Star Wars with Soul
I was surprised to find so many Souls like components in this game, it works well making it very interesting deciding when to heal and respawn versus pushing forward. Then this game adds a lot for future Souls like games to consider like checkpointing before areas a person could fall off an edge, and having falls just lose a small portion of life versus all of it. It does a good job of frequently routing areas so an earlier checkpoint is now quickly accessible, should you need to heal up/save progress.
I personally didn't care for all the platforming in this game and thus it was less enjoyable for me to play than more combat heavy Souls like games this year Surge 2 and Code Vein, this game however did have better presentation (at least if you've watched and enjoyed any Star Wars movies), and the music is amazing as well as the humorous dialog of the storm troopers. It does a great job of capturing the feel of Star Wars, though with perhaps more wildlife than I'm used to seeing, could've been called Star Wars Safari.
I am not a big fan of platforming and to make it worse this game had some inconsistent and unnecessarily complex controls. For instance sometimes you have to press x jump and grab a rope otherwise it auto grabs and pressing x immediately jumps off it. Then it makes you press a button to grab and climb, yet if you then jump to another climbing platform you don't need to grab, well not if going horizontal, if going vertical you do.. just a mess they could of made all ropes auto catch and if you are on a climbable piece of wall have you auto go into climb mode versus having to push a button to do so. Parrying seemed real difficult to figure out the right timing causing me to use dodging but then I often had to dodge so far away it was difficult to get back in to get any sort of attack in before needing to dodge again. The game fortunately has plenty of difficulty choices so you can adjust it to your liking.
The AI cracked me up so often they would throw grenades at their own guys aiding you greatly in the combat. This game had the enemies fighting spiders and other wild life which I always enjoy seeing in a game and using it to my advantage having the AI fight itself before moving in to finish the fight.
As you gain experience you unlock choices into power improvements focusing on survivability, force powers, or combat combos. You'll get a few extra choices as the game progresses, but it doesn't get too deep nor make a major difference in game play based on the route(s) you take. You'll have most abilities by the time you reach end game, so don't fret much on making a bad choice.
In the end it's an enjoyable game, if you're a Star Wars fan jump in, if not then pick it up on Origin Access and then if you don't care for it, you'll surely find something else you can play and enjoy for that month. The game is easily beatable in a month, 20-30 hours if you don't rush anything.
