personalised lightsaber really gave you the feeling of someone growing back into the force and being a Jedi of the Fallen Order. Suffice to say for a person who looks to the story of games before anything else this game enticed me even with its, sometimes problematic storyline, and the reason I stayed and loved the game is mostly because of one thing and that is that they made you feel like a Jedi.

Review by Dillon Vander Putten