LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the first new LEGO Star Wars game since 2016’s The Force Awakens, one that didn’t quite impress in the short demo I played for it. But the prospect of playing across all 9 Star Wars films, three of them never attempted before in LEGO Star Wars game form, with a giant galaxy map full of LEGO antics to explore and collect, sounded way too good to be true. And in 2022 it came true, as LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga released, bringing with it the largest plethora of content to enjoy in a LEGO game to date, and despite an overwhelming beginning, the galaxy opens with possibilities the more you play. But when many objectives outside the main story feel rote and the staggering amount of bricks and characters to collect continues to add up, it begs the question if the game needed to be this big, especially considering the human toll such labors took. There’s no denying this a fun, excellent way to play the Saga for fans of any age, but it’s important to keep the other issues in mind.
There’s no denying LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (TSS within) is a giant game, and the size and scale of its various systems and menus are where the opening of the game stumbles (no matter which trilogy you start with…I went in numerical order). There’s a lot thrown at players when they begin play, from Rumors to unlock details on hidden objects strewn about the open-world planet locations or during games, to Kyber Bricks and Datacards, both of which unlock upgrades from strengthening overall character attributes to those specific to certain classes, while the menu containing access to everything you’ve unlocked or have yet to unlock grows larger as you move through the game and learn new game systems or abilities. My opening hour or so wasn’t that enjoyable, just trying to understand everything I could collect and how I could collect it, but once I started to figure it all out, my confusion led to understanding, but also a little anxiety from the shear amount to collect.
Having played to death the first three LEGO Star Wars games, which included the Prequel and Original Trilogies, and The Clone Wars’ first two seasons, I sort of wished I started with the Sequel Trilogy here but I wanted to save it for last, though thankfully the new takes on the PT and OT films are fresh enough it never felt like I was retreading well-trodden ground. Unlike previous games, were you had a hub world and accessed the missions from there, now the whole galaxy is your oyster, and you travel from planet to planet, or stay in space, to start missions that continue the specific movie’s story. You can mess around before starting the next story mission, exploring the new planet you’ve unlocked or revisiting one you’ve already spent some time on but now have more abilities or characters to explore the many puzzles in each map, or engage in space shenanigans as well. Allowing players to follow the story of the film, travelling from place to place, builds a better connection to TSS’s often funny and condensed take on each film’s story, while makes it feel like you’re always moving forward. That you can break off for a bit, collect a bunch of stuff, and jump back into the story at any time is also helpful across the age spectrum of players. For myself, squeezing in gaming time in the morning before work, I could easily hammer out a few story missions (they aren’t very long) or, if crunched for time, just explore for a bit so I can quit whenever I’d like, and being able to take your time to explore TSS’s many nooks and crannies reveals the richness the developers packed into each world and various spaces within it you can visit. For short attention spans of younger players, there’s something around every corner (and later unlocking the ability to see locations where Kyber Bricks and other hidden items help focus exploration), so if they happen to miss where the next story mission starts, something else can easily amuse them until they are back on course. Being able to play, online or locally, co-op also means you can enjoy the expansive worlds or funny takes on the story with a friend, though the AI companions don’t mess up solo play or solving puzzles that require multiple characters so going alone isn’t difficult.
Personally, I had the most enjoyment out of the Sequel Trilogy section of the game, not just because it was fresh ground for LEGO Star Wars games to explore, but also because it was fresh for me and proved the formula for how the team broke down each film’s story works even for films that aren’t as well-known or part of the collective consciousness. Starting off with Rey and her scavenging abilities almost feels like a more natural way to begin the game, as it’s slower and gives you more time to explore right away, while the battle in Snoke’s throne room plays out well, the expanded fight with Captain Phasma is an enjoyable change, everything on Ahch-To was a joy (I really liked and laughed at the way they presented the reflection cave) and the exploration of the second Death Star’s remains and the extended fight with Kylo Ren were all fun ways to game-ify these films’ story.
Overall gameplay is easy to pick up and as simplistic as you’d suspect from a LEGO game, so any age player should have no trouble picking up a controller and player. The addition of certain abilities for certain character types, like Protocol Droids can be split in half or Scavengers like Rey can build items like a jetpack or net launcher, are easily communicated to players and using those abilities isn’t difficult. While you can take cover in combat, I never felt like it was necessary, besides maybe in the BB-9E boss battle (yes, you read that right!), while dying lacks any real punishment and is instead a minor inconvenience. Riding on various creatures or vehicles around the big land maps helps speed up exploration as the size of each place grows or how the landscape is set up, but controlling them can be clunky. Controlling various ships in space isn’t as clunky and space combat is rather easy as well, almost too easy at times, though besides how they shoot, I never quite felt any ship really felt different to fly so I had no trouble completing races or other space objectives no matter what speed past lightspeed they could go. In fact, space objectives, while fun at first, are probably the most repetitive part of the game, and can drag a lot, especially when I was escorting cargo for someone and got pulled out of hyperspace in increasingly longer battles 4 different times; by the time I completed all 9 films, I wasn’t left looking forward to any more space missions.
After completing all 9 films and bumming around on a few planets, collecting as much as I could, which added up to 29 hours of gameplay and a 53.2% Galaxy Completion, and 35% of its Trophies on PS5. Don’t get me wrong, I play games like Horizon: Forbidden West (which I have over 70hrs in and 81.32% completed), so I’m no stranger to large games or an overwhelming amount of things to do, but a key difference between say Horizon and TSS is how most of Horizon’s extraneous missions and hidden parts of the world tell part of the game’s story and expand what we know, while TSS many collectables are just that, offering cool new skins to run around in or funny new features like baquettes for lightsabers or LEGO stud multipliers. Those are very fun changes to gameplay and can delight anyone playing, but it’s less about WHAT you can collect and more about HOW MUCH you can collect. I wasn’t doubting the need to complete much of the map and finish side quests in Horzion until I finished the game, but that was after 70 hours and with TSS I was looking at what I didn’t get, and while I had fun playing around and collecting for a while after the 9 films, I certainly questioned if all these collectibles were necessary. Considering reports regarding what befell developers at TT Games when making this behemoth of an entry in the LEGO Star Wars series, from having to switch to a new game engine and crunch (a term for packing in tons of overtime hours to meet deadlines), looking at all this content left to play makes one wonder if it was worth it. Reading the full report is totally worth your time to understand the situation fully, as is this follow-up with developers months after the report’s/game’s release, as it shows how while certain aspects have improved, there are still problems. No studio is likely perfect, and these issues are affecting the developers making many of your favorite games, but this is important to note for such a giant and oft-delayed game. If not even the delays helped alleviate the pressures on the developers making TSS, cutting tons of collectibles to gain wouldn’t detract from the overall experience and could’ve helped the mental health and safety of the developers. Did this game really need 1000+ Kyber Bricks? Did it really need that many space missions? Did it really need 8 different looks for the clone troopers? Did they put in all these things because of fan expectations and being worried about fan response if they didn’t? I’d argue they didn’t need to include as much as they did and this still would’ve been the most memorable, and best, LEGO Star Wars game to date, so I hope any future expansions or new entries in LEGO Star Wars take that into consideration and maybe not overload or try to surpass the content of this game.
I appreciated all the mynock love in the game! No matter what era you are in, they make a few appearances, from ones you need to rescue (see the video above...it seems not to be working so here’s my tweet with the video!), ones you shoot in the Tantive IV, and some hiding in Han Solo’s Eravana.
Here are a few other things:
- I did really love all the little character interactions when you put certain combinations together, alluding to fun jokes or tidbits about the Saga in their short but hilarious conversations.
- The little nod-and-wink Darth Jar Jar moment might’ve been my favorite in the entire game.
- With most modern games, it’s commonplace to see glitches, and while I experienced quite a few throughout, nothing thankfully broke the game. While running around the Theed map between The Phantom Menace, I spawned a Republic Cruiser and it simply couldn’t fly and started following me around the map, spawning randomly (see photo above). I got glitching droids who show you images of a person you need to deliver a message to, where there were two of the droids at once. And one entire cutscene, when Obi-Wan meets Fett, was all blacked out but I could still hear the dialogue (also see above). Annoying from time to time, but I didn’t run into too many more after some patches came out between when I was originally playing and when I ended up finishing the game.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a big, fun, and easily playable game, capturing what everyone loves about LEGOs, gaming, and Star Wars in one funny package, but it’s hard to ignore the bloat and what it meant for the team who made the game.
+ Easy to pick-up gameplay
+ Expansive worlds and galaxy to explore
+ Movie stories are well done, especially Sequel Trilogy
– Beginning is a little rough without much instruction
– Too much content, and the toll on developers makes it feel unnecessary
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.