A Perfect, Innovative ‘Sequel’ | LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Review
The Best LEGO Game, and Maybe Even The Best Star Wars Game?
The Best LEGO Game, and Maybe Even The Best Star Wars Game?
This is one of the best STAR WARS games, THE BEST Lego game, and an extremely well done collect-a-thon. It is positively bursting with quality content that many will enjoy. NameBrand.
Lego STAR WARS: The Skywalker Saga, is so shockingly good. I think that’s for a few reasons, but my initial impression for you, is that if you enjoy the Star Wars brand and lighthearted collect-a-thons, you will enjoy this game.
From a Star Wars fan's perspective, I can’t stress this in writing enough: The Skywalker Saga is the best way I’ve ever interacted with the films. There are points I found myself enjoying the game more than I have some of their movie counterparts. There’s something so magical about free-roaming across the galaxy to planets and cities that you might have only seen on the big screen. Not to mention, flying ships, and controlling characters that made up a large part of my childhood. If you’re a fan of the movies like I am, believe me when I say that the way this game presents those movies, their scenes, and their locations, is absolutely incredible. That’s not even relegated to what I have nostalgia for either, as even the sequel trilogy here has good moments, making this game arguably the best and most painless way to experience the narrative in those.
I can’t stress enough how cool it is to play your favorite characters, fly your favorite ships, and wander through your favorite locations in the (film based) galaxy. It needs its own, paragraph sized additional call out. Everything has been realized with exceptional detail.
I think it’s also an incredible evolution of the Lego Star Wars formula. It dates me slightly, but I was the target audience back when the very first Lego Star Wars was released with its iconic mumbling characters, and it only had the original trilogy. Then you had to buy the next game to get the prequels. Then the next game had all the movies. They had a few spin-offs too, but I’ve played them all, so I feel pretty confident about saying that here in the Skywalker Saga, and I don’t think I could have asked for a better innovation on what I’ve played before. It’s new and exciting in all the right ways, but still feels like coming home in all the old ways that count. There’s some real genius there.
So for a few examples, as a longtime player of Tt Games, I thought the new direction with inclusion of voice acting would be ridiculous, but to my surprise, the writing was actually just as hilarious as any of their other comedy, which made me chuckle enough to keep it on. I thought I might miss the cantina hub area, but with the entire galaxy to explore, that fear fizzled fast. I thought I’d miss the character creator, but with over 200 characters and quick swapping, I haven’t missed that either. The space exploration feels tight and responsive, the levels are the perfect length and still have the classic ‘mini-kits’ and ‘true Jedi’ meters, but now there are added additional challenges. The character class system is unique, and mixes up the gameplay just right. I could go on and on, as everything about this game is an evolutionary step for Lego Star Wars, and every choice they’ve made just works.
Collecting Kyber Bricks is one of the largest additions to the game's new formula, with well over 1000 to collect through various activities. Many of these are easily obtained through simple puzzles or platforming, with a rare few being clever head scratchers. I enjoyed collecting a majority of the bricks on a planet before progressing the story, and I think many will enjoy the hunt of this collect-a-thon as well. You can use the bricks to give each character class marginal upgrades, but I never really thought many of them mattered too much, because of how easy the game is right from the start. Even still, I think the whole collectable system is good enough to give some modern collect-a-thon games a run for their money, simply because there are so many to grab through a wide range of activities.
After 40 hours, I finally beat each of the movies and their story modes (impressive considering the movies by themselves are about 20 hours long combined), and now, I can’t wait to just jump into galaxy free play to continue to collect Kyber bricks, as I explore the galaxy. I expect there’s at least 20 more hours of content just waiting for me to discover it. When I’m done with that, if I’m still itching for more, I can head back into the movies to try and 100% the levels and who knows how long that will take me…
If I had to say anything negative about the game, one of my only gripes is the vast amount of content. I’m super happy it’s all here, don’t get me wrong, but the idea of 100% completion scares me. It has to be at least 100 hours or more. Doing that myself would probably make me go crazy. There are also some game breaking bugs, a few of which I did run into, prompting me to restart the game a few times over, and I think that the “DLC” just being character packs (without missions) is kind of lazy.
Ultimately, this game is an absolute masterpiece, and I highly recommend it.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.