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The Skywalker Saga’s competent design is elevated by its infectious, charming sense of humor.
The Skywalker Saga’s competent design is elevated by its infectious, charming sense of humor.
What is it? A parodius Lego adaptation of all nine Star Wars movies with PS2-era sensibilities.
Expect to pay $50/£40
Developer TT Games
Publisher Warner Bros.
Reviewed on Core i5 12600K, RTX 3070, 32 GB DDR5, Windows 11
Multiplayer? Local co-op, online through Steam Remote Play
Link Official site (opens in new tab)
I knew I was in for a good time with Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga when I began the Prequel Trilogy portion and saw Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan’s ship get stopped at a traffic gate floating in space. After a quick video conference with the Trade Federation—who hastily tried to hide their evil plans, labeled «evil plans”—Qui Gon and Obi Wan breeze through the gate, accidentally knocking a hapless battle droid, sending it floating off into space.
The Skywalker Saga pushes its charm, with practically every cutscene featuring some visual gag or punchline at the film series’ expense. Kylo Ren is pumping iron and flexing as Rey contacts him in that infamous scene from The Last Jedi. Ben Kenobi pops some popcorn before watching Leia’s message to him in A New Hope. At the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, Lego Count Dooku makes a cheeky plastic pop noise as Anakin scissors his head off.
There’s an enormous amount on offer—though that does serve as a reminder of recent reports of crunch, bullying and high turnover of staff on the project at developer TT Games. The final product is full of joy, but the alleged human suffering behind it casts a pall over the game’s release.
As in previous Lego games, every character, vehicle, and interactable object in the game is constructed out of Lego, with a commitment to the destructibility and creativity inherent to the medium. You’re often required to break down detritus and environment objects to produce the raw materials for puzzle solutions, and some playable droids can split in half to squeeze through tight spaces. The currency of the game is, as ever, ‘studs’, those tiny, one-peg pieces that always seem to find their way into couch cushions.
The charm of the setting also extends to the voice acting, a feature I wasn’t sold on before starting The Skywalker Saga. Back in the hazy prehistoric mists of the mid 2000s, I played a Lego Star Wars full of charismatic mimes pantomiming the events of the series, and change is a hard thing to deal with. Thankfully, The Skywalker Saga sells the dialogue with incredible voice acting talent.
Not only is there a stellar cast of veteran voice actors, including old hands reprising their roles from The Clone Wars and other spin-offs, but several actors from the films return too. Brian Blessed as Boss Nass, Anthony Daniels as C3-PO, and even Billy Dee Williams as Lando are all a joy to hear.
Unfortunately, those same boss fights are a bit padded for my taste. I don’t mind General Grievous’ multiple health bars so much as the fact that we have to take a break in between each one, with him running off in a cutscene followed by some mandatory battle droid clearing and light platforming and puzzling. It really kills my Duel of the Fates buzz, and it’s a shame because otherwise those fights are where the combat actually starts to come alive for me.
The Skywalker Saga is a jack-of-all-trades, mixing multiple genres over the course of its nine condensed movie campaigns.
Jedi characters also have access to a Force throw ability to pick up and toss objects and enemies, while non-Force powered characters possess rudimentary third-person shooting mechanics with their blasters. All of these options leave you with an oddly deep toolbox for how easy the challenges are. The game provides a stress-free sandbox with room to experiment at your leisure, but I ultimately wasn’t taken with its combat, and The Skywalker Saga’s more drawn-out fights left me feeling kind of bored.
The myriad planetside areas can be revisited at will following completion of their story missions, and they contain various puzzles, sidequests, and minigames, some of which can only be approached post-game when the correct character has been unlocked. You’re limited to canonical cast members during story missions, but free-play lets you select from dozens of major and minor unlockable Star Wars characters. This ties into a key long-term timesink—Kyber Bricks, this game’s main collectible. There’s over 1,100 hidden throughout the game, and I discovered only a little over a tenth of them in my playthrough. In a series first, they also tie into a light progression system. You can invest them into upgrades across all playable characters, or small bonuses to individual archetypes like Jedi, Hero, or Bounty Hunter. Many of the more hidden Kyber Bricks reminded me of the creative Moon placement from Mario Odyssey, and I could see sufficiently motivated players investing the time necessary to find them all.
The Skywalker Saga is not a particularly demanding game, and I was able to maintain a near-locked 144fps at 1440p with an RTX 3070, but the graphics menu is relatively sparse. I didn’t have any significant graphical glitches or performance hiccups aside from the game resetting its refresh rate back to 60hz every time I quit and came back—annoying, but not a dealbreaker. What it lacks in graphics options, it makes up for with an impressively granular accessibility menu. I appreciated the multiple sizes of subtitles, different settings for health regen/static HP pickups, and alternately making QTEs easier or even doing away with them altogether.
The Skywalker Saga is an impressive package, successfully adapting some of the most iconic sci-fi movies of all time with equal amounts playful mockery of and loving adherence to the source material. The only shame is that its sense of lively fun stands so in contrast to stories of the game’s development, mismanagement allegedly laying undue stress and suffering on the people who made this whimsical journey possible. I can only hope that the developer’s next project is delivered under better circumstances.
The Skywalker Saga’s competent design is elevated by its infectious, charming sense of humor.
Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister’s copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he’s not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
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