Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

A competent Souls-adjacent Star Wars game, which in 2019 was more than the license had managed in a decade. The lightsaber combat is the best part, with parry timing that makes deflecting blaster bolts feel like the fantasy rather than an animation, and stagger meters that turn Purge Troopers into genuine encounters instead of speed bumps. Level design is the pleasant surprise: Zeffo and Dathomir use Metroid-style layouts where new Force powers reopen old shortcuts and the maps fold back on themselves properly.

Cal is a bland protagonist and Cere carries most of the emotional weight, but the Inquisitors work and the Vader sequence at the end is staged with real restraint. The problems are technical and structural. Severe traversal stutter on consoles, a map interface that is genuinely hard to parse, and long stretches of ledge-shuffling that pad the runtime. Enemy variety runs out early and the middle act revisits planets more than it should. Solid rather than special, and clearly built on a budget.