Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

A fun and challenging romp across multiple planets, but with some frustrating flaws. The game focuses primarily on combat and exploration and has "metroidvania" elements that open up new areas to you as the game progresses.

The level designs are terrifically complex with many secrets and an excellent 3D mapping mechanic that takes some getting used to but is very functional. Combat is fast and tactical, rewarding skill and learning your enemy's moves. It is quite hard but also feels fair (except for the camera, see below). I played at the "Jedi Master" level (one above the default) and was seriously challenged. You need to be "on"! If you're not paying attention even trivial enemies can cause you quite a bit of hurt. I also loved the Uncharted-type environmental puzzles, though I wished there were more than a handful.

So, unfortunately, combat is also a source of a lot of frustration due to two awful design decisions.

First, in how the game is saved. This is Dark Souls-style, where you can save only at specific points that are often quite far from each other. All enemies regenerate when you rest and it becomes quite tedious to repeat the same ten minutes over and over again when you die. Regeneration also makes no sense at all, which breaks immersion. Couldn't they have at least implemented some kind of progressive regeneration of enemies over time? Similarly immersion-breaking is that dead bodes just disappear after a few seconds. This feels like game design compromises from ten years ago. To add to the frustration, load times are very, very long, even if you are in exactly the same level and very close to your save point. (And I used a PCIe 4 SSD!)

But possibly even worse (!!) is the camera. It moves and rotates around during combat like a drunken sailor. It's immensely frustrating to be deep in a challenging combat situation and suddenly the camera decides to point to a wall and you can't see anything going on. You can kinda control this using enemy targeting, but in some situations it actually make things worse. You really, really want to avoid walls and corners. The camera is your greatest enemy.

Otherwise, one type of mini-game sequence I really hated is "sliding". These challenges require split-second precision in addition to the ongoing struggle against the awful camera. Having defeated a bunch of tough enemies and then dying on a stupid mud slide made me rage quit more than once.

The graphics are inconsistent. At times they are breathtaking, but they also have a cartoonish quality that just seems silly. Performance is miserable even on high-end computers, with stutters and frame drops all over the place. There are also visual bugs with occlusion. (Again, stay away from walls.) The game supports HDR for monitors that have it, which is great to see, but the implementation is lackluster. You might enjoy the regular SDR colors more.

Finally, I need to complain about the collectibles. There are few great upgrades to find, but almost everything is ... new costumes for you to wear. It made the joy of discovery feel quite hollow. I fought through all these enemies and even died and restarted a few times for a new poncho material? Do gamers actually enjoy this kind of "loot"? I don't.

As for the story and characters—it's all fine, just not especially amazing. No character here is annoying but no character is especially inspiring, either. If you know your Star Wars then you will feel at home in this universe. If you don't, well, no big loss, as it's fairly self-contained. Unfortunately, I did encounter some non-breaking story bugs, such as one character talking as if the other was somewhere else—he's right in front you! Nothing terrible, but it did feel unpolished and broke immersion.