Fallen Order was a game I played at around the time of release, however I dropped it after a few hours since I was just annoyed by the lightsaber combat and it to be inferior to Jedi Outcast and Academy and was disappointed that it was going to be the future of lightsaber combat games going forward, I was also turned away by how derivative it felt on top of the story especially it's premise really getting on my nerves and how many were praising it at the time. 5 years later after the initial release and me being more acceptive to playing games on easy mode, I decided to revisit the game and now I do enjoy the game, I've got my issues with it, but as a whole Fallen Order was a game that kept me hooked for hours whenever I started a play session of it and that's the best thing any game can do.
I'll begin with the story and it's...okay. I wouldn't call it "terrible" just underdeveloped and could've been better. There are some good moments here and there but as a whole it's just inconsistent. It's already hard to accept the very premise of the game especially if you are familar with the Star Wars canon before or after the Disney buy out. Every time the characters said, "we are going to rebuild the Jedi Order" I can't help but roll my eyes consider everything that happens in the movies.Getting past that, it's not a terrible story on it's own, the later parts of it are better than the earlier stuff. The latter sections while having a good opening that contextualizes Kal well just hits a stumbling point where he goes on a series of unrelated adventures that doesn't have much to do with his personal growth. For example, levels on Zeffo and Kashyyyk doesn't add much to the game since the former is looking for a tomb and the latter is helping the Rebels on Kashyyyk which has nothing to do with Kal himself outside of him being heroic.
Trilla could've been a better villain since she never does much to make the player dislike her, she gets one fight with Kal on Zeffo and then no shows for most of the game. Darth Vader comes too out of nowhere for his appreance to be impactful and if you don't know the movies, him showing up would be like "huh" moment.
However when the flashback to Order 66 was awesome and well done, the Episode 3 fan in me was enjoying the music that played during those scenes and it does a good job at establishing why Kal is the way he is and accepts that, from here on out the story gets better with him accepting his mistake and being more confident. Marron's on the underdeveloped side however due to her joining the party late game.
The gameplay is also really solid...depending on how much you can tolerate the combat. I'm not a big fan of combat revolving heavily around parrying and even with story difficulty, where the timing is supposedly non existent, I still couldn't consistenly pull them off, I just mash L1 like crazy, enemies would still land hits on me. The moderate SW fan in me also finds it weird with the idea of Jedi struggling to take on hordes of Stormtroopers, this is something I argue the Jedi Knight games did better since the lightsaber was a super deadly weapon that killed enemies in a 1 or 2 hits instead of just being a wacking stick.
The rest of the gameplay outside of that? I really enjoyed. The best way of describing Fallen Order's moment to moment gameplay outside of combat is like what if the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games and Metroid Prime ever had a baby? You get this.
Platforming might be a little too reminscent of PoP with the automation and wall running and the map is similar to Metroid Prime, at the same time, PoP never had expansive level design and constantly giving the player new ways to traverse the world throughout the game. Samus Aran in Metroid never had the over the top abilties that a Jedi does.
Force Push and Pull get more use in this than any SW game I played force pushing walls, force pulling ropes during a platforming run while wall running, and pulling to unlock platforms.
It might be a little on the derivative side but compared to Uncharted's climbing of "holding the left stick and occasionally press x", Fallen Order's platforming of wall runs, climbing, sliding, jumping, rope climbing, swimming and swinging and later a double jump is far more involving.
The light metroidvania elements also makes the game fresh and hard to put down, every planet visit is structure like a metroidvania where there is a number of blocked off areas and it gets hard to traverse at first but you get a new power and now traversal can feel liberating.
Around the 2nd visit of Kashyyk was a little annoying, the later I would get a double jump and then it starts to becomes a joy to traverse after that initial struggle. The player just keeps getting new combat and traversal moves that prevents it from getting stale.
Overall, Fallen Order despite it's inconsistencies with combat and story has such a well made and structured campaign that I can look past all that.
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