Playing through this now. Just cleared up the visit to Kashyyyk. I've no idea how far I am or if there's other planets to visit.
I can't like, I'm not overly impressed by the experience it provides. I don't think it's bad, but it all feels...sterile, or something. Like a bunch of tried and true concepts from other AAA games bolted together, but none of them particularly exceptional or original in expression to stand on their own or to imbue the game with it's own identity. None of the influence it has drawn from is poor, but none of it is expressed in a way that's remarkable.
So much of the game feels loose and flimsy to engage with. Cal kinda floats around the environment clumsily and without much weight. Wall running feels awful and rigid. There's very little weight or momentum to traversing the environment, and the same can be said for the combat system. A Dark Souls-lite influence is welcome, but the execution is clumsy. Hitboxes are an extremely mixed bag, and there's a lack of satisfaction to the impact of the lightsaber. Even the way Cal swings it just...doesn't feel right, or satisfying. A bit loose, a bit floaty, too animation priority heavy, like it's missing something that gives each swing a sense of momentum and power.
The visual design is the same; widely inconsistent. Sometimes it looks outstanding, other times less so. There's been vistas and cutscenes I thought were jaw droppingly gorgeous with phenomenal use of lighting and shading with incredible asset detail. Next moment I'm walking around in an area where the lighting seems actually broken.
So yeah, I dunno. It reminds me a lot of Tomb Raider 2013; a decent start to a new series that, in essence, cobbles together design tentpoles of other games, but results in a game that isn't particularly remarkable in anything it does and at times lacks identity and focus in originality to elevate the experience. Tomb Raider took me three attempts to get into and once I finally did I had a fun time, but I can't say I have any overly fond or potent memories of my playthrough. To Fallen Order's credit I'm happy playing through it as-is, on my first playthrough. But I also suspect my memories will be similar to that of Tomb Raider; kinda just going through the motion of Game Stuff and ticking of the boxes to see where the story and adventure goes, but not really forming much in the ways of unique memories.
We'll see. I still feel I'm kinda early in the game, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the pacing was wack. The story seems kinda meandering and I fully expect a climactic ending level to come out of nowhere.
