by May Honey, Contributing Writer
Reviewed on the PS5
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is both Lego gaming and Star Wars gaming at a high that we’ve not seen in a long time from either franchise. Even for a tired old Star Wars and Lego fan such as myself, it was so easy to get wrapped up in the expansive and very humorous adventures of the film series I grew up with. Rarely do we get a game for this audience that boasts such scrupulous attention to detail, a consistently humorous tone that always lands, and an experience that is this innocently delightful. I was absolutely glued to the screen for the over 15 hours of gameplay I’ve played. In that time, I’ve completed the story of all nine films, done what feels like countless side missions, and made endless little discoveries on so many planets. It says I’ve only completed 39.5% of the full game, and that makes me so excited, because after playing it for this long, I know that whatever I discover will be just as much of a blast as what I’ve seen so far.
On a technical level the developers at TT Games have done a real overhaul of what we normally expect the gameplay and experience of a Lego game to play and feel like. The spirit is still there; don’t worry. We still have the constant physical humor, the snappy pacing of all the levels, and the puzzle-oriented progression, but almost everything else has had significant changes made for the better. To start, the extensive roster of characters is now separated into nine classes, each with their own set of traits and abilities that can affect ways you progress through levels and the open world. All of them have constant and practical use in every corner of the galaxy, making even some of the more seemingly niche classes having more surprises and uses than you may have thought going in. That even encourages a little experimentation as you go along the world. For example, while I was exploring around Mos Eisley doing a side mission, I was fighting all the crowd of stormtroopers using only R2-D2 to surprisingly fun results. Combat has also been diversified from Lego’s trademark spam-the-attack-button style of the past. Now there is a regular attack, jump attack, and special attack you have to combo together to be effective. In fact, if you do spam one type of attack too often, your enemies will block you and you’ll have to counter them to not take damage. The game is still a quite breezy experience in terms of difficulty, but this new diversification of play helped each new encounter and level feel fresh in a way games like this rarely ever feel. It also doesn’t hurt that the level design is better than ever here, often hiding secrets and gags you didn’t even know you were looking for.
The story of the nine films takes up a surprisingly little amount of this game (if you couldn’t tell by my percentage), but don’t let that fool you. There is an ungodly amount of attention given to every beat of the original films. It feels like it all goes by so fast, but it nevertheless always feels satisfying. That’s partly due to the amount of variation they allow you to have during the missions and how they play out. Sometimes you can blow up a door and go in guns blazing to fight a bunch of stormtroopers, or you can put out some fires and take a little bit more time to take a stealthier route around them. This not only makes you feel that much more involved in the level, but it adds a replayability that added a lot to the overall experience. Especially if you’re a perfectionist like me, you’ll go back to 100% all the stages. The worlds are where you’ll spend most of your time though, and there are 23 separate planets to explore (yes you read that correctly). Each one is packed to the brim with puzzles giving you all kinds of rewards, light thrills, and laughs that really give this game its true personality. Going outside of the films themselves and coloring the Star Wars galaxy with their own little storylines and details are what really make these hub worlds come alive. You can unlock ships for an immensely easy-to-learn form of space travel, Kyber bricks to help upgrade your characters, datacards that unlock extras, and of course all the characters you could ever ask for (there are over 380). Whether it be climbing to the top of a tower on Naboo, winning a horse race on Canto Bight, or gathering podracer parts from all around the galaxy for an Ewok on Endor, I am always eager to find everything that each of these worlds have to offer.
As a Star Wars fan, no matter what side of the political isle you come on in terms of liking the prequels, sequels, Disney+ shows, or any of it at all, it’s hard to find such a purely innocent way to immerse yourself in that world. This game really did that for me in a way that felt special. A great game for kids and adults, it was in the hands of Star Wars fans that just wanted to make the best game they possibly could have, and they not only did they do that, but they did it in a way that reflected all of the love, passion, and ingenuity that went into making the series as a whole. You can’t make a game like this if you don’t really care.
Score: 10/10
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