#fallen order review

[saber-life]

Eno Cordova Lightsaber (Jedi Video Game Series)

Available from @sabermach

www.sabermach.com

[flammabel]

I didn't know xbox did a year in review but my results are predictable. I am *so* surprised at my most played game. 🙃😌

[jonberry555]

Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars by Sam Maggs Review

[rinzi]

Game reviewer: exploration was poorly rewarded since the game only gives you cosmetics

Me, finding an ugly mustache I'll never wear: I love it thank you

[cantbrowsewithoutaccount]

Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars spoiler review

Let me start off by saying I love the game and finished it only recently, with the characters still fresh in my mind. I was excited about the book. I ate it up. 

Do I love the book? No. But I don’t hate it either and I don’t think it is terrible.

The characterization in this book is good, great, even. It lets you live in the character’s heads and see the world through their eyes. Their internal dialogue is fitting, especially Cal’s in my opinion. He is headstrong, stubborn even, devoted to a point of recklesness. His world has a bit of humour in it, too, and I though it wasn’t misplaced. He’s had this little spunky side of him in the game, too. Love it. 

There are some great points of conflict in this book. The fact that the Mantis crew is not as united in spirit as some of its member may think, something I suppose will tie into the second game where we don’t see the group together. There are wonderful moments of debate and fears and how each character deals with it. I liked it. Greez has an important moment and is not overshadowed, he’s given a proper voice as he should. Not just being shelved at the pilot seat all the time. Cere is being pivoted towards her position in the next game (trailer) and her behaviour is belieavable. I liked that Cal is still unfinished in a sense, he sees himself as a weapon, as a brute force that he wants to have a purpose, and he’s decided it’s to defeat the empire. He goes far enough that sometimes you wonder if he is still a Jedi or just a vigilante with a lightsaber. I like that. And I think the book gave him enough foundation to build into this idea - this unfinished, unpolished Jedi who’s left to his own devices to decide what being a Jedi even is or means.

Saying that, I am not a fan of making Cere his new Master - his new mentor. She even calls him a Padawan in one scene. Have we forgotten that Cere herself knighted Cal a Jedi knight? He’s grown past this trauma and became a man, that was the entire point of the first game I thought? And his behaviour seemed to reflect this, he was confident and took on this “leader” role in a lot of instances, clear signs of growth. I wanted to see a lot more about his knighthood, maybe see it brought up in moments when he doubted himself. Also, why does his ass have to be saved all the time? He’s very capable. He’s much stronger than at the beginning of his story. I wish he had more agency in his own book.

And this brings me to a point I wanted to make: this really isn’t much of a Cal’s story. He is in it, but the main focus is on Merrin. This isn’t wrong on its own, she is a very interesting character and I desperately wanted to know more about her. Do I feel like her characterization is good? Yes. I do. I don’t mind her being this easy-to-crush passionate person. I don’t mind her loving easily and I understand her trauma tied to Dathomir. But... she can’t talk about it with Cal? Really? Saying she felt connection to Fret because she let her be angry felt a bit too convoluted and just... stupid. Cal who is known and even described as this amicable, sweet, compassionate guy was not someone Merrin could confide in? I understand the point that the Jedi want to feel peace, and him and Cere have moved on, and I’m glad that this is not retconned by the novel, but Cal absolutely felt fear and fury and was angry. He would understand. He would help, not just worry for Merrin in the background. Am I a bit mad that he was not the one Merrin felt connected to so strongly? Yes. They even mention that they have a connection but just don’t ever expand on it.

I am getting a bit side tracked. New characters: Fret. Her girlfriend. I don’t mind them and I think they served the story just fine. There were not very interesting to me personally, I couldn’t really connect with them. But I think that is my fault, because my headcannon of Merrin and Cal being together kept knocking on my skull whenever Fret was there. I won’t like a character just because Merrin sleeps with her and Cal can’t help but “like her”. Why? Why should I like her? You gave me nothing but a conflicted romantic interest that you tried to hide behind cheesy descriptions of her body. Calling her “beautiful” and “hot” won’t change my mind: I wanted to throw her out of the airlock.

The romance: it felt rushed. It felt too much like a fanfiction. It made me blush and I audibly said “Noooo, they didn’t.” a few times. Was it fun? For sure. Was it fitting to the story? No. I am not one to shy away from smut, I love a good romance story. But this is a Star Wars story. About family, about being lost and about finding your connection to the outside world and someone in it. The game set a standard, a higher standard than we are unfortunately used to by Disney, and it was this beautiful, deep story that you could relate to. These raunchy parts in the book made it feel... childish, cheapened. I can understand the connection between Fret and Merrin, even if I don’t agree with it, without hearing about their plush lips and reading description of Fret’s tight and ripped bod. Cal being a dumbass and mistaking Merrin’s hickey for a bruise from a fight? What? There is a place for these stories, and it’s on ao4, not in the official novelization. It is not wrong - it is just so, so out of place that it is jarring. I would much rather hear Merrin’s internal monologue and know more about her history - her world of Dathomir and her Magick. I liked that she was losing her “fire”. I liked that she found a way how to gain it back. But it could have been done more gracefully.

This is my main point with this book. It reads like a fanfiction. It is nice to read and easy, you rush through it like a lightning. But is that it? So many phrases and descriptions in this pulled me right out because I recognize them from smut oneshots.

+ I do have to say that I liked the battle scenes - the combat felt fluid and nice to follow.

I also kind of like the story, even when you know from the start that it has to be something without real consequence or payoff, because it is hard to fit something in between “official” stories without overshadowing what they’ve already got going on. It was good for what it was, I liked how the story tied together. There were some rough spots - Is nobody worried about the fact that someone can track the Mantis for weeks? An Imperial? The weird bird dude? Are we gonna talk about that?

Cal feeling these tinges of jealousy without giving them a name was nice. I like the idea of him being so fiercely protective, so lost in his idealogy that he hasn’t even thought about romantic love, but is slowly coming around to it. He’s getting curious. His and Merrin’s relationship is so sweet and supportive, and I do enjoy that this Merrin’s story still does not rule him out like a potential love interest, because I really do wish to see that happen. This clash of cultures and idealogies is such a rich field and I want desperately for something to grow there, tall and strong.

Maybe in the game. Maybe in the game. But not in a “make out in the fresher” kind of way, please. No more.

The book leaves us at a set up for the game while not really answering much about Merrin or anybody else. It is fun, it is definitely not terrible. But it just leaves me with higher hopes for the game.

Number rating seems very limited but if I had to, I’d give it 6/10.

[rebelsofshield]

I was going to do a longer post about this, but anyways since it’s the ten year anniversary of the Disney purchase, I figured I’d name my top 10 pieces of media from the new canon/era.

10. The Force Awakens

9. Lost Stars

8.  Star Wars Doctor Aphra

7. The Alphabet Squadron Trilogy

6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

5. The Clone Wars Final Season

4. The High Republic

3. The Last Jedi

2. Star Wars Andor

1. Star Wars Rebels

[keybladespirit]

16. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

Wow! My PC is not good enough to run this game, but I can tell it's a great followup to Fallen Order. Even through the framerates given to me by my struggling PC, the gamefeel that would have been there if I had the money for an upgrade or three showed through pretty well. Looks ugly on the lowest graphics settings though. And yeah maybe that's supposed to be expected but like, games used to look pretty good on Low, you know?

The story was a big improvement over Fallen Order. For one, Cal Kestis feels a lot more like a unique character who couldn't be replaced with the an existing character. Where Fallen Order felt like a pretty generic Star Wars story for this time period, Survivor does a lot more with the unique bits and pieces that Fallen Order had. Still maybe not the best execution of the story being told, but it succeeds very at being a Star Wars story about trauma and loss and how these things can control us if we don't let ourselves heal. It feels very much like Fallen Order stumbled so Survivor could jog briskly. I hope this series turns into a trilogy because I really feel like there's one last story to be told here.

My biggest problem is mainly that it feels like there's a lot more going back and forth between locations. It's like.... Koboh, Jedha, Koboh's moon, Koboh, Jedha, Koboh again, moon again... and it makes sense for the story but like... that stretch of the game could have been broken up more, I think. That said, Koboh does have a decent amount of different kinds of environments (but the swamp should have been more poisony I think), so that helps a lot with reducing that fatigue. If there's another game, I'd like a new planet for a home base of the kind that Koboh is, Dagobah as a dedicated poison swamp planet, one of the moons of Tatooine but not Tatooine itself, and probably a few others.

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[frostehburr]

One with the Force in Jedi Fallen Order

At the start of October I decided I wanted to get the platinum trophy for the original Resident Evil 4. The original has a select few trophies that are mostly bosses and two collectables. I actually got tired of the game while playing through again for the professional difficulty which had to be unlocked with a first playthrough. So I moved on to Jedi Fallen Order.

I know I know, it's an EA game but much like other games I have, it was a gift so I'm playing it. Thankfully there's no microtransactions or $7 skin dlcs that are tied to trophies like another game I know that is surprisingly not an EA game.

I already played it through once a year ago so this time around I did a new game plus. Meaning everything I already unlocked was... already unlocked... so I didn't have to search for every single chest in the game.

Downside of that is that I still had to go to where those chests were in order to fully explore the map!

Majority of the maps were really easy. Dathomir, Ilum, and Bagono were very small so I basically completed those maps on my first visits. Kashyyk was on mega long linear level you had to travel to twice to complete. It ended up being the refinery that clocked me the most. Turned out those chests I had found in my first run a year ago came to bite my backside because, after searching up and down the entire map trying to figure out why it was stuck at 96% complete, it turned out the tiny spot with an already opened chest was what I needed to step on to complete the map.

But there was only one map I had to check google for, Zeffo. A twisted layered mess of a map that I back tracked up and down back and forth over and over again. Trying to fill up all databanks. Finding all echos. And double checking every chest even if it was already opened because Kashyyk taught me not to leave those chests alone.

Within the exploration, I unlocked basically all of the other trophies since gathering every collectable in the game checks off every corner of the map. That's all stim canisters, all lightsaber pieces, all ponchos, all BD-1 and Mantis paint jobs, all databank scans, and every plant seed for the terrarium.

Since I already had the story trophies, exploration took out almost all of them and I could take the platinum with ease...

Except, there was a total of two remaining. Unlocking all abilities and scanning all enemies.

After fighting enough bounty hunter encounters to be max level, I got ever ability and only had one enemy type to scan. Turns out it was the final boss of the game! I don't know if it's considered a spoiler due to the game having the sequel out and its been long enough for everyone who wanted to play the game already having played it.... I'm still not flat out tell y'all who it is, even if it's obvious.

Know that if you're missing one single dot on the tactical databank, it's most likely the final boss of the game.

And that was it!

Jedi Fallen Order was one of the most simplest games I completed but that was mostly due to everything being tied with exploring the maps. Think if everyone wanted to go for platinum with this game, they could achieve it rather quickly.

[nikihawkes]

Book Review: House of Chains by Steven Eri\kson

Title: House of Chains Author: Steven Erikson Series: Malazan #4 Genre: Fantasy Rating: 4/5 stars The Overview: In Northern Genabackis, tribal mountain warriors raid southern flatlands. Years later, Tavore, Adjunct to the Empress, enters the last Malazan stronghold. New to command, she must hone 12,000 recruits to resist the Whirlwind of her sister Sha in the Holy Desert. The power struggle…

[legion1227]

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Semi-review.

For the record, I did not complete the game, but I want to voice some opinions that I harbor.

"Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order" is a competent game, but I don't think it's for me. I've been a fan of the Star Wars franchise for years, and I enjoy the many TV shows, movies, and games that have come out of Star Wars. Upon hearing the news that the sequel game, "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor" was releasing, I finally saw an opportunity to try the game out. When it became a free game for PS Plus members one month, I claimed it and wanted to try and beat it before the 2nd game dropped.

I put several hours into the game and then dropped it.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game at all, and I enjoyed the story told, but the gameplay wasn't too engaging for me, and the level design was headache-inducing. The levels are pleasant to look at, but they are a pain in the ass to traverse. I found myself getting turned around and struggling to return to the ship and fly to the next planet too many times. The game would have benefitted from a fast travel system on all the planets. Honestly, I got tired of having to figure out where to head, and that attributed to me dropping the game as I did.

Combat-wise, it was fine, I guess. There's a weight to swinging the lightsaber and striking down stormtroopers, monsters, droids, and whatnot. But deflecting enemy blasts, temporarily freezing them with the force, and striking them down with a lightsaber lost its glamor for me after a while.

I don't think it helps that I played this game not too long after finishing God of War Ragnarok, which I loved the gameplay. The combat is quite different from Ragnarok, and it's interesting what you can pull off, but it would be nice if there was more to it.

Honestly, what I found to be the best aspect was the story. I wish I got to see firsthand how the story of Cal Kestis ended, but the game no longer sparked joy after ten hours. Framerate issues plagued my game as well, which helped in no way. But there's a good foundation for this game story-wise.

Playing a Jedi Padawan who is targeted by the Galactic Empire, traversing throughout the galaxy is a fun concept. Your character, Cal Kestis, is a decent protagonist, and the characters met along the way are along the same wavelength. It was also a welcome surprise to see established characters like Saw Gerrera appear for a bit.

I don't see myself revisiting this game anytime soon, but I may have to watch a story compilation sometime as I want to see how the story ends and how the sequel fairs. I hope Star Wars fans are enjoying Jedi Survivor immensely, and I wished I liked this more than I did. 3/5

[lemmonhead67]

STAR WARS JEDI SURVIVOR SPOILER REVIEW - Game Chat Ep. 42

[comedydealer]

BADA BING, BADA BOOM! Hello TTRPG enthusiasts, hello glorious gays of the world....’tis I, June Powers, high-quality video essayist & reviewman. The following video has full manual subtitling and is in 1080p. I’ve made a review for an astoundingly good roleplay dueling game called I Have The High Ground and I want you all to see it very much - hence the tagging and this being on your screen - but I speak some good honest truth about storytelling and togetherness in this reviewbit and I’d love for as many people as possible to hear the message...andmaybelikecommentandsubscribe... Relatedly, this video features: Justin McElroy, Suletta Mercury, The Grim Reaper, Milhouse’s Faceclaim, and so many goddamn lightsabers. You wouldn’t even believe how many lightsabers we’re dealing with here. Come look.

[jonberry555]

Spoiler-Free Review - Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars by Sam Maggs

I've Read Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars by Sam Maggs. "Cal Kestis leads the Mantis crew on an adventure set between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor." The videogame tie-in novel follows Cal an the Mantis Crew between the games Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

[littlemuppetmonsters]

finished survivor

[thatonesupercooltoony]

So ive been hearing pepole playing and talking abt the new stat wars game. So that had me thinking and i started playing the first in that series fallen order. Honestly that opening was really good lol.

And also. Im not a big star wars dude. I just like playing random games. One i finish it i can see me reviewing it here as someone who hasnt been into star wars. It could be fun