It’s a Story-Based Experience, Without Moral Choices
Most of the Star Wars games of recent memory have been either multiplayer-focused titles or smaller mobile gacha-style games. Jedi Fallen Order is a huge break from that trend with a heavily story-based single-player experience.
You play as Cal Kestis, a young padawan on the run from the Empire, trying to re-establish his connection with the Force. Although Fallen Order is a single-player game, the big thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t mean there are moral choices.
Respawn wanted to tell a very specific story about a strongly-defined character from the start. There’s plenty of drama and character development, just don’t go in expecting to make a choice between the Light and the Dark side, like in the Force Unleashed or similar games.
Difficulty Options Are Highly Varied
Jedi Fallen Order takes a lot of inspiration from other games, specifically series like Dark Souls or Metroid. As you might imagine, Fallen Order can be a pretty demanding game, especially with its focus on melee combat.
The good news is that there are four different, adaptive difficulty options to play through. From easiest to hardest they’re Story, Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, and Jedi Grandmaster.
The lowest, of course, lets you play through at a breeze, simply experiencing what the story has to offer. Higher difficulties, however, provide a much meatier combat experience.
The difficulties do more than just raise the damage you take, and lower the enemy you dish out. On top of that the difficulties tweak the AI of enemies, making them more aggressive. Past that, it’ll shorten the window you have for parrying, requiring faster more precise inputs on your part.
You can change the difficulty at any time during gameplay, meaning you can tweak the experience to what works best for you.
It Connects to Other Star Wars Properties
This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but Fallen Order does indeed connect to other stories within the Star Wars universe.
First and foremost among those is the animated show Star Wars Rebels. While it doesn’t directly link, the main villains of Fallen Order are the Inquisitors, who were fully introduced in Rebels.
On top of this, one of the planets you’ll be visiting is Dathomir, an important location in The Clone Wars and other stories. Dathomir is the homeworld of Darth Maul and the base of the Nightsisters, a coven of witches that Asajj Ventress belonged to.
Another connection revolves around Saw Gerrera, a prominent rebel leader first introduced in The Clone Wars who also appears in Rogue One. Cal directly interacts with Gerrera, cementing the character’s place in the larger story even more.
These are just a few examples, but for Star Wars fans there are a lot of little links to ground Fallen Order in the larger universe.
There’s a Big Emphasis on Exploration
There are numerous planets you’ll be exploring in Fallen Order, and each one is heavy on exploration. The game liberally encourages you to poke around and explore, finding alternate pathways, hidden items, Force Echoes, and much more.
The rewards for exploring are more than worth it too. You can rack up extra skill points to make yourself stronger, alternate costumes and colors for both Cal and BD-1, new lightsaber pieces and colors.
We’d absolutely recommend that you take your time when playing Fallen Order and go at your own pace, exploring however much of each world you want.
Don’t forget to return to worlds later on when you’ve gained new abilities and can open up even more pathways.
There’s More Than One Lightsaber Type
That’s right, later on Cal will be able to use more than just his one single-bladed lightsaber. Partway through the game you’ll unlock the dual-bladed lightsaber staff, which functions completely differently in battle.
The single-blade is better for one-on-one fights or duels, while the dual-blade is effective at crowd control and multiple enemies. You’ll be able to swap between these on the fly, allowing for more varied options in combat.
Keep this in mind moving forward, as once you unlock the ability you might try out some new moves to see what you like best.
There are some other surprises in terms of moves and lightsabers later on, but we’ll keep those quiet just so you can experience them yourself.
For even more on Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order take a look at our official review, or our Jedi Fallen Order guide wiki for plenty of tips and info.
