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Note: This review is based on playing through the game on the Nintendo Switch. Comments regarding stability are indicative of that experience and may not be reflective of playing the game on other consoles such as PlayStation 4 or 5, Xbox One or Xbox Series X, or PC.
Lego video games have had a fairly consistent format since 2005 when Lego Star Wars: The Video Game hit stores. The player will follow a story from a major franchise (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel, DC Comics, etc) and collect a bunch of collectable objects as they progress. By the end of the game, the player would end up with a bunch of virtual miniature assemblies of iconic pieces of the franchises, dozens upon dozens of playable characters, and a shiny “100%” completion marker to give the player the feeling of accomplishment. Further games down the line would expand on this format by introducing side missions and open worlds, but none have revamped the game as much as (fittingly) Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, as the name suggests, takes the players through the nine episodic movies of Star Wars without much regard for expanded universe happenings. The player must play through each trilogy chronologically, starting with Episode I, IV, or VII, and then moving through the rest of the story in order. It is an interesting approach that does have its own strategy for free play to its selection. For example, starting off with The Phantom Menace will allow for the player to receive a Jedi character quickly for force puzzles, however through the entire prequel trilogy there are no readily available scavenger characters. Conversely, if one picks The Force Awakens to begin with, they will receive Rey right off the bat as a scavenger character but do not receive a Jedi character until The Rise of Skywalker.
The Lego games have always brought a very tongue-in-cheek sensibility to the franchise they are covering and that is no different here. From moments that are sanitized from the films to make them more family-friendly (the destruction of Alderaan is almost completely omitted from A New Hope) to jokes inserted into cut scenes like Luke’s consistent drinking of milk and looking directly into the camera like he does in The Last Jedi, to small Easter Eggs to the franchise like an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark during the fight at Maz’s castle on Takodana and a reference to the name George Lucas had for Rey (Kira) when he was developing Episode VII before it became The Force Awakens. All that said, these references and jokes are mostly located in the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy while the sequel trilogy is played mostly straight.
The biggest change from past games is the introduction of the vast open world that seamlessly goes from level to exploration. For this game, this feels like it could make the game drag for some players as they go along however as the period between levels very quickly devolves into walking from point A to point B with very little to do along the way. Arguably the most egregious of these is The Last Jedi where Rey just follows Luke around Ach-To trying to persuade him to train her. Compound this where the player is forced to match the target’s speed and the game does grind to a halt at points.
The actual levels that are included in the game are far too short in an almost overcorrect from past games like Lego DC Supervillains and Lego Marvel Superheroes 2. Past games would have ten “minikits” (white canister objects hidden in a level) to find and now there are just five. The levels themselves are more fun to play than other aspects of the game, however a disproportionate amount of time is spent in transit between levels rather than just playing the level directly. Hopefully this is a result of trying to expand the open world aspect rather than a long-term change to the series.
The game still does not have a great diversity of puzzle types which can make both levels and free play seem repetitive. Bounty hunter characters will use heat weapons to make gold bricks melt, Jedi will stack boxes and climb them, astromechs and protocol droids will make players do simple puzzles to unlock doors, and just about every puzzle in the game will require some combination of these to progress. Considering there are over 1000 Kyber Bricks in the game, not to mention character and vehicle tokens, to collect by doing puzzles like this, it will become a strain quickly.
Speaking of the Kyber Bricks, hopefully future games carry over the new upgrade system that assigns additional value to the rewards the player receives for completing missions. In past games, the gold bricks would be used to unlock doorways as more of a completion blockade where they need a certain amount of them to progress. Here, they are replaced with Kyber Bricks that can be used to upgrade health, damage output, speed, and other bonuses. It is a better system to motivate collection than the old which was dependent on players wanting to complete the game to 100 percent.
In terms of how well the game handles, there have always been a litany of glitches that impact the Lego games that tend to never be fixed properly. Over the course of gameplay, there were framerate drops fairly consistently that made the game hard to play and a few instances of missions not loading correctly, which would force one to leave the mission and reenter it in an effort to press forward properly. The load times are also a little extreme, only when traveling from planet to planet. For example, say the player is on Endor and wants to go to Hoth to try and complete side missions that are both in space above Hoth and on the surface in the Echo Base area. There is a load screen for the travel between planets and then when the player moves from orbit to surface there is another long load time.
The final thing to note about this game is the downloadable content (DLC) which is insultingly lacking compared to its predecessors. The content available in this game are strictly character packs that unlock characters from The Mandalorian (split into two separate packs), The Bad Batch, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In the past, Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 included DLC and additional levels for movies like Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Avengers: Infinity War. Even the last Lego Star Wars game to have DLC (Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens) included full level packs with the DLC that told the story of how C-3PO ended up with a red arm and how Poe escaped from Jakku and rendezvoused with the Resistance. At a $60 price tag, characters like Ahsoka and Din Djarin should be included in the base game, especially when the base game includes characters like Mr. Bones, a repurposed B-1 Battle Droid from the Aftermath book trilogy, somehow made the cut.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a fun game, however justifying the full retail price is tough considering for most players it is probably not worth the $60 price tag. If one considers themselves a passive fan, they can probably wait until Black Friday or Cyber Monday when the game will inevitably be marked down but may also be bundled with all the additional characters at the same time. If someone does have the $60 to burn, it’s not a bad way to spend a few days playing through. If one likes the past Lego games or loves collect-a-thons, this game is definitely for them.
Final Rating: 8/10
