EDITOR’S NOTE: We have a new contributor, Kevin Clarkson, and are expanding just a little as he brings us occasional reviews. And we’re trying something new with a video game review. Enjoy.

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So today I took a chance that I wasn’t sure I’d ever take again.

Today, I bought a Star Wars game on Day 1.

If you’d gone back and told younger me that buying the fresh new Star Wars game would be considered taking a chance, I’d have called you insane. Unfortunately, however, we live in a world where EA has been gifted all contracts for future Star Wars property games and they’re, well, EA. It’s become a meme just how bad they are as a company.

In this case, though, EA is just the parent company. Respawn Entertainment are the ones who threw this bad boy together and after enjoying both Titanfall and APEX Legends, I had a glimmer of hope that they wouldn’t let us down. With EA comes the fear of an unfinished game begging for DLC to complete the story, mixed with more than enough microtransactions to satisfy a Toydarian. Respawn claimed this wouldn’t be the case with Fallen Order and (after reading SEVERAL user comments confirming it) I finally decided to take their word for it.

But enough preamble (preramble?); let’s get to some review!
(Skip to the end for the TL;DR spoiler free review!)

Mildly Spoilery Review and Play-by-Play

Jedi: Fallen Order is a Souls inspired action platformer that puts us in the very worn boots of Cal Kestis, a Padawan survivor of Order 66 (whose voice and face both come courtesy of Cameron Monaghan), living a secret life as a scrapper on the scrap-covered world of Bracca. Being the masochist that I am, I decided my first play-through should be on the Jedi Grandmaster difficulty level; the hardest in the game. More on that later.

Something that I really liked is that the game puts you in the driver’s seat pretty fast, pushing you into a mercifully quick tutorial on the basics of climbing, balancing, jumping, and otherwise getting Cal around the galaxy in true Uncharted fashion. I hate me a game that 1.) takes forever to put you in control and 2.) has an unbearable tutorial *cough* METAL GEAR SOLID V *cough*

Anyways.

Incredibly lax galactic labor laws results in an accident sees Cal using his abilities to save his friend Prauf–and blowing his cover in the process. Prauf swears he won’t tell anyone and tries to figure out how he can repay Cal for saving his life. I was terrified he’d betray me to the Empire (because I really liked Prauf and having to kill him would be a shame), but before he could even have the chance to slip off-screen the two are rounded up and brought face to face with a couple of Inquisitors — force sensitive agents of the Empire tasked with hunting down and eliminating any jedi who survived the Purge.

The Second Sister is quickly shown to be the primary antagonist for Cal. At this point in the game (maybe 20 minutes in? It’s hard to tell with how much time I pause to do other things) I was already sold. The story had already pulled me in, the atmosphere is undeniably Star Wars, I had already gotten emotionally invested and hurt by a side character. The only thing left to test was the combat which was coming at me like a Braccan scrap train. First up is a couple of easily dispatched stormtroopers with blasters. Then comes the melee troopers, who prove to be a much higher challenge than the ranged folks.

A very interesting point of note here is that the increased difficulty doesn’t simply make the enemies absorb more damage, like most other games. What it does is unlock more behaviors for the AI. The fight smarter, they parry and block more, their shots are a little more accurate. Your defensive stamina depletes faster and your window to parry is also much smaller, meaning you have to fight smarter and perfect your timing. Of course, they also hit you much, muchharder, but their intent of not reducing the impact of wielding a lightsaber is perfectly realized. There’s great tension knowing the enemy can down you in two hits, but also immense satisfaction in taking them down just as quick once you get through their defenses.

It took me more tries than I care to admit to get a handle on the pacing of combat, but being something of a Souls veteran already I am quite familiar with frantically dodging, getting a few swipes in at a time, and really wishing I’d take the time to learn to parry properly.

The combat feels great, for the most part. Is it better than Jedi Knight lightsaber combat? I’ll keep testing it for a few more days before I make that decision, but nostalgia tells me not likely. It does feel much more satisfying to take out even the smallest of enemies than mowing through wave after wave of troopers God of War style as in The Force Unleashed.

The rest of this segment is quite literally straight forward. I proceed towards the front of a train, fighting troops along the way, picking up more tutorials, and getting quite a bit of platforming in as I go.

A cutscene introduces us to the Mantis and one of her crew members as they swoop in to save Cal from impending disintegration, but they’re not yet able to pick him up. Go figure.

More platforming and fighting until eventually the Second Sister blows the train to hell. There’s a second sliding sequence (which would seem to be a recurring thing) and then Cal faces off against Second Sister herself.

She’s appropriately intimidating and dynamic enough that I can’t wait to see more of her, although I feel like I could maybe take her if I gave it a dozen or so tries. Second Sister is thankfully saved from an early game L by the Mantis, which successfully completes the extraction this time around.

We’re introduced to the Mantis’ two immediately likable crew members; Cere Junda, played by Debra Wilson, and Greez Dritus, voiced by Daniel Roebuck. Cere is capable and good with a blaster while Captain Greez gives me some good Rio Durant vibes in the best way possible. These are a couple of characters that I won’t mind spending (hopefully) many many hours with throughout the game.

You’re taken to your first explorable environment on Bogano where BD-1 decides to introduce his helpful little self to Cal. The exploration here isn’t very inspired. You won’t be doing anything you haven’t done a dozen times before in a dozen different platforming adventure games. The areas with juicy secrets are fairly obvious to find, there are clearly some “come back and do it later” sections, and the impending wall-run ability was telegraphed to the player pretty bluntly leading up to actually getting it.

So nothing new there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Another new feature of the game introduced on Bogano is the Meditation Circle (spot? zone? whatever). If you’ve ever played Dark Souls, this is your Bonfire. You come here to regain hit points, force points, and spend your earned skill points on new abilities. Also like Dark Souls, however, choosing to rest at these points respawns all mobs that you’ve dispatched. This makes it pretty easy to farm xp for skill points, but I don’t see myself doing too much of that. The skills are gated to story progression and I don’t think I’ll ever be hard up for extra skill points that I won’t get by playing the game with little to no grind.

The Meditation Circles also serve another obvious purpose — auto-save zones. If you die, you go back to the last circle you rested at. Death is another place that Respawn borrowed from FromSoftware. As you slay enemies, you gain xp that fills up a bar towards more skill points. If you die, you lose all that xp. You can get it all back, though, if you can manage to land a single blow on the enemy that killed you (or happened to be closest by when you died.) Quite a bit more forgiving than Dark Souls in which you had to kill the enemy, but the concept is still the same.

BD-1 proves to be quite the companion. You use them to scan entries, fish loot out of chests, open certain doors, and heal outside of the Meditation Circles.

If you don’t spend a lot of time doinking around like I did, Bogano is a fairly short stop. This is the place where Cal and crew really get started on their quest. They get an objective and a couple leads on how to pursue it. It’s at this point that the game gets a little more non-linear by letting you choose where you want to go exploring first. My first options here were to either go to the rainy homeworld of the ancient and mysterious Zeffo, or take a detour to visit the notorious Nightsisters of Dathomir.

Obviously I went to Dathomir first.

I’m currently unsure if the Nightbrothers of Dathomir were such a challenge due to my lack of power, Dathomir just being a hard early game choice, or the high difficulty level (all three most likely), but after a mildly frustrating learning curve I came up to a jump I just couldn’t quite make. Either I needed to come back later with a double or enhanced jump, or I was just missing something simple. I decided to cut my losses and go to Zeffo instead.

My short time on Dathomir wasn’t a complete waste, though. In addition to that juicy, juicy xp I gathered and honing my warrior-like skills through demanding combat, I also upgraded Cal’s saber to a *drumroll* saber staff!

Now I personally don’t really give two honks about the staff, but I’m more than happy for the people who LOVE those things. The staff comes with a different playstyle in the game, bringing more “crowd control” at the cost of damage. For the time being, I’m choosing to use the higher damage per hit of the single blade.

Speaking of that saber, the answer is YES, it is CUSTOMIZABLE. Going a step above what most Star Wars games give you, Respawn has sprinkled more than just different colored blades throughout the galaxy! Exploration rewards Cal with several different components to his saber; emitters, grip, switch casing, and even the alloy used to craft the hilt. And while the exploration itself so far hasn’t felt very challenging, I’m nonetheless fairly excited to see what all Respawn has packed in for this saber.

The saber isn’t the only thing you find new skins for. Cal’s outfit, BD-1’s chassis, and the paint job of the Mantis are all changeable if you can find the new skins hidden in chests on the various worlds.

I didn’t end up spending too much time on Zeffo. I landed, sort of got the lay of the land, and posed for some pictures before deciding to wrap it up for the night.

TL;DR REVIEW ZONE

My time with Fallen Order was brief but definitely enjoyable. The story already has me hooked and I’m loving these characters so far. Combat can be wonky, and there’s certainly a few bugs that have both saved and killed me, but it’s overall pretty good. The face mapping for Cameron is a little awkward at times and I’m not sure if it’s the programming or just him being awkward, but it is what it is. Exploration doesn’t introduce anything new whatsoever (so far), but it’s not bad. Just uninspired. I also haven’t had to try for any of the secret chests just yet. Simply go somewhat off the beaten path for some easy loot. Maybe later on the explorations and secret zones will get more challenging, but I’m not holding my breath.

My only complaint at this point is a fairly minor one. I like Cameron, I like all the characters, the dialogue is good and it’s delivered very well. I just feel like Another White Male Lead is a boring choice (coming from a white male.) This would’ve been a good opportunity to give us a PoC lead. I completely agree with the decision to not allow players to create a character OR GO DARK SIDE, as it makes everything in the game canon, but I do think they could’ve gone with a different lead.

Sorry, Cameron. I still like ya.

If you were worried about EA ruining the game with microtransactions and other bullsh**tery, worry no longer. Respawn seems to have followed through on their promise of a gripping single-player, story driven experience that I’m excited to explore and enjoy.

If you love Star Wars but are (understandably) on the fence about purchasing, I say go for it. Or wait until it’s on sale. Or watch someone stream it. It’s your life, do what you want.