STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) by Respawn Entertainment

Fallen Order looks gorgeous and its respect for the Star Wars license is apparent. It does a fairly good job at taking inspiration from recent, popular game series such as Dark Souls, Uncharted, and the Tomb Raider revivals. If you like those games, or you're hardcore Star Wars fan, go ahead and pick this up—You'll probably quite like it! For me, however, it didn't do enough to elevate itself above its genre or its license, and although I love Star Wars and was eager to jump into the world, that love failed to carry me to enjoying this title. I frequently found myself struggling to have fun with it for a number of reasons.

Although Fallen Order looks great graphically and runs fairly well in general, I experienced regular, annoying framerate hitches—most often during transitions into different areas. Normally this is a minor annoyance, but there are several instances in which this hitching and other frame drops occur when you're attempting to platform, or even in the middle of sub-boss fights. It's extremely frustrating to miss the timing for a jump or a parry because the game is dumping frames from 70+ down to 20ish. One instance was the ice slides on Zeffo, at which framerate takes a dump at certain points when you're attempting not to slide off the edge, or make the jump from one slide to another, or when wallrunning and attempting to jump to a hanging vine from which to swing. The framerate hitching here is severe enough to hamper your timing and cause you to miss a jump, which is very frustrating. There's another instance during one sub-boss on Kashyyyk, which I had to battle while experiencing awful framerate drops seemingly every time I entered the room, which led me to such frustration during attempted dodges and parries that I quit playing the game completely for a few days... And scared the crap out of my dog with a loud string of vitriolic curses damning the game's existence.

I generally find Respawn's level design to be incredible; it was the main attraction for me in Titanfall 2. Although the design is nicely cyclical in Fallen Order and cleverly uses shortcuts a la Dark Souls, the actual layout of each individual area within the levels themselves seem far more gamey and much less ambitious than the lived-in, unique, inspired spaces found in Titanfall 2. Fallen Order is made up of mostly small corridors and a sometimes rectangular, box-like rooms for larger encounters. A lot of the stuff in this game looks beautiful graphically on Unreal Engine 4, but I did not enjoy roaming through these environments because despite this graphical beauty, they all ended up seeming very dry content-wise. I appreciate the attempt to liven up the atmosphere by scattering bits of lore and storytelling items throughout the level, but this was done in such an inorganic way that they seemed contrived and out-of-place and made everything feel gamey more than they made the environment seem lived-in and realistic.

Another issue I had with the game is its reliance on backtracking. If you have liked Metroidvania style backtracking, then you'll probably enjoy this about Fallen Order as well. I personally dislike using unlocked abilities to backtrack through levels, as this loop serves more to frustrate me with repetitive environments and engagements rather than impart a sense of a growing power level. I don't want to grind through 90% of an area I've already cleared to unlock something, get to 10% of a new corridor, and get a box that has a different lightsaber knob. To me, that is boring and unfulfilling. For you, maybe it will be different—perhaps you'll enjoy the added challenge. I can't say.

Fallen Order relies on combat as its main challenge, and while it is decent, I couldn't help feeling like swinging the lightsaber felt too light and airy, in addition to having a very small range. It also constantly clips through the environment as you move through the game, and it seems to do no actual physical damage to humans (by this I mean the dismemberment you would expect from a lightsaber, such as with combat finishers in Witcher 3) but still somehow kills them, which feels fake—like your lightsaber is make-believe—and gives a distinct, immersion-breaking feeling of weakness. Some of the most satisfying combat in video games, such as in Dark Souls, features weapons that all seem to have a realistic weight to them, and act physically like a real weapon would. The lightsaber in Fallen Order feels like a make-believe object—a toy, or a stick—and imparts no sense of power or danger that it should. Swinging the zweihander in Dark Souls, or parrying in Sekiro, for example, are some of the most satisfying weapon interactions of any game I have ever played. I wanted the lightsaber in Fallen Order to feel somewhere near this good, too, but it's just lacking. The animations are enjoyable enough, but the weightlessness and the lack of any effect on the environment are unsatisfying enough to noticeably damage the experience. The force powers, however, were excellent—I wished I could use them earlier in the game, and more frequently once I had unlocked them.

I bought the game because I wanted a good Star Wars story, and perhaps most damning was that I had little to no emotional investment in the game past the first level. Past this introduction—which I found gorgeous, polished, compelling, and inspired—I felt like I was simply shuttled from video game level to video game level and with the plot driven forward only by a MacGuffin I didn't care about. Additionally, the loot and collectible items scattered through the environments did little to help motivate me, either, as they're pretty uninteresting: you will sometimes spend 10 minutes solving a puzzle, only for it to unlock a minor difference on the rubber grip on your lightsaber hilt that you'll never even notice outside the work bench interface. I've done an entire platforming challenge on Kashyyyk only for Cal to scan a Force Echo and say "this place was sacred to them". Due to this I felt no drive to explore side paths and find additional loot because their contents were almost always underwhelming, nor was I urged to do so by additional plot or character development.

Since neither the story nor the collectibles motivated me, the vast majority of the game felt like grinding forward through samey corridors, similar encounters with similar enemies, and ultimately to unfulfilling tedium. There were a few boss fights I legitimately enjoyed (Second Sister ended up being my favorite character), but the plot left me unsatisfied. It features some very contrived turns that made little sense. Haxion Brood base felt completely out of left field, for example. The constantly forces you into making contrived mistakes even when you know they're coming, robbing you of any agency to affect the story. It often turns you towards going back to worlds to which you have already been and grinding through areas you have already cleared, since there is no fast travel system. The game tries its best to utilize shortcuts to funnel you through quickly, but there's only so much the level designers can do here. If these were interesting, inspired areas that provided a genuine, lived-in feel of immersion, then not having a fast travel system would be no issue. But they're not; they're boring corridors with little to catch your interest, creating a feeling of tedium when you're forced to go through them repeatedly.

If you like action games, Soulsbourne games, or Star Wars, then Fallen Order might be right up your alley. You may even love it, as many people seem to. But if you're looking for narrative punch or realistic, inspired world and satisfying lightsaber combat, you will likely want to look elsewhere, as it's very light on that—at least so far. For me, though, it's been a disappointment.

⭐⭐