Review – LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

Movie-tie-in video games have generally never had a great reputation. Most are derided for having lackluster gameplay that fails to adapt the source material well. However, for the longest time, the LEGO games have stood apart as an exception to this rule. The LEGO DC, Marvel, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings games have all been largely well-received for their massive open world, easy-to-learn gameplay and their reverence for the stories they adapt. The game that started all of this success was the original LEGO Star Wars released back in 2005.

As a kid who loved both playing with LEGO‘s and watching Star Wars, the original LEGO Star Wars for the PlayStation 2 was one of my favorite games to play. My brothers and I would spend hours trying to earn all of the collectibles and battling one another in Dexter’s Diner. The original game still holds a lot of nostalgia for me, so when LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was announced, I was pretty hyped. After a couple of delays, the game has finally released and I am pleased to say that it has mostly lived up to my expectations.

Content Guide

Spiritual Content: As with any piece of Star Wars media, there are discussions about the Force and the inherently spiritual nature of the concept which derives from Taoist and Buddhist philosophy.

Violence: Characters fight one another with lightsabers, blasters, and the melee weapons. As with other LEGO games, all of the violence is completely bloodless and characters “die” by breaking apart into pieces.

Drugs/alcohol: Characters go to cantinas but no alcohol is shown being consumed.

Language: None

Sexual Content: None, unless you count the one stormtrooper, who’s a guy, who wears a bathing suit and can be seen lounging in a hot tub. There are several jokes about Kylo being shirtless and ripped. The game goes the extra mile in keeping things kid-friendly by having Anakin and Padme, who are married, sleep in the separate beds of a bunk bed.

Other Negative Content: There are a few mild bathroom humor jokes involving animal stool and passing gas.

Kid, I’ve Flown from One Side of this Galaxy to Another

Easily the strongest aspect of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the breadth of its content. As is stated in the title, this game adapts the stories of all nine of the mainline Star Wars films which Disney has dubbed “The Skywalker Saga”. As such, this is probably the most expansive LEGO game in terms of its characters, vehicles and collectibles. In “Galaxy Free Play”, the player is free to explore a multitude of hub worlds from Coruscant to Tatooine; each with their own plethora of side quests and hidden collectibles. These side quests will include timed races, dogfights in space, shooting challenges, and puzzles that can only be solved with Force abilities. There are over three hundred characters and one hundred vehicles that can be collected across the course of the game and that isn’t even including the other collectibles like kyber-bricks and minikits. Given the variety in which the collectibles can be obtained, running around the galaxy never gets boring.

As with the original LEGO Star Wars, the story levels are made to be completed one-hundred percent by collecting all of the studs and minikits. This game also adds certain challenges that can be completed through gameplay such as killing a certain number of enemies or destroying a specific object. These challenges add to the variety of tasks that can be completed in each level. As with every LEGO game, there are plenty of collectibles that require the player to replay the story levels in “Free Play” with their full roster of characters in order to get them. Characters are divided into classifications such as “Jedi”, “Dark Side”, “Bounty Hunter”, “Hero”, and “Villain”. Each class comes with their own specific abilities which can be used to access collectibles and complete puzzles. Even after completing the main stories of Episodes I through IX, there is plenty of content left for the player to discover and enjoy.

An Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age

LEGO games have never been typically well-known for their combat as they are games that are made to be playable for the whole family from kids to adults. While LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is by no means a difficult game to play, it does make some much-needed adjustments to keep their formula fresh in the current era of gaming. Blaster combat is reminiscent of third-person shooters as players can now take cover behind objects, equip disguises, and acquire different types of weapons to use in firefights. Lightsaber combat is also varied to include quick-time prompts and greater emphasis on dodging and blocking. This largely prevents the player from button-mashing their way through enemies and adds a hint of strategy to what would otherwise be mediocre combat.

The game also takes inspiration from role-playing games by adding an upgrade tree for each class of character. These upgrades can be purchased with studs and kyber-bricks which can be found in both the story levels and free play. However, for experienced gamers, the relative ease of the gameplay doesn’t warrant the inclusion of the upgrade trees. That being said, it is still neat to see that LEGO is experimenting with new types of gameplay mechanics for their games.

The Ability to Speak Does Not Make You Intelligent

One of the more divisive elements of this game is the inclusion of fully-voiced characters that repeat their lines from the movies. James Arnold Taylor and Matt Lanter reprise their roles as Obi-Wan and Anakin, respectively, from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. While they are not the original actors for these characters in the movies, their performances actually improve upon some of the worst scenes and dialogue from the prequels. On the other hand, the inclusion of certain voices serves to take away from the experience. Certain characters such as Qui-Gon and Han Solo have such distinct voices in the movies that hearing someone doing an impersonation can be distracting at times. Also, as much as their new voice actors are trying, certain characters like Jar-Jar Binks and ten-year old Anakin will never cease to be annoying to me. Note that these are very personal gripes of mine and that for many players these changes will not be an issue.

While the game’s voice-acting is hit-or-miss, the humor almost always hits. LEGO games have become known for their juvenile humor that often satirizes the movies that they are adapting. The humor never shies away from satirizing or poking fun at the goofier elements of the Star Wars franchise. References to Anakin’s hatred of sand and Kylo Ren talking to Rey while shirtless show that the game never takes itself too seriously. My favorite joke however, has to be when Qui-Gon Jinn says, “I have a particular set of skills”; this is next-level meta-humor at its finest. There will always be a part of me that misses the mumbling wordless jokes of the original LEGO Star Wars. That being said, the humor here is appropriately cheesy while never being too dumb.

I Don’t Mind Flying but What You’re Doing is Suicide!

The game is a lot of fun, however it does falter in a couple of key areas. As with the original LEGO Star Wars, the vehicle levels are the weakest ones in the game. The ships are not very maneuverable and are very limited in their control. During combat, the screen is often cluttered with so many different things that it can be difficult to keep track of what the objective is. There are times when blindly holding down the fire button is the surest way of getting to the end of the level. As a kid, one of the most frustrating levels of the original LEGO Star Wars was the podrace level from The Phantom Menace. Now as an adult, the new version of the podrace level was also my most frustrating experience in this game. The controls for the podracer are very clunky and the player moves so fast that they will find themselves bouncing off of every obstacle on the map. After experiencing much smoother vehicle combat in other Star Wars games like Squadrons and Battlefront II, the vehicle levels in The Skywalker Saga feel like a step backward.

The wide-open hub worlds are fun to explore, but the drawback of their size is that it is not always clear where to go for certain objectives. Some missions will require the player to dig through their mission log in order to figure our where exactly to go and what to accomplish. I did also experience a couple game-breaking glitches. One in which the vast emptiness of space was all that was on screen and another in which my screen went totally white and I could not see anything. Thankfully, quitting to the main menu and reloading the level rectified the situation and these were the only major bugs that I experienced in my playthrough.

Conclusion

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a simple, yet solid experience that the whole family can enjoy. The world is expansive and there is no lack of objectives to accomplish. The combat is easy enough for children while varied enough to engage adults. The classic LEGO juvenile humor is ever-present along with plenty of clever in-jokes for the hard-core Star Wars fans. If you have enjoyed the formula of past LEGO games, this game adds enough to keep you engaged while still staying true to its roots; and if you have never played a LEGO game before, I do believe that this one has the best chance of winning you over.