Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order released in November 2019 and surprisingly delivered a quality gaming experience. Fans have been wondering when Electronic Arts were going to deliver a high-quality Star Wars video game that wasn’t filled with microtransactions or shady implementations. Respawn Entertainment managed to exceed expectations and delivered one of the best games of the year, but is it an all-time great among other Star Wars games? It’s time to look at 5 reasons why Jedi: Fallen Order is the best Star Wars game ever, and 5 reasons why it’s not.
10 Not: Too Fresh
With Jedi: Fallen Order releasing so recently it’s hard to get a solid objective assessment of where it sits in the grand collection of Star Wars video games. Recency bias is a real thing and can often give favoritism to the newest entry as opposed to the actual best. Until more time sits between gamers and the game’s release, it’s hard to claim it’s all-time in any category. The truly great games are the ones that stand the test of time and are more than capable of holding up years after they initially released.
9 Best: Characters
In a franchise full of rich and colorful characters like Star Wars it can be difficult to fully realize new personas that feel unique. Jedi: Fallen Order manages to introduce more than a handful of characters that capture the player’s attention and immediately fit into the larger mythos pretty well. Whether it’s Cal Kestis or Trilla Suduri, many of the new characters are well-written and feel like 3-dimensional living beings and outside of Greez, none of them feel like a stereotype seen before in video games.
8 Not: Treasure Among Trash
The Star Wars license, which has been exclusively owned by Electronic Arts in the video game space, hasn’t been treated with care since the publisher acquired it in a bidding war. Both of the Battlefront reboot titles failed to impress with critics and the sequel ending up being the focus of a large international investigation into video game microtransactions due to its egregious implementation of them. Is Jedi: Fallen Order great, or is it just the silver lining in a pile of mismanagement on EA’s part?
7 Best: Interesting Narrative
Often times Star Wars video games tend to either retrace familiar territory or due to something so irrelevant as to not muddy or convolute the main series canon. The great thing about Jedi: Fallen Order is that it delivers a new refreshing narrative that manages to feature beloved parts of the universe while still creating and delivering new and interesting story threads. It takes players on a fun ride full of heartbreak, surprises, and awe-inspiring moments that have you thinking about them long after the credits roll.
6 Not: Performance Issues
Despite Jedi: Fallen Order having a great story and solid combat and exploration mechanics, it had really glaring and frustrating performance issues. This is uncommon for a release by Respawn Entertainment and was likely due to their time constraints when it came to releasing the game in a certain time frame. Patches and updates have managed to make the game a lot more stable, so years from now those launch window issues might not even be a relevant point of criticism to the naysayers.
5 Best: Mix Of Old & New
Star Wars is a franchise with such a large amount of history it’s almost disrespectful to ignore. In the modern age, the best stories in the universe are ones that mix the established lore in a meaningful way with new and inventive ideas. Fans want something that feels familiar while at the same having it feel new and mysterious. It’s a hard balance to find that Jedi: Fallen Order manages to nail in spades. There’s enough sprinkled in to make it feel as though Cal always existed and his story is finally being told.
4 Not: Bugs & Glitches
When a game releases and immediately there are hundreds of thousands of animated gifs online featuring the numerous glitches and bugs players are running into, you know you have a problem. The game manages to overcome these issues with a solid story that features fulfilling lightsaber combat, but it doesn’t make them non-existent. This means that Respawn Entertainment will likely make this a point of emphasis in the sequel, which could really end up being the best Star Wars game of all-time.
3 Best: Lightsaber Combat
Whenever one artist takes inspiration from another you know that no matter how skilled they are they’re not going to match the high bar of quality from someone who honed the craft. When it became apparent that Respawn looked towards developer FromSoftware’s combat as their main influence for Jedi: Fallen Order players became cautiously optimistic. It turns out that despite not matching FromSoftware’s master-class combat, they still managed to deliver a combat system that’s rewarding, challenging, fun, and creative.
2 Not: It’s Not KOTOR
There are few Star Wars games or game series as revered as the Knights of the Old Republic role-playing game series often referred to as the acronym KOTOR. Millennial gamers may know developer Bioware for their work on both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, but they made their mark with their 2003 Star Wars role-playing game KOTOR. The sequel wasn’t as critically acclaimed as the series shifted developers, but both KOTOR games are still considered the apex of what Star Wars games can be.
1 Best: Feels True To The Franchise
When fans see something new in the franchise they can tell if it feels true to what the core of Star Wars is. From the beginning, it was clear that the developers at Respawn Entertainment weren’t only fans of Star Wars, but the understood why the franchise was so special to numerous generations. Whether you disliked, enjoyed, or loved the game, it’s hard to deny that it feels like Star Wars. It showcases that a little tender love and care can go a long way when handling a beloved series or property.
NEXT: 10 Games To Play If You Liked Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
