REVIEW | LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

LifeisXbox’s LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga review | I’ve been playing Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO video games ever since I was seven years old, I started off with either LEGO Batman The Video Game or LEGO Indiana Jones The Video Game on the PlayStation 3, and tend to revisit these every now and then. I have played nearly every single LEGO game from that point on and am still not tired of it after more than ten years. LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga is different from the usual LEGO game, but in a good way. In this game, you’ll get to play through all the 9 Star Wars movies, each having 5 levels. Besides the 45 levels that this game has to offer, it also has an open world like no other, with over 20 planets to explore, and some even having up to 4 separate areas.

Most Memorable Moment

Figuring out this new battle system was quite a journey. In the first few hours of the game, I found myself spamming the x button, and not caring about the combos. However, this quickly changed – all of the different combinations that you can make with this new system is mindblowing in and of itself. When watching previews, I still see a lot of people pressing the x button way too often, so I’d recommend you to try out the new combat system – you’ll love it!

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.

What we Liked!

• Incredible Graphics | After the disappointment that was LEGO The Incredibles’ open world, I was glad to see the huge improvement in graphics in their more recent LEGO DC Super Villains. When it comes to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, however, I’m more than impressed. As mentioned before, the game has over 45 levels and more than 20 planets (some with up to 4 different open world areas), and the fact that the graphics retain their quality throughout the entire game is unbelievable in my opinion! I also love the fact that LEGO objects and minifigs get covered in dirt, sand or snow, depending on the location they are at, at that moment.

• Reworked Combat | Ever since the release of LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, the combat has stayed relatively the same; spamming the action button (X). Later on, they did add a combo counter and a way to grab enemies during combat, but those things felt rather useless, as I found myself just spamming the action button (X) again, as usual. However, they have finally redone the close combat and the shooting systems!
  
  This time around, more than just one button is needed for combat. To start a combo, you’ll have to tap the x button, like how it used to be, but if you keep pressing this button, enemies will start blocking your attacks. If you want to prevent that from happening, you’ll have to press some other buttons, like the A or B button, or you could throw your lightsaber/shoot the enemy by pressing the right trigger. At first, this new combat system felt a little doubtful, as I’ve gotten used to the “spam x” combat. After a few hours of trial and error, I did find myself making combos above the 60s (I even reached a combo of 100+ at some point). I also really like the animations during combat! Hopefully, future LEGO games will adopt a similar combat system!

• Level Challenges | Levels seem to have taken a more 3Ds LEGO games take with the addition of challenges. Since the release of The LEGO Movie Videogame on the Nintendo 3Ds, they added some kind of level challenges to the handheld versions of the games, to make the levels more replayable. It looks like they have taken that idea and put it into their most recent LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga as well, and I love it! Besides collecting those iconic studs and minikits, you’ll have up to 3 level challenges to complete. Completing all 3 of these will reward you with Kyber Bricks, but more on those later. Be aware, the level challenges are hidden, but the requirements to completing them can be unlocked for 30 000 studs. While I used to revisit levels only 1 or 2 times in past LEGO games for the collectables, these new challenges required me to restart these multiple times.

• Studs | It looks like that studs have finally gotten more useful. In past LEGO games, they were mainly used for buying extra’s, hints and minifigs. In LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, there are some new things: upgrades and rumours. Rumours are basically hints, but not in the way you would remember them. These new rumours help you discover the locations of Kyber Bricks and side quests, along with a string of text to help you a little along the way. These can also be bought inside of levels, giving you hints as to where minikits might be hidden, or as to what the level challenges’ requirements might be. While we’re on the topic of levels anyway, collecting a certain amount of studs inside of levels always rewards you with a “True Jedi”, but in order to collect a “True Jedi” in this game, you’ll have to fill three smaller bars, instead of just one. Filling each bar will reward you with 1 Kyber Brick.

• The Iconic LEGO humor and Voice Acting | Somehow they always seem to nail it; there hasn’t been a single LEGO game to my knowledge that had hilarious punchlines and references to movies in them. And that has obviously been made possible by the amazing writer and voice actors that worked on this new game. While the voice actors aren’t the people behind the Star Wars movies, they do sound almost identical to the actual movie actors, which is really amazing. I’m glad they did it this way, because the way how LEGO Jurassic World’s voice acting ended up still haunts me. And for those nostalgic gamers out there, there’s a Mumble Mode extra unlocked right at the start of the game – there’s no need for you to unlock it!

• Gigantic Open World | “A giant galaxy, it is. Planets around every corner, there are.” (I just had to do an attempt at speaking Yodish in this review…). Now, I’m being serious, this game’s open world is HUGE!! This game includes nearly every single planet that’s been shown in the Star Wars movies, which should make for a total of 24 planets if I’m not mistaken. And that’s not all, some planets have multiple locations. Take Tatooine for example; this planet has the Jundland Wastes, Mos Espa and Mos Eisley, which are three separate open worlds on 1 of the 24 planets. In some of these locations, I even spent up to 3 hours finding collectables and completing side-quests, just because of how much stuff there is to be done.

Mixed Feelings

• Kyber Bricks and Upgrades | Not sure why the decision was made to change the iconic Golden Bricks into what are now called Kyber Bricks, but they do also seem to be more useful. Kyber Bricks can be used to purchase upgrades for all of your characters and class-specific characters. Most of these upgrades, however, weren’t that interesting to me. The only ones that I really liked were the studs magnet, faster walking speed and the collectables finder upgrades. Because they changed the name into Kyber Bricks, doesn’t mean that there’s a different way to find them; they are still as boring and repetitive to find as your good ol’ Golden Bricks.

• Too Much Change to the Level Design | While the levels themselves weren’t necessarily bad, I do think that there wasn’t a big enough focus on casual levels. There were way too many levels where you do races, fight others in space and where you do boss battles. And most of the more casual levels that were in the game felt relatively small compared to previous games (that’s kinda proven by the fact that there are 5 minikits per level, instead of the usual 10.)

• Co-op | Co-op is one of the things that has stayed relatively the same. However, I found co-op to be a little less useful in this game compared to other games. There aren’t as many sections that require 2 people at the same time, especially in the more casual levels. There are also levels that require the 2 of you to control one vehicle. In the first level of the game for example; one will be steering the vehicle, and the other will be shooting. For those younger people who are interested in roleplaying, with 380 characters and 24 planets to explore, I’m sure you’ll find some fun in that.

What we Disliked

• No Lipsync During Gameplay | This is just a minor nitpick, but I found the fact that the lips weren’t syncing during gameplay to be pretty distracting. There were even a few NPCs that had such a bad lipsync to the point where their facial movements looked like a 3fps speech – not all NPCs, though, that also makes me wonder why that’s so inconsistent.

How long to beat the story | About 15 hours.
How long to achieve 1000G | Between 70 – 80 hours.

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