I got this game becuase it was the Premium game Classics game for the month of January and well, while the game isn't good, it is an interesting game.
I will admit, the first couple of levels of the game weren't too bad, the combat while far from good was somewhat serviceable, there was enough health pickups, and it was often easier just to reflect blaster bolts than it was to attack up close, the controls and camera aren't the greatest, serviceable at best, awkward at worst, it suffered from the same issues that a lot of fully 3D camera control games suffered from at the time where the movment with the tank controls as well as the collision detection not being the smoothest, and the camera at times can give you a good layout of the action, there was no moment where I was ever like, "man this is so much better than being able to rotate the camera".
Where the game did shine in the early levels however was the level design, I have a massive soft spot for mid to late 90s 3D level design approach of, little hand holding and you just find a way around a level yourself. It just felt super rewarding to figure out all the pathways you are supposed to go by yourself, and figuring out which switch does what and moving blocks to access new areas in order to progress through the level just gives that feeling of, "oh my god I did it" that only gaming can provide. I also have a massive soft spot for dedicated interact buttons before the days of Resident Evil 4 making them contextual. I did wish the game taught you that using Force Push to activate switches earlier in the game since it happens randomly in the 4th level.
However all of this goes downhill when I got to Tatoonie where the directions were far too vague and I had no idea what the actual means of getting T-14 Hyperdrive even was, it seemed like it was entering into the realm of a role playing game where it can play out in multiple ways but I am not a big fan of that kind of design and prefer the more linear and direct approach. It also just felt like the devs of the game were just padding out the runtime of the game so it wouldn't be as long as the film it's based on.
I eventually level skipped to Courasant and I disliked how the game made you play it as a third person shooter and you had no geniune means of evading attacks while having a lose auto aim and no geniune means of aiming, and fighting droidekas without lightsabers were a pain in the ass. I started to get bored and level skipped to the final level and it was back to the linear progression I liked but it's more obtuse here and once again, the devs were just padding out the levels. Like for example, in the movie Obi Wan jumped to where Maul and Qui Gon were when they were fighting but in the game Obi Wan has to do awkward platforming and puzzles instead. It just derails the pace of the Obi Wan, Qui Gon and Darth Maul fight.
Padme has to do a bunch of weird and convoluted key card puzzles to progress and also, who would put a key card near the top of the pillar? Even the level design has less consistency in logic later on. Why are there even droids on the balcony?
By the time I finished that last level, I was just glad the game was over.
This leads to me the most interesting aspect about this game, it feels like an amalgamation of multiple SW games in one before they came out despite being a third person version of Dark Forces 2.
It has the role playing of KOTOR, it has the lightsaber combat of Jedi Knight and Revenge of the Sith game, it has the character swapping and puzzle solving where you play as blaster and lightsaber characters like the Lego games, and it has the linear action adventure platformer third person shooter adventure that Bounty Hunter would have. Everything this game does is done better in other SW games all though TPM game came out before many of them so in a sense, it paved the way for them which despite the latter not being good it's interesting to view it from that lens.
It goes to show that it had interesting ideas in spite of being rushed out of the door to meet the movie's release date.
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