Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

2024-10-05
"What if Star Wars did a Dark Souls but was in SPACE." That's the pitch, right? Well, whatever. The problem with the "Soulslike" moniker is 1) it's not very helpful in delineating which aspects are nodding towards our most revered and august FromSoft titles and 2) it sets the game up for a very harsh comparison if you like those games (and you like those games right? RIGHT?). In this case 20 minutes into the game when the combat started I thought "Oh this is pretty good" when I was countering and generally fucking up the days of some Stormtroopers. And then an hour later I thought "Oh no, nope no no, uh uh" when I fought some big ass beasty boy--who I shouldn't have been fighting cause I skipped to a late game planet--and found the dodge wasn't giving me any iframes, I died, and it teleported me back to some spot where I had to repeat some now boring ass platforming section again. You might don the moniker of Soulslike but when push comes to shove they always miss something or, more often, many things. To Fallen Order's credit I was able to just pop the difficulty down from max to Normal and everything was fine from there on out. The way I see it is you either make a combat system that is perfect and give no difficulty settings or...you offer some difficulty settings. Attaboy Respawn.

So what're you left with if you find the combat merely fine? Well, really, it's more of a metroidvania mixed with an Uncharted. You got climbing, abilities that unlock new-old areas, you got big, gorgeous set pieces and an entertaining story with some very good acting voice backing it up. And you know what? I found it great. Sure, the pacing can be a bit hit or miss. Some levels have too much combat or aren't punctuated with enough story interludes or boss fights to keep it zippy but on the whole I had a good time.

Oh if you like Star Wars there's one moment in the story that somehow wasn't spoiled for me and is so, so cool. So look forward to that!