While it is the best in the series, it is still a mediocre game overall.
The story in this game is like every other Star Wars related game/story/book/movie ever: good guys versus bad guys. Your character is an up and coming jedi and throughout the game you pave your road to either the dark side or to the light based on what skills you learn. You know, the same thing as in Jedi outcast and in the other Jedi Knight games. Of course this does something a little different, as depending on what side you pick, the final boss changes, but it really isn't substantial. The characters are annoying and what happens with the character Rosh can be seen from a mile away. Basic, terrible, Star Wars formula is all you'll find.
The gameplay aspect hasn't changed since the first Jedi Knight game: the gun play is terrible, the light saber is boring to use, and most of the force powers are not needed.
Why does this game have guns in it? Aside from Storm Troopers and mercenaries, there is no purpose for them. The projectiles themselves are all very weak, slow, and completely unsatisfying. While there are subtle differences between all the guns, they all share the same fundamental flaw: they suck. Now, having played all the games in this series it was obvious they would never fix this feature. That would simply require an overhaul of the games, because who doesn't want to play these games as if you were playing as Han Solo or Boba Fett? But alas, they are simply boring; and sorry for not being too descriptive on how they "suck" but download the demo and you too will quickly understand what is meant by that.
Now some of you are probably thinking,
"What? Why is this guy griping over guns in a Star Wars game? Surely he must know that the whole reason you would ever want to play a game within the Star Wars Universe is to play around with the light saber..."
I can't blame you for that, because you should be right about that in theory. But this is the fundamental problem with this game: the light saber is simply boring to use and the mechanics behind it are stupid. For one, the light saber is simply over powered against anyone without one. Makes sense? Well… maybe, but this means the vast majority of this game will be extremely boring. Your character will be able to block and deflect most projectiles, and a single strike means death for the enemy. Once again, expected, but because the A.I. is so dumb and the light saber is so powerful, the fun is sucked out of it. Combat, if you only want to use a light saber, while just consist of charging the enemy (all of which fire in the same pattern) and then hacking them as they stand still. Maybe if shoots penetrated once in a while, or maybe after having all their shots blocked they stop firing and give up? It'd be far more interesting if there was some difficulty or at least the enemies have some semblance of "intelligence." Severing body parts can be fun, but only for the first five or so times.
When fighting against other light saber wielding Sith, the combat seems a little more interesting at first, but a new host of problems appear: there is no depth in combat. Combat will consist of running back and forth, button mashing, and hopefully landing a hit. That is it. Having played this game through several times, as well as Jedi Outcast (the same mechanics), I tired messing around with this aspect. I found no way around the aforementioned fighting strategy, as using the different strikes (direction plus attack or jump plus a direction and attack and etc.) in reaction to other strikes but the collision detection of the light saber is so wonky that it just seems random.
After the initial allure of the light saber disappears and you want to just finish this game, a faster alternative to using your boring weapons is using your force powers. Most of them are useless, but force push, force pull, and force grip make quick work of anyone near a ledge, including most Sith enemies. And luckily for you, there are lots of ledges to throw people off of. It isn't that fun to do after a while, but it sure beats using a light saber.
In addition to having bad combat, the developers of this game thought it was a good idea to also make a lot of terrible missions as well. A few of these missions don't have enough ledges, and a few of them require riding a beast or vehicle (the swoop mission is the buggiest and most frustrating part of the game by far). Like most shooters, they are all linear, and though large they feel really barren and completely void of any character or life. For some reason the developer also thought it was a keen idea to allow the player to pick the order in which they can play through missions, maybe to give the impression that even though you're playing in a terribly designed map, you at least had the ability to choose when to play it.
Just skip this game, the whole series, anything Star Wars related.