EA Star Wars single player story game without DLC, Season Pass and loot boxes?! Electronic Arts, is that you? With some delay due to force majeure, we are talking about Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, a game in which you can feel like a Jedi.

Message from the editor: Our defenders from the 115th brigade, which is now fighting in the east, need a pickup truck . Details for transferring funds to a monobank card – Polyanskaya Karine Sergeevna, card number 5375414101372265. We ask you to take part in the fundraising.
Glory to Ukraine!

The last decent single-player games that gave us the opportunity to brandish a lightsaber and feel like a real Jedi were the rather controversial Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008) and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (2010). If we’re talking about really good single-player action or action/adventure in the Star Wars universe, we’ll have to go back even further, to the days of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003). Yes, the recent Star Wars Battlefront II also had a single-player campaign in which we were given Jedi weapons from time to time, but it was too short and chaotic, and the loot box scandal pretty much ruined the reputation of this project. So the appearance of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is a real miracle, for which you should thank Respawn Entertainment, the authors of Titanfall , Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends .

Among other things, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is the first Electronic Arts game to be released on Steam after an eight-year hiatus, marking the publisher’s return to Valve’s service. Yes, this is another round of confrontation between Steam and the Epic Games Store, and EA, obviously, received very good preferences from Valve, but players will only benefit from such competition.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order tells the story of Cal Keltis, a young Padawan who survived Order 66 and was hiding on the planet Brakka during the Great Jedi Purge, where he worked as a scavenger for the Scrappers Guild. Using the Force to save a friend, Keltis attracted the attention of the Order of the Inquisitors, whose task is to exterminate the Jedi who managed to survive Order 66 (after the events shown in Revenge of the Sith, about a hundred Jedi remained in the Galaxy), and to search for children who are sensitive to the Force. . For Cal Keltis, who managed to save his lightsaber, but lost some of his strength, the hunt begins.

The prologue of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, which takes place on Brakka, is a linear tutorial level that is very different from the rest of the game, and if you like what is shown in it, it’s not a guarantee that you will like the game itself. The fact is that Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is a mix of metroidvania, in which you have to return to the same levels many times in order to unlock the next skill to gain access to new sections of the map, and games in the style of Dark Souls from FromSoftware, the main task in which is not to die at the hands of the weakest enemy and get to the next fire (here – Meditation Points), along the way opening a short passage to the point you need. However, if you don’t like Soulslike games, Fallen Order has the ability to change the difficulty level, which here, and this is a very rare case, seriously affects the gameplay, dramatically changing the game.

The default Jedi Master difficulty level represents the game the way the creators intended it. With short intense dashes from one Meditation Point to another, with mandatory death on each new opponent, with memorizing the movement patterns of intermediate and main bosses, with careful attitude to healing stimpacks, with attention to parrying and avoiding blows. On this difficulty, you will not be glad that you have reached a new save position, but even that this time you were able to run farther and die near the next checkpoint, which will allow you to restore lost experience and health points closer to the next point on the next run. interest. On Jedi Master difficulty, you will die several times on each intermediate boss and spend 30-60 minutes defeating the main bosses. In the final stages of the game, where there are many times more opponents, and save points are placed less frequently, this will become a real test.

The most acceptable for most players, especially for those who are not very fond of games in the spirit of Dark Souls, the difficulty mode is Jedi Knight. Here, the damage dealt by opponents is reduced, their aggressiveness is reduced, and the parry window, on the contrary, is expanded. At this difficulty level, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order loses its Dark Souls feel and becomes more action/adventure in the style of the Sands of Time-era Prince of Persia series. Still quite difficult, but already quite passable. You will only die due to your own negligence and you will be able to feel like a real Jedi, and not some kind of squishy, who can be beaten by three alien gophers. However, fights with bosses, even at this difficulty level, remain quite difficult and require the study of enemy combat techniques and the search for methods to counter them.

The other two difficulty levels, “Story Mode” and “Grand Jedi Master”, look like a misunderstanding. On the first fights generally lose all meaning, turning Fallen Order into a pure acrobatic attraction, while the last is intended for those three nerds who found Dark Souls too simple.

Cal Keltis has wielded a lightsaber since the beginning of the game. Here are just the basic techniques that the young Padawan remembers – this is a pathetic semblance of the skills of a real Jedi Master. Well, Cal will have the opportunity to remember the lessons of the teacher, learn new techniques and improve his saber, turning it into a staff and even learning how to disassemble it into two parts directly in the process of delivering particularly powerful blows. The fact that Cal will be able to do with a saber and the Force by the end of the passage is just a completely different level. If at the very beginning of the game you will defeat one AT-ST with great difficulty, then at the end you will cope with two at once without even breaking a sweat. In general, the implementation of the lightsaber and the use of force in Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is perhaps the best in the history of Star Wars games. Using a saber or a staff, interspersing different techniques and techniques is really very convenient, and the feeling of belonging to the Star Wars universe that the game gives is unique. Bravo, Respawn Entertainment.

As for the elements of metroidvania, not all of the planets available in the game, and there are as many as eight of them, five of which can be visited repeatedly, require careful study. The same Brakka, Ilum, Ordo-Eris and the fortress of the Inquisition in the final are completely linear; Bogano is just small; Kashyyyk and Dathomir as a whole are also linear, although they seem confusing. A really complex structure requiring multiple visits is at Zeffo. This planet is the largest in size, and its levels are difficult to understand even with the help of a map.

Naturally, as in every decent metroidvania, Jedi Fallen Order has a search for secrets and collecting collectibles. That’s just the collectibles here are generally meaningless. You can find in the boxes scattered in the nooks and crannies of the levels only a new poncho for the main character; a new skin for your BD-1 companion robot; a new skin for the ship that you see exactly twice per mission; and new elements for customizing the lightsaber, which are impossible to see in the heat of battle. So it’s worth collecting items only if they come across along the way, returning to the planets to completely clear the levels doesn’t pull at all. But the search for memories and scanning of living beings and objects is an important part of the game. Memories-responses that Cal can “read” bring a good increase in experience, and sometimes a bonus to your hero’s health.

The events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, like most games in the Star Wars universe, take place between the third and fourth episodes of the saga, so you will meet some of the heroes of the films. In particular, you will fight on Kashyyyk side by side with Saw Guerrera from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , and at the very end of the game you will meet another truly iconic character in the series.

The time period imposes a number of serious restrictions on the game from Respawn Entertainment. Since the developers cannot change the events of Episode IV – A New Hope, it is clear from the very beginning that all the heroes throwing around the Galaxy in an attempt to revive the Jedi Order will be in vain, and this running in circles is a little frustrating. Yes, during the journey, Cal made real friends and learned a lot about himself, but Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order ends with really zilch.

Let us down and the study of some minor characters. Nightsister Merrin, who seems to be a very interesting character, is barely developed. The same can be said about Jaro Topal, Cal’s teacher, the rebellious Jedi Taron Malikos, the Ninth Sister, and even the Second Sister, who seems to play an important role in the story. The three main characters, Cal Keltis, Cere Janda and Griz Dritus, are much better developed. But the real discovery of the game is the robot satellite BD-1, which outshines even BB-8 in terms of cuteness and expressiveness. It’s the best droid in all of Star Wars and Disney should definitely include it in one of its future movies.

Unlike most EA games, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order uses the Unreal Engine instead of Frostbite. In dynamics, the game looks good, the planets differ in appearance, flora and fauna, some of which the authors had to invent on purpose. However, sometimes the picture still looks a little blurry, and it’s completely impossible to take normal screenshots during the battle. Fallen Order also has performance issues. On the PC, this is expressed in fps drops during particularly intense moments of the battle, but on the Xbox One S consoles and even on the PlayStation 4 Pro, there were sometimes delays in loading textures and objects.

What really impressed me was the soundtrack. And although the authors tried to create something different from the classic Star Wars film music, from time to time familiar melodies are woven into the composition, and it is very pleasant to meet these echoes.

Well, Respawn Entertainment, which somehow quietly turned into the main studio of EA, managed to revive single-player games in the Star Wars universe. While Fallen Order has some story and performance issues, overall it’s a very solid project that makes you feel like an all-powerful Jedi for the first time in a long time. It will take you 10-15 hours to complete Fallen Order, depending on the chosen level of difficulty and meticulousness – not bad enough for a single-player game.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has already had the best digital start and best PC sales of any EA Star Wars game. According to the publisher, by March 31, 2020, the circulation of the game on all platforms will exceed 6 million copies. According to rumors, Respawn Entertainment has already received EA approval to develop a sequel. If this goes on, look, EA will indeed finally abandon loot boxes and begin to release more single-player games. Hey EA, think back to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III. Maybe it’s time to revive this project?