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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Saturday 14 June, 2025 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 1 September, 2025
Current opinion of this game
Fantastic. Loved so many part of it.
September 1, 2025 12:25:34 PM
Really, really enjoyed it. So much that I decided to go for the "all items and secrets" trophy just because that would scratch the exploration itch this game had been scratching for me. I'm also thankful for the "easy mode" - which was, as advertised, easy - but like I said, I was really into exploring the levels, finding secret stuff and just enjoying the places. I was reminded of Bungie's level design for Destiny - more precisely Bungie's art direction for its levels. Destiny levels tend to be super, super linear (which is fine) even if they twist around in interesting ways. This games' levels are much less linear - Zeffo in particular is a nice version of a contained sprawl... I even had fun trying to remember how to get to different parts of the level I wanted to re-visit because I was missing a chest or secret. The only thing I wish I had was, once you've finished it, some indicator of whether you had all the Jedi memory things - I'd sometimes stumble across ones I'd missed (and some were secrets) - but a counter for that would have been nice. I get that you may want to hide them away - since many are about the game's story - but once you beat the main story, why not give people the chance to know what things were missed where? (you know which ones you're missing, because of counters in the encyclopedia thingie - but you don't know in which parts of which map if that makes sense). I'm now genuinely excited and interested to play the next one! (not so much for the story/characters to be honest - the addition of the night sister at the end felt odd and forced, but the action was great, and the environments as well) (ok, now that I think about it, and because of the surprise appearance of one Lord at the end...what happens in the sequel? I also forget when in the Star Wars timeline the game takes place? I mean, I know it's before Return of the Jedi...but is it before A New Hope? I think so?)
August 13, 2025 07:11:18 PM
I just picked this up again after not playing for...months? (I have to check my last gamelog for this one - assuming I even wrote one). I was worried that I would have forgotten everything - and that re-learning would be such a chore that I'd just give up and move on to something else. Thankfully, I had last set the game to "easy" (whatever it's actually called in the game) which made the process of remembering/re-learning it NOT a chore, and actually kind of enjoyable. I then looked at the controller mapping to see what actions I had missed in my re-learning process. I've been having a lot of fun playing it on "easy" - I was really looking for an adventure, not so much a challenge. But it made me realize - typically when a game has difficulty settings they only affect ONE "vector" for that game's difficulty. In this case, the "vector" relates to the games combat - you have shorter windows to react, enemies might have more HP, they might be more aggressive, that sort of thing. But, this game also has environmental puzzles - and I've assumed that the difficulty of these is basically fixed: it doesn't vary depending on the difficulty level. From the perspective of "designing challenge" - having varying difficulty for puzzles is a tough design problem. Really though. Generally it is "solved" by having some sort of clue system to hopefully give the player some guidance on the puzzle at hand - and the more sophisticated systems might have different levels of clues, with each one giving more information and thus allowing the player the "minimum" amount of help needed to solve the puzzle. Anyways... that's where I'm at in my headspace - since I'll be playing a lot of "thinkygames" and I've also been thinking about challenge in games. In terms of progress I've unlocked Kashyyyk as a destination - but I'm currently exploring other parts of Zeffo just to see what's going on. I've also appreciated the fact that the collectibles are all cosmetic stuff. Ok, ALMOST all - there's a few that help with your health and force stats..but most so far are cosmetic and related to your lightsaber (multiple components, each with their own cosmetic), poncho/cloak, spaceship look, and little robot look.
June 20, 2025 02:51:01 PM
One of the benefits of playing old games I've been sitting on for a long time is that I know that I picked up the game for (usually) a good reason like "this game was well received or interesting for some reason" and, for some games, by the time I get around to playing it I don't recall exactly what those reasons were. To be fair I sometimes pick up random games because they're cheap and I haven't heard of them and they might be interesting. Anyways, what this means is that when I get around to playing them there's a bit of a discovery process for me which also includes recalling what it was that motivated me to get the game in the first place. So, Jedi Fallen order! I don't remember if this game is supposed to be "good" or what (it's sequel Jedi Survivor I remember as being well-regarded critically), so as I start playing I'm thinking ok - this is like an Uncharted game but it's Star Wars! (the initial scenes on a backwater planet in a giant spaceship junkyard where the work being done is stripping old (oftentimes giant!) spaceships... There's acrobatics, getting to places by jumping, climbing, swinging, and so on. There's also cut scenes without too much backstory. And it's all action-based..and feeling very much like Uncharted. Cool! But then, things "go bad" - the game takes place AFAIK between episode III and IV. So, Jedi are getting hunted down and my character has force skills! (which he's been keeping hidden). Oho no! Rapidly the bad guys (Imperial inquisitors!) show up and you have to escape. And here, mostly, in a high-stakes escape sequence (on a moving train! so, again reminded of Uncharted...but not in a bad way!) you're introduced to the different combat moves, and blocking, deflecting blaster shots (you have a lightsaber it turns out), using a force skill, etc. Ok, this still feels sort of like Uncharted - no shooting, but still action and set-piece oriented! Of course this is all the prelude - you escape...and cue more cutscenes and you meet some characters and end up on a planet where you're told to investigate (enter) an ancient Jedi vault or something like this. Ok, I got this! I start wandering around, meet a little robot guy, and waltz into a cave and this monster (with a large health bar) hits me twice and I'm dead. Oh. That was not like Uncharted - felt much more like, say, a souls-game. I might need to tune down the difficulty. And, of course, I'm not yet really accustomed to the controls and the moves, etc. (I'm also pretty bad at these games). Slowly, the game starts to open up, I learn there are skills to unlock, you need to level up, killing monsters helps with this, now I can heal (the little robot is your buddy and carries stimpacks). It's been an interesting introduction to the game - and it's a bit weird how some stuff opens up out of sequence for my exploring (I killed this monster - there was a chest, but I couldn't open it, I still don't really know why, it wasn't a bug though I was suspicious of that for a while because I did have the game crash on me once).... Anyways, I've finished my work on the planet (got into the vault) and I'm now on a "follow up on the leads" part of the adventure. Fun so far, but we'll see.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4)