condensed movie campaigns and
bevy of side content. The Skywalker
Saga is most often a 3 D brawler, with
very easy encounters disguising a
surprisingly deep melee combat
system. With either lightsabers or
fists you can launch opponents into
the air and combo them into oblivion,
divekicking and countering like
Dante from Devil May Cry. Most
enemies go down a
little too quick to pull
off anything crazy, but
The Skywalker Saga’s
many boss fights offer
more opportunities for
flashy stunt work.
Unfortunately, those
same boss fights are a
bit padded for my taste.
I don’t mind General Grievous’
multiple health bars so much as the
fact that we have to take a break in
between each one, with him running
off in a cutscene followed by some
mandatory battle droid clearing and
light platforming and puzzling. It
really kills my Duel of the Fates buzz,
and it’s a shame because otherwise
those fights are where the combat
actually starts to come alive for me.
Jedi characters also have access to
a Force throw ability to pick up and
toss objects and enemies, while
non-Force powered characters
possess rudimentary third-person
shooting mechanics with their
blasters. All of these options leave you
with an oddly deep toolbox for how
easy the challenges are. The game
provides a stress-free sandbox with
room to experiment at your leisure,
but I wasn’t taken with its combat,
and The Skywalker Saga’s more
drawn-out fights left me bored.
Outside the usual brawling, The
Skywalker Saga also features some
extensive space and aerial combat. I
find the dogfighting to be a bit more
engaging than battling on the ground.
The challenges are still fairly
straightforward, but being able to fly
around and explore space made up
for it. I’m especially fond of how The
Skywalker Saga lets you tool around
in planets’ orbits between missions,
shooting down meteors and ferreting
out sidequests. As with the planetside
environments, TT Games swings for
the fences with its hi-fi space
backdrops: the dogfighting takes
place over some phenomenal
skyboxes of Star Wars’ colourful
planetary systems.
The myriad planetside areas can
be revisited at will following
completion of their story missions,
and they contain various puzzles,
sidequests and minigames, some of
which can only be approached
post-game when the correct
character has been unlocked. You’re
limited to canonical cast members
during story missions, but free-play
lets you select from dozens of major
and minor unlockable Star Wars
characters. This ties
into a key long-term
timesink of The
Skywalker Saga – Kyber
Bricks, this game’s
main collectible.
There’s over 1 ,100
hidden throughout the
game, and I discovered
only a little over a tenth
of them in my playthrough. In a
series first, they also tie into a light
progression system. You can invest
them into upgrades across all
playable characters, or small bonuses
to individual archetypes like Jedi,
Hero, or Bounty Hunter. Many of the
more hidden Kyber Bricks reminded
me of the creative Moon placement
from Mario Odyssey, and I could see
sufficiently motivated Lego Star
Wars-heads investing the time
necessary to find them all.PHONE A FRIEND
The Lego Star Wars series has been
defined by its commitment to drop-in
couch co-op, and The Skywalker Saga
is no different in this regard. With a
second input method and the press of
a button, a player two can take
control of one of your secondary
characters. This is perfect for laptop
play in a dorm, or maybe if you’re one
of those new millennium dad typeswith a media centre PC, but it’s not a
great fit for desktop play, and The
Skywalker Saga cries out for online
co-op. TT Games hasn’t implemented
any online play system of its own, but
there is Steam Remote Play to fill the
gap. I’d never used the feature before,
but it didn’t take too much wrangling
to get a friend of mine halfway across
the country controlling Han Solo to
my Obi Wan in A New Hope, all
without him owning a copy of the
game to boot. Unfortunately, this
proved a bit too demanding an ask
for one or both of our shaky internet
connections, and the Comcast
corporation proved the greatest
opponent of fun in a galaxy far, far
away. I lost my friend and had to
invite him back three times over the
course of an hour of play. As it stands,
you’ll need pretty reliable internet on
one or both ends to enjoy online
co-op in this game – and need to own
the game on Steam rather than Epic.
The Skywalker Saga is not a
particularly demanding game, and I
was able to maintain a near-locked
144fps at 1440 p with an RTX 3 070,
but the graphics menu is relatively
sparse. I didn’t have any significant
graphical glitches or performance
hiccups aside from the game
resetting its refresh rate back to 6 0hz
every time I quit and came back.
What it lacks in graphics options, The
Skywalker Saga makes up for with an
impressive accessibility menu. I
appreciated the multiple sizes of
subtitles, different settings for health
regen/static hp pickups, and making
QTEs easier or even doing away with
them altogether.
The Skywalker Saga is an
impressive package, successfully
adapting some of the most iconic
sci-fi movies of all time with equal
amounts playful mockery of and
loving adherence to the source
material. The only shame is that its
sense of lively fun stands so in
contrast to stories of the game’s
development, mismanagement
allegedly laying undue stress and
suffering on the people who made
this whimsical journey possible. We
can only hope that the developer’s
next project is delivered under much
better circumstances.77
The Skywalker Saga’s
competent gameplay is
elevated by its infectious
and utterly charming
sense of humour.VERDICT
Provides a
stress-free
sandbox with
room to
experimentPLANETSIDE
The Skywalker Saga features a galaxy map
with dozens of iconic localesCORUSCANT
It may be
ecologically
unfeasible, but this
planet is just so cool. Coruscant
offers sci-fi vistas and a bit of fun
waiting tables atDexter’sDiner.TATOOINE
Classic for a reason,
The Skywalker Saga
really does justice to
the Tunisian mud brick
architecture used as the basis of
Tatooine’s towns andbazaars.NABOO
I was impressed by
The Skywalker
Saga’s rendition of
the underwater Gungan city, but
its take on the capital Theed is
something to behold.KAMINO
All property is
beachfront property,
the interiors look like
an Applestore, andit’s populated
entirely by aliens andTemuera
Morrisons. A paradisein space.Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga