Jedi: Fallen Order starts off by introducing Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan), the game’s protagonist, who works on a scrapyard in the planet Bracca, with his good friend, Prauf (JB Blanc). He might not look like the most interesting person and, when I watched the original trailers for the game, I was afraid of getting another lackluster and bland main character like we did in Remedy Entertainment’s Control.

But no! Cal reveals himself to be persistent and decently likeable, and could very well serve as the next Star Wars movie protagonist. He could be more interesting or charming but, as is, he does the job. The player is slowly introduced to his past and, the more Cal comes to better terms with his troubles, the easier it is to enjoy playing as him.

There is a surprising amount of depth to not only Cal but also the story as a whole, which begins by lowering your expectations and looking like a shallow placeholder that simply exists to let the gameplay shine, but surprises you later on. It’s chock-full of memorable moments, like when you take on an AT-ST on your own for the first time, or the concluding moments of the game after the last boss fight. The cutscene-slash-gameplay segment where they show how Star Wars’ iconic Order 66 unfolds in the game is one of my favorite parts of the entire experience, in a skilled demonstration of atmosphere buildup and voice acting. Something as simple as showing a young and frightened Cal Kestis helplessly watching his master Jaro Tapal (Travis Willingham) fighting clones as Cal escapes really goes a long way to create emotional tension. A must watch for any Star Wars fan (maybe not if you haven’t played the game yet and want to later).

It’s a shame that Prauf is ditched so early on in the story, but it helps setting up the feeling of loss and despair that is so common in Star Wars media and is present in both the rebel alliance, whose people sacrifice their lives and lose their loved ones fighting the Empire, but also in the Dark Side of the Force, where suffering is what powers their strength. You stop missing Prauf soon enough, though, as there is no shortage of good characters in Fallen Order: Cere Junda (Debra Wilson), a firm former Jedi who soon develops a trusty bond with Cal along with Greez Dritus (Daniel Roebuck), the captain of the ship the trio uses to travel from one planet to another. However, this bond could have been better worked on. I remember this one occasion where Greez suddenly started with a heartfelt confession about how he thought of Cal and Cere as a family and, as they didn’t share that many moments together before (or at least not enough to develop such an affection), it felt like it came out of nowhere. In the end of the game, though, the chemistry is there, and I didn’t mind it much.

Outside of these three, Merrin and The Second Sister are also noteworthy. Merrin is, simply put, awesome — design-wise, personality-wise, I don’t know, even her accent is awesome. She brings a very important question to the main objective of Cal and his gang: “what if you endanger the people you are trying to save by trying to save them?” and is ultimately decisive to the ending in more than one way. Give me a Fallen Order sequel, if only because I want to see her again. The Second Sister is awesome, but in a different way — she’s an extremely well crafted villain with justified motives and you feel a bit sorry for her when you finish the game. There could be a lot to unpack here, and I’d sure love to talk about it, but I’m trying to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. As such, it’s up to you to find out why I’d consider these two of my favourite characters. (PS: If you liked Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) from Rogue One, Clone Wars or Rebels, he makes an appearance here too!)

Merrin’s design is fantastic.

The Second Sister, helmet off.

But I haven’t talked about BD-1 yet…

Be-beep!

BD-1 (which stands for Buddy Droid-1), in particular, is quite the trustworthy little pal — its interactions with Cal are adorable, their relationship is nicely developed, and it’s nigh impossible not to grow even slightly attached to the little droid when it saves your life several times.

My only complaint about BD is not about the droid itself, but the healing mechanic of the game. In Fallen Order, you heal yourself using healing stims, and BD-1 is the one who provides them: hit up on the D-Pad and Cal will shout something like “I’m not feeling so good…” or “I need a stim, buddy!”. The problem is: the mechanic itself is somewhat of a gamble. The lack of polishment present in other aspects of the game is more relevant here, because I’ve lost count of the times I pushed the healing button, Cal said the voice line, but no canister came out. This is the difference between living or dying, specially if you play the game on higher difficulties like Jedi Master or Jedi Grandmaster (like I did), where simple attacks from the weakest monsters can kill you easily, and bosses frequently knock you out with one hit.

Luckily, that one aspect doesn’t completely hinder the absolutely magnificent gameplay of Fallen Order (to be expected from the same company that made Apex Legends and Titanfall 2). First things first, let’s be honest: Star Wars is cool. Space wizards are cool. The fight choreographies are cool. Lightsabers are cool. Because these aspects are already so ingrained in our collective subconscious and in pop culture itself, the developers already had a solid basis to work from. But they went the extra mile: the combat is one of the best things I’ve ever had the pleasure to put my hands on in a videogame. Tight, responsive, flashy, and with good audio design — turn on the lightsaber, it goes pshh!, swing it, it goes zwoom, parry an attack, it goes pshow!!, exactly as it should. Cal feels agile and his movement is swift. Enemies’ attack patterns are interesting enough that they deserve to be learned and you feel good when you master them. The general animations naturally look so good that, sometimes, saber fights between you and a boss feel scripted, like you’re both gracefully dancing. A sight to be seen. Do you like Dark Souls? Sekiro, maybe? You’re in for a treat.

The combat does borrow lots from Sekiro (to the point where comparing the two is justifiable), with the poise system making an appearance and parries being just almost as frequent but, with Force powers thrown into the mix, it still stands on its own as fresh swordplay that offers you a variety of options that are not present elsewhere.

My only nitpicks about this are not related to the combat itself, but the bosses. Most bosses are fantastic, but there are two in specific that are not as well designed as the rest: Gorgara and the final fight against the Second Sister. In either of these two, the bosses have much more HP than they should, which results in both boss fights overstaying their welcome. I enjoy a fair challenge, but in these two specific bosses I felt bored most of the time. It is important to not only stretch the boss’s life bar, but to make sure the player is having fun in the process. Whereas other boss fights are challenging in a fun way, these get their difficulty from a bloated health stat, leading to dying over and over against an unengaging enemy. It’s actually weird that this is the case, because other boss battles were phenomenal (shout out to the Ninth Sister!) and I did not feel this at all… I am left wondering why the development team dropped the ball on the two particular bosses I mentioned.

“You’re not worth my time.”

Bosses out of the way, one thing that favors the gameplay is the fact that the level design frequently offers different ways to approach enemies. Maybe you want to bait Storm Troopers into shooting you, parry their laser shots (killing them) and then go for the Scout Troopers? Or maybe you want to force pull and kill each Scout Trooper first and then breeze through the Storm Troopers with melee attacks? The choice is yours. Actually, when you rack up Cal’s body count, he’s probably kind of a serial killer. Poor Troopers.

In addition to being great murder locations, the levels are just beautifully designed, sprawling in complex ways like a spider web, providing you with fun platforming that constantly makes use of Cal’s Force powers and rewarding you for exploring with things like customizable skins for BD-1, the Mantis (Cere’s ship) and Cal’s poncho. I was somewhat surprised that there were puzzles in this game, but they are clever, fun, sometimes optional and do not break the pace of the exploration.

Something I also have to mention is the map system. It’s gorgeous, not just visually, looking like your typical, blue-ish, shaky Star Wars hologram, but functionally. Unexplored areas are highlighted with a yellow marker, which is REALLY useful — in my opinion, it should become a standard in the videogame industry. This is not to say there aren’t secrets to be found because everything’ll be immediately given away to you (hidden corners and other extras aren’t shown in the map until you find them), but having the “main” paths always highlighted is a huge help. You never get aimlessly lost (which, in most cases, isn’t any fun).

My only complaint with this game’s exploration is the fact that it doesn’t have fast travel. My previous compliment on the level design’s intricacy can now be used as criticism: while it is fun to explore the branching paths every planet has to offer for the first time, it is not fun to revisit a planet or look back on the map while you’re on your way out and noticing that there is a godforsaken path that is still yellow. No way that I’m gonna go all the way again through the entire map (and let me tell you, each planet’s map is BIG) with dozens of enemies that might kill me just to explore that one spot… but I’d gladly do it if you could fast travel between save points. This is the only thing that kept me from backtracking after finishing the game and getting the sweet, sweet 100% completion. I’m not sure how fast travel could be implemented if it meant you had to use Force related powers (I don’t think Jedi can teleport?), but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to think of a plausible alternative. It would save the player a lot of work — even if you were limited to fast travelling only to locations within the same planet, it would be a much welcome feature. And I would love to be able to easily revisit planets just for the sake of it, because everything is really pretty! Which leads me to…

The visuals.

The Zeffo species or, as I like to call them, Star Wars Chozo.

Dathomir.

The Derelict Hangar on planet Zeffo.

The Tomb of Miktrull.

Inside a crashed ship.

Fortress Inquisitorius.

I’m sure the screen captures have done most of the talking for me, but I must dissert — the art direction of Fallen Order is fantastic, and the graphical aspect is probably one of my favorite aspects of the game, particularly if you’re playing in a good PC rig, or the better version of consoles (as in, PS4 Pro/Xbox One X). I love the lighting, which has been fine tuned to provide the best mood for each setting. Reflections all look amazing, be it water, metal, or plastic. I like the detail of being able to light up things like dark caves and obscure corridors if you hold your lightsaber up, and I like the fact that BD-1 also helps with its own little flashlight.

The holotable you use to navigate from planet to planet.

I also very much enjoy the effort that was put into having a small number of planets that are very different from one another, rather than having lots of planets being less unique as a whole. Dathomir and Zeffo are my favorites, Dathomir for the overall aggressive and deadly appearance and Zeffo for the mix of the hangar, Tombs, grottos and wilderness. The one that I liked the least was Kashyyyk, the planet of the Wookies: it just feels like an overgrown jungle whose aesthetic wasn’t quite as nailed. It ended up looking very muddy, brown and not nearly as attractive and eye popping as the rest of the planets but, in general, the various settings are competently done.