Star Wars the Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition Review

Originally, I was going to give the game a 5 out of 10 mainly because this has to be one of the most unpolished big budget AAA games coming from the 7th gen. This game has you staggering around like a bumbling idiot. You will get knocked down, barrels will explode and enemies will break out of your combo out of nowhere. So much of the game on Normal Difficulty is stagger, stagger and more stagger. The game's enemies have firearms and add the staggering animations to that and you get a God of War clone that is sub standard. Some enemies are not really fun to fight like any giant enemies like the monsters, AT STs due to their area of effect stop attacks. Many of the enemies fire guns at you so that means it often consists of spamming lighting because it's the most effective projectile attack in the game. Force grip and the much anticipated physics engine is mostly useless since the novelty of being able to lift things with the force serves no geniune purpose in combat and you are often better off using saber strikes or anything that can be chained into a ligthing or force push combo. That and aiming the force throws feel awkward, inadequte and imprecise for what the game demands for you to do them which is why the destroying the Star Destroyer towards the end of the game felt like such a tedious sequence. The lack of an evade command makes melee combat not as robust as it could be since enemies like before I mentioned will break out of your combos a lot and will relentless attack you close range. Breaking shields and blocks seem to happen at random, and I am not a big fan of the game's auto targeting and I think manually targeting enemies would've worked better for the game since I can pin point which enemies I can attack with my saber, lightning and even possibly try to use force throws with.

Lowering the difficulty to easy however did mitigate much of the frustration I intitally got from the game mainly because getting staggered a lot less and taking more damage really improves the game. The lack of polish becomes less of an issue. You will still get hit by random explosions, enemies breaking out of your combo, and projectile enemies hitting you and for some god unknown reason reflecting blaster fire is tied behind a skill tree but being able to take more damage does help you feel like the awesome Jedi that the game marketed itself for being. Also, even though the game had annoying QTEs, it was nice that during bosses it kept looping until you got it right which is better than widdling down the health bar to do it again. Lowering the game to easy turned a 5 out of 10 game to a 6 out of 10.

The story and music however are the best things about the game. Hearing John Williams' Prequel music especially from Revenge of the Sith was great and it fit the scenes of the game really well. The story while having some issues overall was decent enough too and it fit the Star Wars universe pretty well especially how it brought in the "Rule of Two" regarding Darth Vader and Palpatine, and something I just find poetic about Palpatine and Vader indirectly creating the very alliance that would cause their downfall later on. Aspects of it can feel rushed due it being a game but it's a solid Star Wars story.

Ultimate Sith Edition came with a bunch of DLC bonus missions and here are my reviews of those.

Jedi Temple:

This felt like it should've been in the main game since it seems to be an important part of Starkiller's development but it's a decent add on, if it didn't come with Ultimate Sith Edition, I would've skipped this entirely. All the issues in the main game still apply here all though the platforming and force puzzles were more on the grating side than being enjoyable. The final boss of the level was weird in that he drained my health than I respawned and he never did it again. Overall, a decent mission that should've been in the main game, worth checking out if you have the Ultimate Sith Edition.

Tatooine:

This DLC was a huge step up over Jedi Temple. I have a soft spot for "what if" stories in long running fiction like Star Wars and me being an SW pre Disney era fan of the franchise, this DLC was fan service delight getting to see Jabba fighting through all the iconic locations of the Tatoonie portions of the OT like the Dune Sea, Jabba's Palace, and Mos Eisley. Boss fights with Boba Fett and Obi Wan were also pretty nice too, and the Obi Wan fight felt like a somewhat unoffical conclusion to the amount of times Starkiller fought Obi Wan with the character of Proxy.

Same gameplay, same stuff with a much worse frame rate in some portions but if you are a Star Wars fan, this is worth checking out for the fan service, if not a fan of the franchise or the base game, you can skip this. This was worth going through since it came with Ultimate Sith Edition.

I might give this a 7 for the cool fan service but with all that gone, it's the same 6 that is only that because of easy mode.

Hoth:

This DLC was honestly kind of boring. There isn't really much interesting stakes in Starkiller beating up an untrained Luke and so much of the DLC as a result is just arena fight after arena fight. The Tatoonie DLC was fun in that it had characters like Boba and Obi Wan to fight but Luke pre ROTJ just wasn't really that engaging for me. The gameplay is the same old TFU at this point and not much is improved, I wasn't expecting much and it was average, definately the weakest DLC out of the 3 in the Ultimate Sith Edition.