Just beat the game last night, thought I'd leave my little review here to exchange thoughts and whatnot. Spoiler free.
It's the best singleplayer Star Wars game to date, I know it's faint praise, but I do think it is a great game. It's no GOTY by any means but it's very good and reminiscent of an era in which EA was actually likable.
Combat is heavily inspired by Souls but it's far too flashy and "clunky" to be a replacement, difficultly is probably the game's biggest flaw. The game on hardest difficulty isn't "like Dark Souls for Dark Souls fans" it's simply not balanced and not fun. In Bloodborne, I know if I died, it's on me. In here, I could die for endless reasons beyond my control. Fighting the Empire is fun, fighting the Fauna of each planet is entirely different and I didn't like it in all honesty,
The Force was super cool but rather pointless in boss fights other than the initial skill you are given. Platforming in this game is objectively bad, it looks cool and well animated but the game often fails to recognize what it's supposed to do and you will die a lot for it. So it's closer to Tomb Raider than Uncharted in that regard, but feels unintentional, set pieces while climbing are definitely inspired by Uncharted. Games
tries to use its level design cleverly but the system is rather clunky and doesn't recognize what you're trying to do very well, falling off pipes instead of jumping to the next, dropping down, etc.
Puzzles are simple enough that they remain interesting and traversal feels cool. However the lack of fast travel is puzzling to me, the worlds are interesting and the level design is honestly excellent, but I don't want to backtrack through these confusing multi level worlds just to find secrets, if I could fast travel between meditation circles, then I'd be down for it.
Story is the game at its best, it's really good for Star Wars standards. Which means, it's cheesy and in love with its own lore but it's great. I'd say a 10/10 for Star Wars standards and a 9/10 for normal game standards, ending felt a little weak to me, like it needed a punch but other than that, the characters grew on me and I cared for them, especially BD-1, those tippy taps, those god damn tippy taps, I'd die for that android.
Overall I think it's a very good game and hope Respawn make more of these, it was a very competent Souls-like game that needs more refinement which comes naturally with experience, the story is good and the difficulty is whack. Oh, played it on PC for $15 usd with Origin Access, played on Epic settings but the game crashed a lot near the end of the story. 8/10 for me.Dunno if it's Top 10 goty 2019 game for me, but I enjoyed it.
