Revisiting the Jedi Knight series after two decades (part 2).
[h2]I liked...[/h2]
[list]
[*]The nostalgia - it's a classic LucasArts game from the pre-Disney era, it feels like Star Wars
[*]The customization - you can make your own character, choose which skills you want to specialize in (both in terms of lightsaber combat and force powers)
[*]The setpieces - the game contains some memorable levels (like the crystal cave or Vader's castle)
[/list]
[h2]I didn't care for...[/h2]
[list]
[*]The story - unlike [i]Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast[/i], there is little sense of urgency, a lot of it actually happens off-screen while we are doing unrelated episodic missions; when the story does take center stage, there is little nuance or soul to it
[*]The gameplay - serviceable, but nothing to write home about; blasers are mostly superfluous, movement is too floaty, some enemy types are overused, autosave checkpoints are too far apart
[*]The crashes and glitches - the game did crash on me half a dozen times; a few more times it didn't crash but the screen turned white, prompting me to restart the program anyway (I did not lose any progress due to these problems, thankfully)
[/list]
[h2]Verdict[/h2]
Back in the early 2000s, I played the living daylight out of this game. I would spend hours with friends just fooling around, spawning different enemies, even dipping my toes into modding and map-making. Together with [i]Knights of the Old Republic[/i], [i]Jedi Academy[/i] was the Star Wars game for me growing up. Looking back at it now, KoToR still holds up to this day, [i]Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast[/i] is a game I've given up on while recently giving it a go, and [i]Jedi Academy[/i] is somewhere in the middle - definitely playable, an OK experience, but not really exciting.
After some 20 years, I still recognize the levels - being a Quake III engine game, it didn't age beautifully, but what striked me was just how by-the-numbers the whole game feels. You play generic missions in various Star Wars locales, interspersed with a wooden story - Kyle Katarn and Luke Skywalker are not enough to save it, and they mostly advance the plot off-screen. In one mission, Kyle and our protagonist Jaden visit a planet where they are greeted by acid rain. No, they do not bring a hazmat suit, umbrella, or anything. I guess this ought not bother me, in an action game, but it does feel kind of lazy - the story supposedly has these grand stakes as usual, but the characters are just winging it like it's all an excuse to swing some lightsabers around. [spoiler]The pivotal moment in the game, where you face down your annoying partner who'd betrayed you in five seconds flat and tried to kill you, is handled with similar nuance - you can basically act like nothing has happened, or embark on a bloody rampage against the whole galaxy.[/spoiler]
Speaking of fights, I found it a bit uneven. There are situations where you can just die very easily (especially in tight spaces from grenades or heavy weapons, or when fighting multiple lightsaber opponents). In the first part of the game, guns have some merit, but eventually most of your opponents are force users which are annoyingly resistant to all of them (unless you can make them jump off a cliff while avoiding your projectiles, haha). Which leaves us with lightsaber combat - it has flashy combos and stances, but it felt quite random to me in practice (likely due to lack of skill on my part, judging by how many reviews praise the fencing here; however, the game doesn't really explain the finer points of combat to you, so a lot of the time you're just left-clicking and hoping for the best). The force powers are cool (you can roleplay as The Emperor if you master the "naughty" Force Lighting skill), however your force/mana pool is quite limited, so you are often stalling to perform the next jump/power/combo; it breaks the combat flow.
In closing, despite what little me would probably say, I cannot really recommend this game in 2026. It is certainly servicable, especially in terms of combat; however, throughout the whole game I kept waiting for that "wow" moment and it never came. I mainly missed a more engaging story or characters that would carry the game forward.
[i]Feel free to look at [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/azar-dragneel/recommended/]my other reviews[/url] and curator pages: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34616763-Azar-Reviews/]Azar Reviews[/url] and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41898234-They-OK/]They OK?[/url][/i]
