My Love-Hate Relationship with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
If I’m going to be honest, my first play session of Jedi Fallen Order was somewhat miserable. Although a decent amount of my misery came from accidentally setting the game difficulty to hard, the difficulty setting could not mask the shortcomings of this game which were on full display over a few hours of gameplay. At this point, I couldn’t even fathom giving this game a rating above 7 and I continued playing with a negative mindset of just getting through the story to get the game over with.
Now that I’ve beaten the game and grinded nearly every single achievement in the game, I can say that my first play session of Jedi Fallen Order was not reflective of the experience I had afterwards. Although the shortcomings I mentioned previously persisted throughout the game, the strengths of the game really had moments to shine as I progressed deeper through. Despite my less than glowing first impression of the game, Jedi Fallen Order is a game that won me over in the end and makes me excited for potential sequels continuing the story of the protagonists in this game.
Jedi Fallen Order is a rollercoaster ride with some incredible high points and very irritating lows, but I am ultimately willing to accept some of these deficiencies because everything else that the game offers — particularly the story and characters — does a fantastic job of capturing what makes the Star Wars franchise so unique and special.
Characters
Bar none, the best part of this game are its characters. The writing in this game is superb, and the voice acting and dialogue really sets this game apart because it sounds so natural. Video game characters can sometimes fall into this trap of feeling or sounding robotic when they interact with the world and people around them. Jedi Fallen Order’s main characters are the exact opposite in this regard, and are all prime examples of how to create and write characters that emotionally resonate with the player or audience.
The main two characters directly affected by the collapse of the Jedi Order — Cal Kestis and Cere Junda — have strong storylines that grip the player because it touches on the insecurity and trauma Cal and Cere carry with them as a result of the event and all the decisions they have made afterwards. Jedi Fallen Order does a great job of giving each character a chance to show their vulnerabilities, which ultimately sets these characters up for success because it gives them room to grow and offers the player with more opportunities to sympathize and deeply connect with them.
Unlike some games, the writers of Jedi Fallen Order have also put in serious effort to give each character distinct personality traits — hell, even lowly stormtroopers engage in downright hilarious banter in the background as you sneak up on them. The character that best exemplifies this is Greez, the lovable four-armed alien who’s the pilot of your crew. Greez embodies the sassiness and stubbornness of a stereotypical wacky uncle, and he’ll go down as one of my favorite video game characters ever. Finally, the main cast also has great chemistry as a group and they really play off each other well throughout the game.
Story
The game’s story admittedly starts off somewhat slow, as the start of the game is a bit more exploration heavy. The story picks up steam later on with the player gaining more insight into Cal and Cere’s past alongside more intense action sequences and set piece moments. One of the coolest things about the game is that there’s always a feeling of mystery as you move forward exploring planets, which offers genuine surprises and several rewarding encounters.
Ultimately, Jedi Fallen Order truly looks, sounds and feels like something that belongs in the Star Wars universe. The game’s soundtrack, cinematography, planet design and references / expansion to Star Wars lore gives Jedi Fallen Order a Star Wars DNA that’s unmistakable and meets the standard of quality inherent to other Star Wars productions. Being a video game does help Jedi Fallen Order bring a lot of value to Star Wars as a whole, as there’s some big scenes in the game that would have been exceptionally challenging to recreate in film. The ending, which for the most part was fantastic, featured an AMAZING call back to the original trilogy that left me absolutely speechless and concluded the game on a really high note.
The Elephant in the Room — Gameplay
The combat in Jedi Fallen Order often fails to deliver the balance, polish and responsiveness we expect from other Triple A titles. First of all, you start the game off incredibly underpowered and taking down enemies is often drawn out because you just don’t have the tools to dish out damage quickly enough. You can only damage enemies when they are staggered or under the influence of a force ability — force is not quickly recoverable for a decent portion of a game, and staggering an enemy takes longer than it reasonably should. When an enemy is staggered, you can only deal a small amount of damage to them before they get their guard back up and their stagger bar fills up entirely again — how annoying is that!
On the flip side, it often feels like enemies consistently deal more damage than you and you often feel like you are at a disadvantage for every fight in the game. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact there is not a reliable ranged attack that enables Cal to deal with enemies from a distance, which would have been helpful in tight situations. The bosses in the game also exhibit this high level of power. Although I liked the extra challenge of Fallen Order’s boss battles, bosses often take multiple tries and I felt that I had to fight them a certain way (to maximize damage output) in order to stand a chance. Although the game has a blocking / parry mechanic, the implementation of it is flawed because the parry window is less forgiving compared to other games and it feels like it only works 50% of the time.
Most of the combat abilities that tilt the scales in your favor (e.g. extra lightsaber damage, stim fully recovers force meter, etc.) simply aren’t unlockable until halfway through the game, compelling me to play incredibly defensively until then. The combat gets much better once these upgrades are acquired, but I do not think the player should have to rely on getting upgrades in order to experience balanced and fair combat — it should feel like this from the start regardless of the state of your character.
In short, you can’t easily harm enemies while most medium enemies can easily overpower you, and this is the reality of the game for at least ten hours until you unlock a few crutch upgrades. This turning point dramatically changed my experience with the game — it felt like Cal instantly transformed into a powerful Jedi Grandmaster at the flick of a switch. With those upgrades in hand, the game’s combat felt much more balanced, normal and closer to my initial expectations. I really started having a ton of fun with the combat from that point forward. Nonetheless, I still faced issues defending myself from enemy attacks because the parry ability works so inconsistently.
I understand that this is Respawn’s first foray into third-person action adventure games, but I do not think Jedi Fallen Order’s combat should have missed the mark this much. Many improvements can be made from a balance and combat design perspective, but the combat I experienced with character upgrades was not bad and at least shows that there’s a workable foundation that can be corrected to deliver a more pleasant experience if a sequel is ever to be developed.
Although in-game platforming was mostly fine, it suffers from some similar issues as combat with a below average level of responsiveness. This led to a lot of unnecessary deaths, as I was unable to reach a platform or grab a rope despite heading in the right direction. The lack of control you feel with movement and traversal sometimes kills the flow of the game, as there were multiple occasions where I restarted a platforming checkpoint over five times in a row because I repeatedly fell off the map.
On a more positive note, the game has great environmental puzzles — something that a lot of games in the action-adventure genre have failed to execute well in recent years. The puzzles are moderately challenging and require some critical thought to complete, unlike other games where the pathway to completion is pretty much laid out in front of you as soon as you start the puzzle. A nice touch is that the puzzles employ your force abilities, giving them a stage to shine outside of combat.
Level Design
I loved how each explorable planet has its own unique character and charm while still feeling like a Star Wars location. Most of the planets are pretty huge as well, which is a double-edged sword — it adds to the impressiveness and diversity of each planet, but the lack of fast travel means that traversal back to your ship is a painstaking process. In addition, the checkpoint system in the game occasionally works against the player. Every time your character dies, you respawn at the last meditation point that you visited which could be a significant distance away from you. Dying therefore sometimes forces you to lose a decent chunk of progress. This does not happen too much though, but it is a valid concern nonetheless and begs the question of whether a better checkpoint system should have been featured in the game instead.
Game Performance (on Base PS4)
There were a few bugs when I played the game like models not loading fully, movement freezing entirely to load the next area and one story cutscene which stuttered when I played it. Also, textures tended to take a longer time to load compared to other games. However, I will not dwell on this too much as other players (especially on other platforms) may have had a different experience and I do not believe these technical problems can be generalized to all players. However, it seemed like the game’s input unresponsiveness in combat / platforming along with these minor technical glitches did happen at a higher frequency compared to other games I have run on my PS4, which may illustrate that more could have been done to better optimize or port this game to PS4.
Conclusion
Even though I said this game won me over, I am honestly still a bit conflicted about it. Jedi Fallen Order’s narrative elements gives the game a ton of heart, but it does not mask at all the actual gameplay which I was unsatisfied with for around half of the game. This game is undeniably a great addition to the Star Wars universe, as the new story it tells is so emotionally grounded and marvelously honors its source material, adding so many new dimensions to concepts only lightly touched on in other Star Wars media. For even the most casual Star Wars fans, this game is a real treat and rivals the Mandalorian as some of the most compelling Star Wars entertainment released in recent years.
I think that the gameplay in Jedi Fallen Order could turn some players off because it is rough around the edges and downright unfair at times, but I have a lasting, more optimistic thought I want to share concerning this. Despite Jedi Fallen Order’s weaknesses in gameplay, I wholeheartedly believe that a lot of these shortcomings are fixable and Jedi Fallen Order was just a few changes and tweaks away from going down as a classic game. Narrative issues, in my opinion, are harder to fix than gameplay elements — if we were to compare this game to competitive racing, our crew has a naturally skilled driver just not the best car for him to race with. If Respawn Entertainment is aware of this game’s shortcomings and actively works hard to not repeat their past mistakes, I have no doubt that their next Star Wars game will be a masterpiece.
