Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review - 5 Ups & 3 Downs

1. Backtracking Eventually Gets Repetitive

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order E3 Trailer
EA

Fallen Order's Metroidvania elements weren't telegraphed too clearly before release, and that's actually quite a shame. Backtracking and discovering new areas you weren't able to access the first time around was really fun, while turning the tables on those early enemy encounters with new weapons, force abilities and experience helped showcase the development of Cal as a Jedi, as well as the player's own progress.

Unfortunately, there were occasions where backtracking erred on the tedious side of things. Fallen Order's story requires players to return to planets they were previously unable to fully explore, but in traversing the same areas a second time around, those old enemies and AI patterns pretty much repeat themselves. The same quantity of troopers in the same order and type appear over and over, and it happens to coincide with a mid-act lull that breaks up Fallen Order's brilliant beginning and final third.

Now to be clear there's nothing wrong with repeating enemies, but it has to be done in a way that lends itself to the narrative. Returning to a planet you've already liberated and having the same groups appear in the exact same way, fighting the same amount of native wildlife with the same weaponry just isn't compelling, and is the one area where Fallen Order's Soulslike stylings grow stale.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.