How are people liking the game?

I've played the game for about an hour and so far it isn't speaking to me.

For people that are playing it, does it get better?

When i sat at the bonfire and it reset enemies i wanted quit the game right then. So far it feels like a boring tomb raider game without guns - with some dark souls randomness thrown in.

I have EA Access so it didn't cost anything - at least now. (I thought i had a bargain with Athem … blah.)

Of note, SLI does work for the game. Which is nice to see. I don't think i could keep a solid 60+ FPS without it. 2080ti SLI can hold a pretty stable 110+ fps at 4k with "EPIC" (ie, maxed settings.)

Here is a video of the first 45min

(it is taking a long time for YT to bake this.. at some point it should be 4k)

Feels weird to not see any reviews for this after Death Stranding embargo lifted a week before release. Even Pokemon reviews are out. I know it’s pretty common but still feels off for what’s supposed to be a tentpole release coming after the DS extended coverage.

I think the reviews are allowed out at 9PM PST.

I think Brad will be doing the quick look for it. (But who knows when that will be out.) I hope he plays more than an hour or two. In general, I personally wish they'd put more time in before doing a QL.

The early embargo for DS was the exception to the norm these days. Plus you have Disney who embargo the hell out of star wars stuff.

I thought the most recent hands-ons all sounded positive. I’m immediately assuming quality since it’s Respawn.

We’ll see. I’ll be slightly bummed out if it’s no good (as Respawn has been consistently very good), but I’ll also get a big chunk of hours to spend elsewhere.

I've sunk about 5 or 6 hours into the game so far and I'm having a lot of fun. It definitely does a great job at capturing the Star Wars universe. I totally suck at the combat so I moved down to easy pretty quickly, but I think there's a lot to like for people who like more deliberate action games. There's more going on than that initial gameplay demo at e3 seemed to suggest, especially in regard to exploration and the Metriodvania-like elements.

I'm enjoying the writing and story more than I was expecting to. I understand why the review embargo was so strict because of spoilers, because I don't think they've previously showed off any of the game's opening. I'm only just about to get to the Kashyyyk area shown at e3. It's a bummer though, cuz I know a lot of people will interpret the lateness of reviews as a lack of confidence for the game's quality, which is pretty far off based on what I've played so far. I'm sure it'll still sell great thanks to the license though.

@benjaminolson: How Soulsy is it?

@merxworx01: It feels very Soulsy to me, but I'm not the most experienced Souls player. Some of the mechanics, like the bonfires, are lifted straight out of Souls, and the parry system to the combat seems similar to Sekiro (which I haven't played myself). You won't do well trying to spam attacks or block, which makes it pretty deliberate in a Soulslike way.

I definitely think there's a big appeal for people hoping for a Star Wars Souls-like, especially as I imagine the harder difficulties being pretty punishing, based on how much trouble I had on normal.

@benjaminolson: oh, that is good to hear. I'll put more time in the game then. Thanks for the feedback!

I thought EA access didn't get this game until tomorrow? I don't like the sound of it being like a souls game, but I will deal with it because it's Star Wars.

@casepb: I set my Xbox's location to New Zealand so I could play early.

I'm not a big Souls fan either, but on the "story mode" difficulty setting I'm having a lot of fun with the weightiness to the combat, but not having to deal with punishing difficulty and precise timing of the parrying required by the higher difficulties.

And other aspects of the game, like exploration, the writing, and indeed, the general Star Wars aesthetic, are keeping me engaged even though I'm not great at the combat.

Looking forward to hearing more in two hours when the embargo lifts. If it’s at least semi-positive, I’ll buy. I didn’t enjoy Sekiro so I’m starving for a souls-like.

Ps fuck EA with this release date embargo nonsense.

Only a fews hours in so far.

I think Cal's movement feels quite jittery kinda like the Witcher only sped up.

Combat is very quick, so far it's been pretty much all counters like Batman Arkham Asylum waiting to push triangle.

I'm playing on PS4 Pro with an SSD and the load times on respawning are erratic, I waited nearly a minute at one point thought the game locked up, at the same point after a few times only about 20 sec's but its not been consistent.

The game has been occasionally framey traversing the enviroment, fine during combat though.

So far it feels like Star Wars not original trilogy but Force Awakens seems pretty good.

Wait, this game is basically Star Wars Souls ? I had completely written it off after E3, but if that's the case my interest is peaking.

@ares42: Yo completely same boat.

I'm so-so on Star Wars anymore, but I've always liked the potential the universe has and loved me some of the older Star Wars games. If this is legit a "souls" style game...I'm in

@ares42: @takayamasama

Having played for like 10 hrs now, this game is a far cry from Dark Souls. The combat is considerably less responsive, more flashy then actually well designed. The numerous difficulties don't seem to help the games balance at all as on very hard (the highest) some sections are a complete joke, meanwhile other sections (aka a swath of melee with hard to reach ranged enemies) are super brutal and feel quite cheap. I would say the combat is actually pretty unfun on the higher difficulties and even on lower difficulties the least fun part of the game.

Leveling isn't a thing as experience is merely for upgrading skills (which are locked by story progression) and there are no items. Its more metroidvania, as you get upgrades that unlock new sections, but I have found that aspect a bit annoying as it takes forever to get back to certain areas (sometimes multiple times because of the upgrades) to unlock a chest that gives a new cosmetic and nothing of real substance. Performance is also a big problem. I do have a weaker system, but the load of new areas can result in substantial frame drops and at least for me freezing for long enough I thought the game was going to crash. I have also fought the camera and been stuck between an enemy and a wall numerous times.

I am enjoying the story and being in a star wars world. For $15 (origin), it seems completely worth it, but for $60 no way. As of now I would say this game is definitely a Origin Premium or get on a sale.

It's pretty solid so far.

It's not a Souls game it's a game inspired by Souls mechanics and it's important to recognize that distinction now. So as it's own thing that is just using that style of combat I think it feels pretty good so far.

Traversal feels a little wonky, and if it ever gets more demanding than simple Uncharted stuff that might get frustrating.

Played for 3 hours tonight. I was really excited for this game, and I'm really liking the story and presentation so far. PC version runs very well (for the most part) even on my GTX 970. Combat is most similar to Sekiro (which I enjoyed), but much less precise. Playing on hard I haven't found any of the timing especially difficult so far, and early enemies go down quicker than in Sekiro or other Souls games. Surprised by the enemy variety as well, I expected mostly stormtroopers but there's much more wildlife that you face. The flow of the game is very Souls-like going from bonfire to bonfire, with plenty of places to explore and shortcuts to open. The in-game map is very helpful as well. Overall really enjoying it, and I'm excited to see where the game goes.

I really like it, but don't love it. The game I can't help but keep thinking about - partially because of the environment art, partially because of the combat style - is God of War, and everything this game does just fine that game does exquisitely. I'll get back to that in a bit. As for positive impressions? The game has a strong sense of wonder, the sound design is expectedly awesome and they really have, mostly, made it feel like I'm a Star Wars Man wandering around a Star Wars world. It's clear this is a direct tie-in to the wider world of Star Wars, and while I'm lukewarm on both the prequels and the modern trilogy for different reasons I can't help but get drawn into a star war.

So, I appreciated my first four-ish hours with the game. I felt like I was coming close to falling in love with it at various points. The Uncharted bits are big, but it's also been done enough I get why someone would resist those amusement park qualities coming from another franchise. The Tomb Raider bits seem very involved, but I find a lot of fault in the environment design there. I was scrambling in circles at certain points and I wasn't ever certain whether it was expected of me or the level just wasn't funneling me well. Those moments were particular strange feeling because at other points, Respawn's done such a good job of angling the camera or creating minor environmental movement like a pack of rats to indicate the path you're expected to go down.

I worry its ambitions are capable of getting the better of this game. You'd hit deadends in God of War or Tomb Raider but those games didn't ever make you feel dumb for hitting roadblocks, instead you'd just sort of bookmark the thing for later in your mind and move on. Fallen Order doesn't seem to want you to do that, though. Partially it's because the map is a DOOM-like tough read as a 3D AR interface, partially because there's no fast travel which makes you feel like being there is the whole thing. This is where the Dark Souls influence comes in strongest - people will compare the combat to Souls or Sekiro because of its unforgiving difficulty and parry-heavy tutorial, but it's really in the meta design of the game - and also feels like one of the game's weaker nods to the generation's biggest influences. If Control's reliance on the bonfire system felt a little tacked on, Fallen Order's feels entirely superfluous so far. I don't mind the enemy respawn stuff, other than it seems like skill points aren't going to be so damn hard to come by that it needs to happen, but failing a task only to have to do a "boss run" afterward in this game just doesn't feel right, even more than Control.

I also find the enemy tells a little hard to read, not always intentionally like Sekiro either. The enemies just move very deliberately, as does Kal, and so I often find myself ramming my head against when I think I should press a button and when the game expects me to. Explosive projectiles are also universally shit IMO so far, whether rockets or bombs. They just feel unmanageable.

I started on the Hard difficulty, but like God of War I found myself knocking it down after a few bad encounters to Normal so I could just enjoy the story (thinking I may come back to the game if the story is good and I've fully understood it, like God of War, on the harder difficulty)...and this game is still harder than God of War was on normal. I'm not often a Hard guy, but when I really click with a game like God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon, DOOM or something I'm always game; Fallen Order doesn't make me feel like it's worth it to be game.

The nail in the coffin for this playthrough - and despite all the complaining/sour language, let me reiterate I really enjoyed my night with this because it turns out I just love this type of game (and I'm glad I skipped Shadow of the Tomb Raider so it'd feel a little more fresh) - was when I came to a wind puzzle consisting of two rooms, and I kept scrambling between the two rooms trying to figure out what I was missing only to get fed up with it and want to get back to my ship to continue the story...and I absolutely could not find my way out of those two rooms, couldn't follow the map to find my way out, and couldn't just fast travel back to my ship. That moment emphasized for me that maybe this game wants a little too badly to be considered a Hard Game, that it was 3:30AM and I was tired after a 7-hour bartending shift and that this game feels like it's biting off a lot.

This is what I was referring to at the beginning with God of War; that game always made you feel like you were learning, discovering, participating in and with it. Bloodborne, too (I'm not too experienced with the other Souls games), it would let you get lost but only so lost as to find a shortcut at the most desperate moment and get back on track. Even that game, you could zip around zones once you knew you had specific but far away goals; the lack of fast travel in this game is pretty wild. In this game, if you lose the plot it threatens to be lost forever, or at least until such time that you're just worn down by its obtusities. That's...not ideal.

Hopefully I can figure it out quickly tomorrow, I'd like to see some other ways this game opens up - or gets weirdly difficult - again before work tomorrow night.

I finished Death Stranding earlier this morning, and I just splurged on this game (Star Wars) and The Surge 2. Now I have this game, The Surge 2 and Borderlands 3 to play through which I'm excited about. Coming directly off of Death Stranding, which I thought (and have said multiple times on the thread I made about it) was beautiful visually; coming into this game, I think this might be even better looking which is crazy. I'm hardly even 30 minutes into it, and I am impressed. I guess I'll have to see how it turns out.

Edit - Okay, so not as technically proficient as I originally thought, but it still looks fantastic. Just some weird animations, and some (albeit, not much) frame rate slowdown in spots. I'm liking the game so far. It's a mix of all games I like, it seems like it has likable characters, the music is very Star Wars and yet original. Great sound design. It's everything I'd want from a Star Wars game, even though I never really cared for Jedi stuff, this is doing it well.

I got a copy from Target for $36, but it’s not arriving till the 28th. After hearing how buggy it is, I hope it’s patched by then.

After some more time I think the combat is quite clunky, the hit boxes feel off and enemies have an annoying tendency of being slightly out of reach after a flurry.

Also the A.I doesn't want to play, more than a few times during a fight the A.I has decided to walk off as if their not aggroed anymore. And that's when their not starring you out a few yards away or getting stuck on flat terrain.

Sekiro set a bar for parry mechanics and the parry in this game sure does fuckin' suck.

@chaz934: yah I ordered it and it didn’t arrive today but hearing how rough it is I’m not in a huge hurry I still got pizzas to deliver in Death Stranding. I know all too well how a good game can get ruined by shitty performance.

I'm curious to check this out but it sounds like it'd be worth waiting for some patches. It really sucks that that this game doesn't have an EA Access Trial; it doesn't need to be 10 hours long, but they should at least let people dick around for an hour or two.

@conmulligan: It may not be available for EA access, but you could pay $15 for a month of Access Premier and burn through the game over the next month. It's not $5 dollars cheap, but I doubt you'll be able to buy the game anywhere close $15 in the next 6 months.

Probably the most interesting Star Wars game that I've played since Force Unleashed 1. But I unfortunately can't run the game above 45 frames for some odd reason, so I'm gonna gonna need the eventual performance/optimization patch. 30 frames is playable, but, still.

Edit:
Apparently Acronis Active Protection is fucking with the game for some odd reason, so killing that task is letting me get a proper frame rate.

Now I can play the game for real. Sweet.

@facelessvixen: I'll take a rock steady 30 FPS than weird wavering framerates that yoyo around. Anything below 30 is not acceptable at this point but I haven't become enough of a snob despite owning a really good PC to not be able to play at 30 FPS in most games. That said, Sekiro was a great game that I completely soured on specifically because of performance as I ended up playing that on a regular PS4 and it would very often dip into low 20's or less. It's even more infuriating because the developer knew what game they were making, they knew the parry timing windows and how challenging some of the encounters were, and they still allowed it to be released on consoles with significant performance issues that were a real hindrance to actual gameplay. That one fight with Genichiro at the top of the castle with lightning cascading outside looks great but absolutely sucks to play because of how poorly it performs.

So far I'm 2 hours in and I am really enjoying it. The story grabbed me and I would only call my self a casual Star Wars fan. Souls like games have always had a long learning curve for me so I am still stumbling in encounters but I've been improving over the first 2 hours. The one thing I am having a real tough time with are the uncharted like platforming. I have fallen to my death countless times and if it weren't for the generous check pointing I would have left this game at just an hour in. The story is keeping me here and the I'm really liking the characters. I think this game has a great look and I haven't noticed any technical problems like the ones I have heard others experienced running on a One X. I'm looking forward seeing this one through.

Hate is maybe a strong word, but I think I might hate the souls-like structure of "Hey, you were low on HP and died to an enemy just popping out of the ground. Have fun going back to your last "bonfire" and spending that 15 minutes on fighting the respawned enemies and platforming again before reaching the same spot." this game.

The action is fun enough, but man, didn't expect how much I'd dislike some of the Souls elements. The world and story are interesting, so maybe I'll eventually just lower the difficulty to story mode.

I'm not too bummed if I end up giving up though, as 15€ for Origin Premier wasn't that bad of a price to pay.

It's been taking me a lot to get used to fighting other melee opponents and I think it's because it seems like it is going to be very much like Sekiro and it is in fact very very little like Sekiro and it's really fucking with me a lot.

I never solved the puzzle I was referring to (at least I don't think I did; it's the one in the Quick Look and I got the ball in the center easily but couldn't figure out if there was more to that or not) but I did, after sleeping on it, solve the puzzle upstairs which was how I had to get out.

Since then, I haven't found traversal as confusing as I did at the end of that first night, confirming it was mostly a mix of tired and buzzed, but I still don't find these environments fully distinctive. I'm constantly impressed with myself when I remember how to backtrack through a zone, it never feels like I'm actually navigating a space I'd been in before, more like a place I dreamt about or something. I really don't understand why there's no fast travel.

I'm still super enjoying this game, though all I can seem to do is complain about it. One of the things that's really started bugging me is the internal logic of the enemy respawns; the Inquisitor enemies feel like bosses, yet sometimes they respawn when you die until you complete a story check and then they stop, except for some other ones that still do. I don't fully understand it. A lot of people seem to miss that this game is designed for you to sprint past respawned enemies ala Bloodborne, and I do appreciate that all you have to do is hit an enemy that killed you to get your stuff back so you could feasibly just dip in and out. Unfortunately something about the game's more God of War/Tomb Raider like feel just seems to compel me to Finish the Fight. The worst was an albino spider boss that I wound up mastering the boss run back to so efficiently that I was beating the scripting to the point; at one point I was trapped in a way between a massive spider, three smaller spiders and a Stormtropper squadron, which was a fun bit of chaos and also the way I wound up beating that boss, tracking the troopers with me and letting them chip down the first third of its health.

Unlike Brad and a lot of reviewers I honestly can't say that this game has been running poorly for me. It's framey like Control but I've said over and over that kind of stuff doesn't bother me, and the rest of it works just fine. I'm not necessarily seeing the amazing storytelling that Brad was talking about in the Quick Look; to be honest, when he says there's a moment in the middle of the game that has you wondering "what just happened to me?" (which is where I just left the game, actually) I've felt that way for most of the game. It handwaves a lot of major events that happen to your character, and especially playing this game alongside The Mandalorian it's hard to be satisfied with the deus ex machina vibes this game is drenched with when that show is doing gritty, bad times Star Wars so damn well.

I wish there were more of a combo system, though I'm starting to get the hang of the force powers. It feels more restricted than Control so I find myself doing the save this resource until I really need it thing way more than I probably should. Combined with the totally pointless customization stuff, this game has really started to congeal into this generations ur-game. It has elements of so many games I like that it's endlessly charming, but a lot of those elements are also superficial in a way that leaves me wishing this game felt more like the marque, Triple A product it's clearly capable of being. As it is, it feels more like if we were still in the PS2 era, and a smaller publisher saw the success of God of War and Dark Souls and wanted a cut of that pie. Except it's from EA and Respawn, so you know the behind the scenes is some kind of shady business.

A big “eh” for me. The story is mildly interesting, but I’m really sick of the “another Jedi survived the purge” trope.

The combat is also kinda bad. I see what they’re going for, but it’s just not a good version of those combat systems. The hit boxes are off, and the attacks feel weightless. It’s also got all the bad camera stuff of the Souls games.

Add all the performance issues on top of it and it’s just an OK time. It’s not a bad time, just am OK one.

I agree with Brad. I’d have liked to see the version of this game that had six more months of development behind it.

I think the Souls-like aspects in Fallen Order are pretty pointless, because even on hard the enemies die quite easily and you don't really get any stronger, I'm not really learning anything.

And with the levels being mostly linear I only ever used the shortcuts leaving or coming back because of story reasons it just felt like padding, respawning enemies seems like giving you something to do as travel back and forth.

The story is also quite laughable atm. Cal doesn't come across as Jedi who's been in hiding after seeing everybody he's ever known murdered in the purge, because in less than 5min does a complete 180 and signs up on a fools errand.

The intro prologue is goddam awesome though its basically the hind train sequence from Uncharted its visually striking and epic in a way the rest of the game isn't, wish Fallen Order was a dozen hours of that.

I'm actually really enjoying it. I think there is depth to the combat, but if you aren't playing on Jedi Master or Grand Master there isn't likely much point to engaging with a lot of it. Lots of the combat options are back-loaded in the game. I think this is how they meant for you to get more powerful without a real leveling/stat/gear system, but I think the pacing is off. The middle section of the game feels like you're ramping up so slow...then you get a few upgrades and you're a blade whirling ninja (as one would expect late in a Jedi game).

If you're looking for something as polished as From's recent work this is not it. I would say this feels closer to the original Dark Souls in terms of animations and general stiffness. If people were expecting Sekiro or Bloodborne I can see how that would be disappointing.

All in all it's a good Star Wars game, probably the best we've gotten in a while. I'm curious to see what Respawn does with patches and post release content. I'm also assuming this will sell a jillion copies and we'll get a sequel. I'm excited to see what Respawn does after learning the lessons of building this style of game.

e: I also found the game play changing upgrade "early" as Brad described in the QL and when talking about the game. It really is game changing and I wish they had introduced it earlier in the natural progression.

Not much to say that hasn't already been said, but I wanted to chime in on some of the messiness of the game overall. For reference, I played through the main course of Sekiro (not the super-secret best ending) and beat most bosses on my first try.

I started this game on Hard mode and it does not feel built for that kind of precision at all. The parry windows are generous, but the enemy animations and hit boxes seem bizarre. The humanoid enemies are mostly fine (though blaster fire does magnetized to parries in a weird way) but the creature enemies all move so erratically like they're not respecting their environment and the range on everything they do is massive. And by squashing down the unblockable hits from 3 types like in Sekiro to just 1 type, a lot of animation nuance is lost and they're difficult to deal with (is it a grab? A lunge? Just a strong swing? Why can't I block those? Etc.). I almost quit the game fighting that first Ogdo Bogdo or w/e near the first max health upgrade before tuning the difficulty down.

I'm enjoying it fine enough and I'll likely finish it, but it's disappointing to have the finer points of Sekiro's combat seemingly glosses over in this game. I bumped it down to Normal difficulty but now it's almost laughably easy and I can parry everything with one hand while cooking dinner with the other. It would have been really cool to set a custom difficulty level with the sliders, instead of choosing a preset.

@humanity said:

...Except for the part where I was only getting up to 45 frames in this game with a 9900K and a 2080 Ti because of a conflict the game is having with Acronis Active Protection while others with similar hardware but without Acronis installed were running the game flawlessly; not yet another conversation starter about frame rates in general.

@facelessvixen: You should probably stop using Acronic Active Protection then?

I think it was either the most recent bombcast, or the bombcast from the week prior, when Jeff mentioned people complaining about it being a weak year for games and how he completely disagreed with that sentiment. I think The Outer Worlds and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order reviewing as well as they have speaks to how weak the overall "AAA" game offerings have been this year. I personally loved Resident Evil 2, Control, and Fire Emblem, but apart from that, no other major releases that I've played stand out as being stellar. I was disappointed with Sekiro, Devil May Cry 5, Gears 5, Rage 2, and The Division 2, with most of those either showing promise before release or having many positive elements let down by overall design.

After playing for about an hour and a half, Fallen Order can be tossed in with the rest of the disappointments for the year. Fortunately I managed to return it on steam, though. I was actually quite engaged with the linear, scripted first 45 minutes of the game, but once I was let loose in the first metroid-esque area, pretty much all of my enjoyment faded. As others have mentioned, the combat does not feel particularly precise, and in my hands, it also felt too weightless to be enjoyable. Couple that with my complete disinterest in the star wars universe and the general technical shortcomings, and I consider this to be a mediocre offering.

Its a solid game, but its really held up, while at times held back by being Star Wars. A lot of the appeal for the game is simply because its Star Wars, but that also leads to pretty common expectations / tropes / problems: storm troopers, jedi, force push and pull, mass killing, but "not killing". The story is pretty interesting and cool at times, but the game doesn't really do anything well, just above average. When you add the Star Wars bump you get some people in love with the game, but I think its pretty average (7-8) and waaay to short for a $60 title (It boggles my mind that some reviewers mentioned spending 30-40 hrs in this game).

I bought it after seeing some very positive review scores and seriously regret it. It's not a good enough Uncharted game or a good enough Souls game to stand out in either genre. The lazy "meditation" point system is boring and clumsy, especially combined with regular ass checkpoints that, if not followed by a meditation point, can lead to some seeeeriously far back loads. The combat is fun against humanoids but the creatures are a chore, and the "enemy that killed you" being highlighted in yellow PREVENTS YOU FROM SEEING THE UNBLOCKABLE ATTACK CUE WHAT THE FUCK! Not a bad game by any means, but wholly unremarkable.

What a strange game this is.

It doesn't seem to have an identity of its own. It's a mishmash of Souls, Tomb Raider, and Sekiro with a layer of Star Wars paint. And what it borrows from those other games isn't implemented particularly well?

The Souls rest system makes no sense in this well established universe. They don't try to explain why all of the previously killed enemies come back to life after Cal meditates. Is the entire game some kind of flashback, or is a Jedi historian researching Cal's life from a holocron or something? I guess I'll have to play to the end to see.

I can't tell if the combat system, particularly parrying, is bad or if it's just me. I can't tell whose timing is at fault, mine or the game. I can't tell if they're telegraphing attacks and I'm just not seeing them, or they aren't telegraphing at all. The end result is I can't parry worth a good god damn. And since parrying is vital to breaking the enemies' Sekiro-esque posture the combat against any melee enemy becomes a battle of attrition that leaves me drained of healing stims. And the will to keep playing.

The Tomb Raider levels are well made, but that's not what I want in my Star Wars game. If I wanted to do a bunch of Tomb Raider-esque platforming and puzzle solving I would've bought a Tomb Raider game! And there's WAY TOO MUCH of sliding down slopes. WAY TOO MUCH.

So yeah, I don't know. The different aspects of this game are shotgunned all over the spectrum from good to bad. Combine that with its Frankenstein's monster assemblage of ideas from other games and you end up with one strange game in my opinion.

I'm loving it so far. Haven't gotten too far yet, I think just 3 hours in. My only issues with it are with the PS4 Pro. The game feels like it's constantly in a loading state, always stuttering and textures are always popping in. The controls have also screwed me over, the parry feels off and odd at times, and I keep trying to change to the double bladed lightsaber and instead I use a healing stim (sometimes more than 1) which is super not cool man. I feel like I want to wait for a patch for fixes, but I also feel like I can't wait to play it more.

One thing that's really starting to annoy me is the camera sway on the slide sections. I'm continually trying to compensate for what looks like the game sending me in the wrong direction, but apparently, it just "auto-trues" somewhat if you leave it.

Oh, and sometimes the camera randomly decides to point back up the hill. That's great.

I'm about half way through now I reckon. I'm really enjoying it, the pace, the world layout, the general ambience of the game. The thing I like too is that there's no loot. It would have been so easy to put a load of crappy crafting mechanics and junk in this game and I love that it just has none of it. Maybe partly coming off the back of Outer Worlds which is chock full of needless rubbish, but I find myself just enjoying exploring the environments and doing the puzzles on their own terms. The combat with creatures sucks ass, but it's fun against human enemies. I wish they'd given you a blaster to fight the wildlife tbh.

Also yeah the slides are terrible why are there so many of them. And wtf is up with the ropes? Screw the ropes.

Credits are rolling, my thoughts on the game never really changed. When it clicked it clicked and when it was rocky it was rocky. I still never experienced the jank Brad referred to, but as the combat gets more hectic in the final two chapters I definitely had some major camera issues. Between this game and Sekiro, I'm also really curious if programmers have begun tuning for more modern HDTV than my own, because I loved the parry in Bloodborne but just never felt like I locked it in here after fully dropping Sekiro due to its unpredictable windows.

IMO, if someone were to ask me what a B Game looked like in 2019, I'd say this is it. It has everything I like about video games in 2019, but all of those things have a minor to significant flaw in their design that prevents them from feeling authentic. If it were the exact same game with completely original IP, it would be roundly ignored by most gamers while a few in the press might point out how interesting and plain fun it's attempt at a more palatable form of Dark Souls/Tomb Raider is despite all its drawbacks.

In retrospect, it's a little disappointing the power incline is so steep on the back end, I started having a lot of fun with my force powers and the various lightsaber abilities you unlock in the late game. Also, something I was charmed by that I think others could not be is how it feels like a very "PS2 game in a PS4 wrapper" kind of thing as well, not always coherently designed and kind of floaty but it just does those few things I really like.

Overall, I'd say the pros were just a general fun factor, the sound design, the enemy designs and combat scenarios. The cons would be the story (mainly its haphazard, slap dash presentation - reading the codec at times feels like reading a 3rd grader's fanfic of their favorite movie, and I'd know as someone who still owns their 3rd grade fanfic), level design, general polish on the combat interactions and a couple of zones that both drag on for far too long and are just not the Star Wars I care about. Any moment this game spends getting its God of War on with fantastic creatures and amazing sets, I just found myself shaking my head at how superfluous and padded out it felt.

This was one of my favorite games of the year, partly by default of it only being the 5th or so new game I've played this year and partly just because it consists of so many things I like about games. But it really is just all of those things, done about 80% as well as the guys who knock 'em out of the park do it, bundled up and painted in Star Wars motifs. I'd love to see what Respawn could do with a sequel, because all the ideas were there here, it just lacked polish and at times confidence in itself and what kind of game it is. If you feel like me, it's a great time. If you're over the Tomb Raider/Uncharted style of campaign and rightly concerned by reports of the "Souls-like" statement being a pretty fast and loose comparison other than some super awkward respawn mechanics and the game being abnormally hard for such a major IP, I'd at least wait for a sale I s'pose.

I finished it earlier this morning (about an hour ago). I thought it was good, but nothing special. I collected everything in the game, and I feel that, while some of the stuff is interesting, it felt like filler to me for the most part: not a necessary part of the experience. More necessary on harder difficulties I suppose though because you do get a lot of XP for picking them up, and the 'estus flask' upgrades are good. If anyone decided to just mainline this game, it seems like one can beat in an afternoon. I played on the hardest difficulty and it wasn't that difficult, only getting easier the more you upgrade.

I partially lie here, I just wanted to finish the game, so I did what I did on Death Stranding and set the game to easy at the very end so I didn't have to deal with any obstacles in my way but I don't think the end would have changed anything. The story was fine, but generic with a lot of cliche dialogue. I liked the end area. The maps were big, but to be frank, I'm a little let down by the lack of worlds you go to. I thought that there'd be at least one or two more. Anyways, yeah I thought it was a good game. Death Stranding and Star Wars down, now I just have to go through The Surge 2 and finish Borderlands 3, then all the games I want to play this year is done.

Oh! The bugs and what have you; had some, but nothing detracted from the experience to me overall. A lot of it had to do with either slow loading and frame rate (often coinciding with one another), or the map not being fully loaded in so when I jumped onto an area, I would fall through the world. I was playing on the Xbox One X. Even though I don't think this game is spectacular, I am very happy this game exists: a single-player Star Wars game. That said, I am disappointed that EA canceled the handful of other promising-looking and sounding single player-driven games, in large part due to Respawn I think (as in, Respawn gets their game out because they're Respawn). This game doesn't do anything remarkable, so I just find it odd that those games didn't get their day in the spotlight.

I'm through probably about 1/2 to 2/3 of the game at this point - don't know if I'm going to keep going. I think the story is really good and exceptionally well acted, but the actual gameplay isn't doing much for me. The ideas going on aren't bad, it's just that none of them feel particularly finished. I agree with Brad - I wouldn't be surprised if this game got pushed out the door to get in before Rise of Skywalker comes out. There are tons of little things that feel like they'd get cleaned up if the team had another 4-6 months to work on it:

• The parry windows feel off. I often feel like when I'm supposed to parry isn't lining up with the enemy animations very well. Sometimes you need to parry right at the start of a big attack, and other times the window is just before they hit you.

• If an enemy kills you, it glows yellow when you respawn, but this covers up the unblockable attack glow. This isn't a huge problem with human enemies, because you can usually memorize their attack patters, but the animal enemies don't animate very well, so there's very little visual difference between one of their standard attacks and the unblockable ones.

• I feel extremely under powered in most fights. I know there's a tricky balance when needing to involve lightsabers, but it shouldn't be taking a dozen or more hits to kill a droid.

• On that point, it is INSANE to me that the strong attack is both an ability you need to unlock and also consumes force meter. It isn't even super powerful, it's more of a "make combat slightly less tedious" level of power. It already has a big wind up, so I'm not sure why they felt they needed to make it a limited resource too.

• Fuck the sliding sections. Seriously. I've had the camera wig out several times and point back up the hill I'm sliding down, and even when going forward, the character doesn't stay on a straight line path very well, so I feel like I'm doing a lot of guess work with my inputs.

• I had pretty good luck avoiding bugs until last night. Then I ran into an area where moving through a certain set of doors would reliably cause the game to load for a good 15-20 seconds. The first time it happened, it took so long I honestly thought the game had locked up.

The game is great, if uneven, it definitely feels like Respawn's first 3rd person action game. I'm sure the sequel will be infinitely more polished and a much tighter game, but the story and Star Wars-iness were more than I could have hoped for. Some huge implications for the larger mythology and the final sequence is easily my Best Moment or Sequence of the year, if not the generation, and I hope it gets the love it deserves on the GOTY shows.

@heathhuston: I wish I’d saved a replay of my experience with that moment. It was the epitome of the flaws inherent in an Uncharted sequence that isn’t explicitly clear about what’s expected of you combined with floaty platforming. For me, it went from thrilling to a scenario I failed four or five times and was just desperate to get to the end of in a snap.

It reflected how I came to feel about the game as a whole: pretty much every idea it had spoke to me, but the execution was just 80% of the way there.