Favourite game of all time. Although the lack of a strafe system impacts this game retrospectively in terms of gameplay, the series has never had a better story or theming since with the exception of up your arsenal but certainly the soundtrack is exceptional here. Whilst the rest of the series tends to lean into the orchestral, effort is put in here to really make the tracks unique to the environment of the planets. The list of weapons is unique where the purposes have very little overlap, and all are very creative (glove of doom my beloved).

An interesting paradox in that it has the most content of any of the Traveler's Tales LEGO games and yet feels exceptionally lazy in almost every aspect. Actually no, sorry, that's not interesting at all. To be honest, this is one of the least interesting games I've played in quite a while.

First of all, it does a really bad job at adapting the films, even by the standards of this series. There are now only five missions per movie (because having ten or whatever there were in previous games would make the story mode just unfeasibly long) and so just by default you're glossing over a whole hell of a lot. I know this doesn't mean much because who in the world would the following apply to at this point - but if you don't already know the Star Wars movies, you're not gonna be getting much out of the campaign here. Also the levels are much, much shorter and simpler than in previous entries. It's almost silly how quick you can blow through what should really be the meat of this thing.

Additionally, as I think has been the case with some of the other recent TT LEGO games (I haven't played all of them), the different abilities and character types have been VASTLY pared down, and the overall gameplay is now simple to an almost insulting degree. All 'character' in your characters has been drained away compared to something like LEGO DC SUPERVILLAINS or MARVEL SUPER HEROES which had in the neighborhood of 50 distinct abilities instead of, like, I don't know, ten here? It's really quite basic. And therefore boring!

And this ends up affecting the real content of the game, which is the absolutely absurd overworld shit. Because when all your characters are the same, running around open world maps for MORE THAN SEVENTY-FIVE FUCKING HOURS gets really, really boring. Now, I am repeatedly on record as being a collectathon guy. I'm PYSCHONAUTS-pilled. I'm a DONKEY KONG 64-cel. Have been for a long time. But this may have broken me of it. This is the limit. The amount of absolutely drudgerous, totally meaningless shit you have to do to clear the overworld maps and 100% this thing is beyond anything I've encountered before. Yes, this is an all-ages game, but there are basically no interesting or challenging puzzles or platforming - you may as well be literally going down a list of around 2000(!!!!!!!!) checkboxes and filling them all in with a button press. Except, of course, it takes way longer than that. I've played my share of these LEGO games, and there is a really clear lack of effort in this area compared to previous ones, and there is just so unfathomably fucking much of it. It almost feels like one of those service games like FORZA HORIZON or something where you're not really ever supposed to even consider 100%ing it, but no, there's the big percentage meters all over the place letting you know how you're doing! Each level, each world, each region! And the cherry on top is that this has by far the most insulting 100% "reward" I've ever seen - so galling I don't even know if I'm gonna do the last little bit of trophy mop-up because I can't bear to give this another minute of my time after seeing what it was.

The only real bright spots lie in the writing (always pretty solid) and a couple fun deep-cut callbacks to SW lore and old EU stuff. But under that K2-sized mountain of at best blahness and at worst shocking incompetence (menus that should be prosecutable, busted-ass challenges you can cheese about twenty different ways, a frankly embarrassing amount of bugs, etc, etc.) they don't mean much.

Not a great sendoff for the series that started this whole LEGO game thing! Really should have rethought the scope on this one!

If this is supposed to be a Lego Star Wars game, it misses on almost every mark.

Lacks charm and feels far too polished. Full of content in all the wrong places. The pseudo open world is bizarre and the roster, while chock-full, is pretty much almost pointless.

Strange game, but you're better off playing the originals.