I don't know how to accurately rate Lego titles. They're games meant for young children that offer zero challenge and are really just an excuse to run around and collect a million different things. Which, turns out, I'm down for. Every few years when one of these games pops up and is based on a franchise I'm actually interested in, I hop on board for a bit, because they're the kind of simple, mindless fun I think you need once and a while.

The Skywalker Saga is very much of that same mold, although on a seemingly much larger scale. The individual levels of each movie have been abridged to a greater degree than past Lego Star Wars titles (perhaps too much so), but alongside them come much larger, open environments that constitute the meat of this particular one. Side-by-side they offer a lot of variety and I never really found myself bored with each level's gimmicks or the surprising amount of different puzzles, even if it did leave me yearning for a few more character classes to break up some of the more monotonous abilities.

In terms of other criticisms I have about the game, I wish they'd go a bit more off-script from the movies at times. When they do it's really a highlight, but cutscenes stick more to doing word-for-word line reading of the film dialogue and letting the humor fill the background instead of bringing it the forefront. In addition I encountered several annoying bugs that disrupted side quests and collecting tasks, though to the game's credit, it is very good about saving everything so I rarely had to redo something I already accomplished. Also no amount of lampooning could make up for having to re-experience The Rise of Skywalker again, but I suppose that was unavoidable given the game's premise.

Ultimately I'd say this game's biggest strength is simply letting you exist and breathe in the Star Wars universe. The breaks in-between levels where you can just roam around, meet characters, explore the vast array of planets, or just take in the ambience of the extremely detailed environments coupled with the classic Star Wars music and sounds makes for a really relaxing experience. Lego games will never be the most compelling things you'll ever play, but every once and a while I think it's worth it to play something like this for a change of pace. Considering this game delivers on that and then some, I'd say it achieved its goal.

UPDATE: Lowering my score one star. At this point in time I've almost 100% the game but due to a bug I have been unable to do so. Truthfully my entire experience with trying to platinum The Skywalker Saga has been an exercise in frustration due to the constant bugs, glitches, and crashes, little of which I experienced through my main playthrough of the game, but have become overwhelmingly apparent in my attempt to complete everything. I know there are players out there who have experienced even more severe, game-breaking bugs than I have, so I can't even say I've gotten the worst of it.

Adding to that frustration has been the fact that we're now going on nearly a month without any sort of patch to fix these problems, and radio silence from the developer on when we can expect one. Quite frankly that is inexcusable and has really soured my opinion on the game overall, even if a lot of the praise I heaped upon it earlier still stands. I'm sure at some point in the future this game will be fixed and these complaints will be rendered a non-issue, but I simply cannot ignore how long this game has been left to flounder in is post-release window.

When I saw that Ragnarok was nominated for just about everything at the Game Awards I sorta rolled my eyes and thought "pfsh, of course it is". Now that I've completed it myself... Yeah, of course it is.

This game isn't perfect by any stretch, the combat gets a bit repetitive, there are too many optional bosses/trials/collectible whatnots, and while I've seen a lot of people praise it for being a duology instead of dragging out to a trilogy (which I agree with 100%), it still ironically drags its own runtime out with side content just a bit more than it needs to in my opinion. There's already so much game, I don't need you to ask me to travel all 9 realms looking for flowers/lizards/stags/whatever else at multiple stages throughout the game as an excuse to go back to areas I've spent 5 hours in already. I appreciate that I can access new areas within the realms now and that's great, but there's no need for an entire tab of "1 of 15" and "4 of 10" ...etc when the game is rich with fantastic content and incentive to explore without it.

That aside, the characters and the story are superb, absolutely top marks. People call this a movie game as a negative a lot, which I really don't understand because it's not a movie game in that it's lacking in game and instead just shows you the story.. It's a movie game because it feels like you're playing a movie, the direction, the tension, the whole thing is a journey that you're being taken on, yes, but that you're still in control of just as much as any other game. If the credits role and I feel like I've just finished watching The Lord of the Rings or some shit, how is that a bad thing??? I beat monsters to a pulp for 40 hours and felt fulfilled at the end, like what happened, mattered - damn what a terrible game ( -_・)?

God of War Ragnarok improves upon everything that it's predecessor does, and yeah it shares some of the same flaws but for what it's worth, I think it's blatantly unreasonable to expect them to have made a better sequel than this. Bravo, Santa Monica Studio.