I remember watching my cousin play this game back when I was a kid, I always wanted to play it but I forgot about it for over a decade. Also, I normally don't even look at Star Wars games because licensed games tend to be kind of bad and I'm not the biggest fan of the setting.
However, I'm happy to say that my preconceptions were wrong. Jedi Academy is actually quite fun and you are cutting down bad guys within the first 30 minutes. They aren't very challenging at first, but once lightsaber wielding enemies show up in significant numbers things get really interesting.
That's the greatest strength of the game in my opinion, it's really fun to fly around high on the force chopping down bad guys with a sword. The presentation is alright, the story is unremarkable and Mark Hamill doesn't voice Luke Skywalker, but none of that matters because the combat is fun.
The only other aspect I found noteworthy is that you can play as an alien. I think that's cool because aliens are cool.
For people who like Star Wars this is probably a must play.