Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - a review by an over 50s gamer

 

Some Context

I like video games, unfortunately I started way back when on Spectrums, and now my faculties are not what the once were, not that I was ever a gaming Ninja.

Now mostly I play games on easy or story mode because I cannot be arsed to try that hard, I want to be entertained, I want to enjoy a game as a game, I don’t want real life where I die after one shot, I get that 24/7 at work and with the wife. I hate online gaming as everyone else is 99% better than me. Oh and I hate Boss battles, they are the most boring moments in a game, if there was an option to bypass them I would, they add nothing to the story just serve to annoy and frustrate.

I bought the game in sale on Epic (£22), with their added £10 discount voucher for £12, Steam had it for £54 at the time. Pick your battles and whatever works for you, but never pay full price (£42 is 4 decent and 6 good bottles of wine)

The meaty bit

Spoiler alert: this review will mention some aspects of events in game, it should not affect your immersion too much but may reveal some stuff you may not want to know.

Caveat: I played the game on Story mode. Any other mode may be way more difficult and include additional enemies that complicate things more than my limited skillset can deal with.

So, is it a good game for those that like a story? Yes and no. It has good story but…. there are some developers involved that are Ninja gamers and do not understand what gamers of a certain age or indeed those less digitally dextrous and mentally capable than them actually want from story mode, there is a reason it is called story mode, but that has escaped them. Not an unusaul state of play though.

The story adds something to the Jedi world and is probably the best Jedi game since Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast. There said it… But it has its foibles.

This is console port, and they did not expend a lot of effort on it. It works and most of the wrinkles have been removed, I did not encounter any major bugs on the first 90% of the game, however when you go into the menu and go to the controls to change a few things and the only option is a controller and not keyboard and mouse (though these work fine) you do wonder what the dev were smoking. Still, it is a minor thing and they do flag up you should use a controller. But as someone who is over 55, I have never really got to grips with a controller and all my gaming has always been with a keyboard and mouse. Brain says no.

Most of the mechanics work fine, but it feels a little aimless at first in that you can go to a world that offers little till you acquire more force powers, it is almost like the devs got stuck in an argument between themselve whether they were doing an open world or a path lead game experience and ended up offering choices you cannot complete without enhancement.

Game Tip: Only go back to a world if the story demands it or if you have all your force powers and whilst there only do the bear minimum to progress the storey on first visit or you will only get annoyed. Though that maybe just me.

Combat for the most part is relatively straight forward, LMB attack and RMB block, but there are many more force related attacks and other stuff you can get through acquiring skill points that are key combos that are beyond my skillset. One to aim for a try and master is the light sabre throw (Block plus F) and as this is a useful range attack. Other than that, just focus on anything that gives you more force power and health or recovers those quicker. If you are better than me at these things fill your boots.

Boss battles

These are not too onerous in story mode, there a couple that are troublesome and may take a couple of goes to get past, but I can live with that.

Then there is the one.

It's near the end, THE boss battle where the devs went all out to annoy their customers, it is exceedingly difficult and involves a lot of blocking and random shit that will just annoy the hell out of you. I was prepared to not finish the game rather than try and beat it at the 100th attempt.I am not alone alone and doing a web search will reveal it is troublesome, ok it is really badly designed by the devs or really well designed by them to annoy you and make you feel inadequate.

Hit this person 99 times but they will not play by the same rules so if you block a combo they will continue it, if they block your combo you will die. Asuming you know how to do all those combos......and then there is this other thing that gets involved....

Basically, it just symbolises everything that is the contrived about the boss battle in games and why I hate them so much and that devs fail to understand what story mode means.

They just suck the enjoyment out of the game, particularly when you have an opponent that plays to different rules than you, has loads of extra abilities and is way better that you.

I will own up to downloading a cheat app (https://www.wemod.com/download?title_id=36630) to give me infinite life so I could get past this boss as games should not make you angry, they should be entertainment, especially when you select story mode.

What are the consequences of this? I seem to have hit a bug where I am in a turbo lift and keep falling through the floor as it ascends. I had to do a game repair in Origin to fix the bug.

To sum up

It is a good game, it has couple of weakness that could have been fixed with a better overall vision of how the game should have played out and some better understanding of what people who select different game modes require from a game, but that is generally statement about game developers. They people who are deep into the game, but fail to realise that there is a market out there of people in their 50 and 60s that have been gaming all their life but need a gentler experience and also have fat wallets with spare cash that can fill their coffers. Don't insult, annoy or frustrate them but offer them a story and enjoyment, after all gaming is part of the enterainment industry not the BDSM one, for the most part.