By 
My knowledge of this series can be summed up with: I’ve seen all the films. I’ve also played a few of the video games but I think they aren’t canon? When you have a series as storied as Star Wars, the games have a lot of legacy to live up to in the eyes of the fans. I’m just a fan of games, so I’m not too concerned with how much it “honours” its source material. What we can look at is what the game is trying to accomplish with the universe and setting it leverages, and how much it educates players about it without prior knowledge. We don’t want to look at a game and cynically deem it a tool for those who play the game to be folded into the ecosystem of the series. I’m going to assume the developers tried to make the best game they could, and not as marketing to sell tickets to the movie. The game can be boiled down to: An exiled psychic monk with a laser sword goes on an interstellar journey.
The introductory mission sets the stage. Cal Kestis is our main character and he cuts up old starships for parts. Here we are taught how to climb and move around. There is a button to grab onto surfaces and a button to let go. Once the player presses the grab button they don’t need to continue holding it to continue holding on. This gives the impression that the player simply needs to press the button once to enter climb mode. One of the early “challenges” the game gives the player is a timing challenge, the player is meant to let go of a climbing surface and then press the grab button again to avoid falling all the way down. By the way, falling results in taking damage, not a fail state, which I think is the real lesson of this challenge. Failing to press the grab button again results in a fall. Only shortly before this challenge, Cal is able to jump from one climbing surface to another without needing to press the button again. I suppose since the player presses the release grab button, the game’s logic is not broken. Maybe if it was reordered, the drop and grab came first, it would be less jarring. Also if the grab button had to be held instead of tapped, it would also free up an input for whatever purposes. I never made this mistake again because I took this damage. In fact, I would even press the grab button after doing the climbing jump, which never required it. The order of the lessons to the player is important like what is taught to the player. Introductions to mechanics are very important. I suppose since I didn’t make the mistake, it is a reasonable lesson.
Moving on, we’re given some plot information. There are NPCs performing tasks and will react as Cal runs by. If you pay attention and were highly informed on the lore of the series, you might be able to figure out when this game takes place. I tried to figure it out but I’m not familiar with the series that well, but I like that it is there for people who are big fans. The player is told explicitly when the game is set later on in the game, Spoiler Alert: Between two movies. We see that some of the characters address Cal directly and it gives the impression that he’s liked in his community, he’s a good dude and you should root for him. There are a few scripted events with custom cameras that the player can witness. Those really sell the scale of things. A slight nitpick is that they are too scripted, having area triggers so the player can see the full event. I tried to view one by waiting at the first trigger, but it didn’t play to completion. That’s fine since players move eventually. The player also starts to learn a lot of the rules of the level design; Where they can climb, what to look out for to proceed. Games must really make these obvious yet blend them seamlessly into the aesthetic of the world. A cheap solution would be a non-diegetic waypoint that obviously tells the player ‘GO HERE’, the diegetic solution is almost universally more appreciated. Tangentially, I think Mirror’s Edge approach was both diegetic and non-diegetic at the same time, paradoxically. The last part of the stage has the player sliding down the wing of a ship. It’s pretty obvious that sliding down and off the wing results in something bad happening. Me, thinking I had a choice in a linear game, try to jam my character into some collision to stop falling. This is impossible. The game will weirdly displace the player model so that it cannot get stuck. Funnily enough, they solve their own problem as other pieces of the wing will break off so the player cannot collide with them. Why not do this for all the pieces? I thought stopping my descent was what I was supposed to do. Anyway at the end of the sequence Cal uses The Force because he’s obviously a Jedi, you can see it on the box art and splash screen.
Moving on, Cal tells his friend not to mention he can use The Force and that he has to leave the planet. At this point I managed to figure out that his friend was going to die, and that he’s not getting off the planet without running into some sort of trouble. There’s a dream sequence here that’s quite good. Cal walks to the end of the train following his friend and there’s a closed door, once the player turns the camera around they see the interior or a starship instead. It’s really cool that games manage to do this nowadays, because the meshes have to be swapped so precisely (camera FOV) that the player doesn’t notice the swap. No loading, seamless. At this point I think it would’ve been cool to teach the player how to run and kick the music up, but that doesn’t happen. It’s fine though. Then we get a cutscene where the train is stopped by people with red lightsabers so we know they’re bad guys, and Cal’s friend dies. I suppose since he uses The Force earlier, the bad guys could sense a disturbance and manage to track him down. Now we’re taught the meat of the game: the combat. My favourite. There’s a scripted sequence that happens where the player is prompted with a button and the game waits for the player to press it. I think this is fine for the most part, the sequence doesn’t need to have a timeout, having one just adds additional polish.
Combat is simple, there’s a light attack, a heavy attack, a block/parry and a dodge. Cal can also use his Force powers, the first one he has is Force Slow. One thing that is very important for the player to master is the parry. This can be used to both reflect ranged laser rifle shots as well as stun melee enemies. This breaks down a little when parries have to be used in succession or against a group of enemies. If 3 enemies queue up attacks one after the other, the first one will be parried since the character is locked into the animation the player is unable to parry the subsequent attacks. If this was because I was playing on the “hardest” difficulty then that is unforgivable, because it becomes impossible. What other games do is that the parry is actually an AOE, so this never happens. Either that or the parry animation is cancellable. Force Slow functions like a soft stun that ends when the enemy is struck. In retrospect, I could have used that time to use the heavy attack, but I never did because I thought the stun lock the light attack chain provides. The most annoying part is that there are some enemy attacks that follow the player through a dodge. That means during certain attacks by certain enemies, the dodge does not disjoint attacks. These attacks will pivot on the spot during animations to hit the player. What madness. Why have a dodge if it doesn’t work half the time, and the player has no way of telling when it will work and when it won’t? I tried a few times, trying the dodge during the anticipation of the attack animation and during the follow-through. Neither of them worked. Usually when players are supposed to “duel” enemies, the enemies have a set of moves with the player needing to discern and execute the correct response to minimise hurt and maximise damage. If it is impossible to “discern”, the rest falls apart. Overhead attacks should be dodged to the side, sweeping attacks dodged backwards or up. The combat system isn’t exactly “clean” because it is unable to do this. Even the unlockable part of the combat just adds a few insta-kill moves with The Force powers that are unlocked throughout the game.
Moving on, there are certain obstacles that can be removed with a lightsaber cut. It is a laser sword, it should be able to cut through everything! Of course we can’t have players cutting up the walls and floor, so the game needs to be extremely obvious which obstacles can be cut down with the lightsaber. Objects that can be manipulated by The Force are highlighted in blue. Honestly, those objects are so huge and it is really obvious in which direction they move, they didn’t really need the highlights. What really bothers me is that only certain surfaces will show the lightsaber decal, among all the surfaces that can be cut, only about half of them will show as if they’ve been cut. It’s a laser sword! It’s part of the fantasy of this game! I was a bit disappointed. Since we’re on the fantasy. There are some areas of the game that are dark, pressing the block button while going through them will have Cal hold up his lightsaber like a torch to light the way. That was cool! Unfortunately, you can obviously see that it takes a while for the game to register that Cal is in a dark area and go into ‘torch mode’. It is also obvious that under normal circumstances the lightsaber doesn’t actually emit light. Maybe having a dynamic light like that would be too expensive on the engine? I can’t remember what the older games did. In a later level the player has to navigate an area and parkour in the dark. Unacceptable! How do I even see where I need to jump if I can’t use the lamp half the time? It’s not as if I can use it to show the way ahead and mentally plan out my executing of the sequence, it’s a small light ahead of the character. Very unfair. And then later the game has the gall to stage fights in the dark! I get what they were trying to do, add tension, and make the player jump; Poor execution. If the lightsaber constantly emitted light, maybe it would be okay. This was exasperated by the fact that I played on the hardest difficulty, and died in 3 hits.
Here are some nitpicks and praises. BD-1, Cal’s droid sidekick is just the cutest. He’s the BB-8 or R2-D2 of this game. The way the game introduces the rocket launcher enemies is just the worse. First of all, it’s almost impossible to tell that the enemy isn’t holding a blaster at that range. Second of all, by the time their missile is on the way, there is almost no time for the player to react. And again because I was playing on the hardest difficulty, I died immediately. Eventually the player acquires the correct response to the rockets. If you are familiar with Star Wars, you’ll know what it is. On one hand, I really dislike not having the correct tools for the situation, on the other, since there are multiple solutions it’s mostly fine. There’s a sequence where Cal is sliding down some ice and some enemies are shooting that can be parried, that’s pretty cool. An enemy with a rocket launcher will shoot at Cal from an unreachable area. Finally, upon reaching the area and finally having the opportunity to get rid of him, enemies will pop up from the floor and hit Cal. This annoyed me to no end, my goodness. What’s more I’m sure that these enemies that pop out of the floor cannot be reacted to, they’re endlessly rage-inducing. I disliked the creature-type enemies in general as they were harder to read. Cal’s pilot endlessly teases that he’s going to teach Cal how to fly, but never does, so we never get to fly either. There’s a seamless load between planets, the destination is selected and you are able to go to the bridge and watch the ship take off and fly into space and into hyperdrive, which is really cool to see in real-time. Cal will go to some ancient ruins throughout the course of the game, which inexplicably have very modern chests. I guess they didn’t have the time to do an “ancient chest”. When Cal learns to swim underwater, the animation for looting it is the same as the one on ground and it makes 0 sense because the animation doesn’t work. Early on in the game there’s an optional destination different from the world that will advance the story. Unfortunately I already figured out that the game is a Metroidvania which means I didn’t want to explore before unlocking all the navigation powers. This caused me to miss an upgrade that I eventually got in a very weird place. It’s an AOE weapon. I eventually unlocked it before a single target boss, so I figured I got it at the wrong place. This game also has so much sliding and jumping and swinging that I thought I was playing Tarzan on the Playstation 2 at times.
Overall, I am satisfied with the game. It’s rough in places and isn’t perfect. The combat could be more polished and more refined around duelling. Maybe different lightsaber styles so the player gets to choose their own playstyle. It looks aesthetically great even if not technically perfect (obvious texture loads & lighting/ambience changes). I was quite let down by the amount of boss fights in the game. It introduces the 9th Sister and the game does not present the 1st to 9th Sister as challenges. Maybe they have to tease some sort of big narrative sequel bait, in which case I feel more betrayed. I would totally play a sequel though.
