Even with a massive discount, this game is not worth spending your time on.
The game does not respect your time and tries very hard to artificially prolong the experience.
The writers did a horrible job with the main character. The only consistently likable aspect of her character is her pet, which isn't even really about her. Yet the game seems to assume that players will automatically care about her.
The strongest part of her character development is [spoiler] taking away her pet [/spoiler] - and again, that's mostly about the pet, not her. The rest of the plot feels like a bunch of checkboxes the writers needed to close. There are very few interesting ideas or memorable character moments.
The game design isn't much better. The big reputation system becomes irrelevant VERY quickly. It initially looks like it's going to be an important part of the game, but eventually it's basically just a few EXP bars you can max out and forget about.
The core gameplay isn't fun either. Shooting is boring. Stealth is boring. Climbing usually feels like a waste of time rather than actual gameplay. The puzzles are fine.
Slicing feels like a cool idea at first, but it's so undercooked that it becomes repetitive very quickly. It had the potential to stay relevant throughout the entire game, but never really develops into anything.
Surprisingly, I think Sabacc might be the strongest piece of game design here. I genuinely like how cheating is implemented and how different abilities interact with the game. It feels like one of the few systems that actually has some personality behind it. Weirdly, it also feels like the developers themselves didn't have enough confidence in it.
But the artists absolutely cooked.
The game is beautiful. Some of the environments are genuinely gorgeous, and the art team did an amazing job recreating the Star Wars atmosphere. That's probably the saddest part of the whole thing, because all that incredible environmental work is attached to a game that I found painfully mediocre.
Technically, though, I can't complain much. I didn't encounter many bugs during my playthrough, and certainly nothing major. Maybe a few misaligned assets here and there, but that's about it.
One thing I kept thinking about while playing is that this game feels like it was VERY different during the prototype stages.
This is obviously just speculation, but I refuse to believe that the current main-character-and-pet concept was the original vision from day one. A lot of the game makes much more sense to me if the original idea was a generic or customizable outlaw character in a "choose your own adventure" type of game, where your reputation and decisions actually shaped what kind of criminal you became.
My guess is that at some point in development they looked at the Jedi games and decided they also needed that predefined protagonist + cute companion dynamic, and the current protagonist and her pet were built around that direction.
Because right now, the main character often feels like an afterthought placed on top of systems that weren't originally designed around her.
Some locations reinforce that feeling. A few of them genuinely give you several different ways to progress, almost like they survived from an earlier prototype where player choice and systemic gameplay mattered much more.
But most locations just give you multiple paths so they don't look like long corridors. Sometimes they sprinkle in a puzzle or an alternative approach, but usually those paths are just another way to waste your time.
The reputation system feels like another leftover from that possible earlier vision. It feels like it was supposed to be a major mechanic that shaped your character.
Instead, in the final game it's basically just a few EXP bars you can max out and forget about.
