Finally, a game that makes you feel like a Jedi, minus a few issues like lightsabre combat...
The story really helps pull you through the occasionally repetitive game play. Any Star Wars fan will enjoy the story as it fills the gap between Star Wars Episode III and Star Wars Episode IV. Letting you play through the events that occurred between the two movies. You play as Starkiller, the new apprentice to Darth Vader. Darth Vader sends you on various missions to kill the Jedi. On the road you meet other characters like Proxy, Starkiller's robot assistant, and Juno Eclipse, Starkiller's newest pilot.
As mentioned earlier, the game play does get repetitive. Considering every mission except for two has you go from point A to point B, and then kill a boss. Battling the various storm troopers is a blast, and you will truly feel powerful when you destroy star destroyers by throwing enemies into them, or even tearing rooms apart in general. The problem is that all the bosses are boring and get repetitive very quickly. There are a couple mini-bosses which come in the form of AT-ATs, AT-STs, and Rancors. AT-ATs and AT-STs battle in the exact same way, and Rancors fight like AT-ATs except they don't shoot weapons. The bosses are also very anti-climatic. The bosses are various Jedi that you are trying to kill. Except they all fight the same and it eventually turns into a game of you doing a lightsabre combo, maybe shoot some force lightning from your fingertips, then block while the enemy AI does the same. The battles end with a quick time event, this is the most entertaining part of the battle because while you watch the screen after hitting each button, the moves Starkiller does really looks cool, like you are actually a Jedi, instead of a simple game of back and forth.
While it is an action game, there are RPG elements in it as well. When you kill things you get rewarded with force points. After collecting enough you level up and receive three force crystals, one for each color in the game. With these you can upgrade things like lightsabre combos, health, force lightning, etc.
Using the force feels great, partly because all the effects look really good. In fact, all of the visuals look good in this game. Fluid animation fills the screen from all types of enemies. Starkiller's lightsaber skills really stand out as he does flourishes and stabs with it. The environments look a bit bland, but with the many enemies the environment is easy to miss. However when enough enemies fill the screen, there were many times I experienced frame rate issues while I was clearing room after room of enemies. That can really take you out of the moment when you are in the middle of taking down a towering AT-AT but the game slows down while you try to run around it.
The voice acting in the game is great. Noticeable stand outs include the two main characters, Starkiller and Juno Eclipse. Their robot sidekick, Proxy, also sounded great. The guns and lightsabre noises sound spot on to the movies. Some of the classic Star Wars music is here as well. While the other characters do a good job, you won't really find anything there that's spectacular.
Collectibles in the game come in the form of holocrons. There are two different types, Sith holocrons and Jedi holocrons. While Sith holocrons only give you a temporary boost in fighting ability, like unlimited force energy or invincibility. The Jedi holocrons give you various things. From ten thousand force points to new force crystals, costumes, and lightsabre crystals which are used to change the color of your lightsabre and give it other special powers.
There are four difficulty types, and the game really made a lot of difference between them. The easiest difficulty, "Apprentice," is a lot easier than the hardest difficulty, "Sith Master." Unfortunately the difficulty isn't because of increased enemy AI. It's due in part with enemies having more health and doing more damage, which is fine. However the difficulty in the game isn't only from losing more health, it's also from frustrating game play. There are many times when I would have full health but a couple enemies would start juggling me, so right when I stand up and right before I'd get control of my character they would hit me with something else and I'd fall back down, I would lose a full health bar because of this, even on the easiest difficulty this happened to me once. The bosses are annoying as well for the same reason that their challenge doesn't change a lot, because you defeat all of them except maybe the last boss using the same tactics, and they can put you in juggles as well or have moves that will take away half of your health bar.
Once I finished the game, which I did twice because there are two endings and I wanted to try the other difficulties. I did enjoy it. The game definitely has problems but I like Star Wars, and the fact that there's really no other game like this that does it well. There are many problems like the frame rate dropping and repetitive game play. But it is worth playing through for the story experience, and to finally feel like a Jedi. If you want an awesome action game, there are better ones out there. However if you like the Star Wars universe and want to finally feel like you have the power of the force at your disposal, this is one journey you'll want to push through.