August 2022 Update
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STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy (Q3 2003) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆
Action9,5 | No achievements
- Storm trooper banter dialogues (if we decide to wait around the corner instead of killing them) are funny
The bad
- Character walks like they slide on soap which makes platforming really annoying
- I bought game because people praised it for lightsaber combat... well it's bad. It may be revolutionary 20 years ago but now it's just bad. Just click to swing and hope you will kill enemy before they kill you
- Not possible to un-equip power, so if we unlock something we don't want to use it stays on the bar occupying space
- Animations are really stiff, during cutscenes characters hover over ground and move legs, without sync to walking speed
- Some cutscenes are buggy and only thing happening are NPCs standing and looking around
- Plot is shallow and not interesting
- Whole game feels like side quest crawler: pick mission from the selection screen and kill all enemies on the map
- Enemies are so dumb. They just stand in distance and activate when you walk into invisible "activation circle". I would say it's like 10 - 15m away from our character. Sometimes they do call us but otherwise don't do anything as we were not "inside" the activate zone yet
Conclusion:
People were praising this one as the best lightsaber combat ever. It was a reason why I bought it years ago and then never really go around to actually play it. And damn, this game aged so poorly. KOTOR 1 was released the same year and is light years ahead of it in each category. Watch some yt videos "lightsaber combat explanation" before thinking about grabbing this one. If combat focused on "press LMB and then move mouse around to control where sword hits during frantic combat where enemies run around you" does not sound nice - steer clear of this game.
Story:
Gameplay:
💸 Microtranzactions | None. | 🏆 Achievements | No achievements. |
📊 Performance | No issues. | 💾 Save system | Automatic saves and by the looks of it unlimited number of manual / quick saves. |
🦚 Game customization options | Game is so old it requires tinkering with setting files to get FHD resolution. Otherwise extremely limited customization. |
🌍 Map | Level map is a static image in the data pad that's hard to read. But levels are also narrow corridors so it would be hard to get lost. I realized there is map more than half into the game as there is no need to use it. |
🎮 Controls | It feels like we slide on soap. It's really hard to do any platforming sections as controls are slow and delayed. We can walk, force-jump, attack with LMB/RMB. There are invisible walls everywhere but game was made for so old hardware I can't really complain on technical limitations. |
📇 Inventory | No inventory. Just simple weapon selection menu with mouse scroll or under 1-9 keys. |
🏹 Weapons | There are few types of blasters but this is Jedi game so we use lightsabers, right? Blasters are useless against Sith anyway and we would get hit too many times by storm troopers without lightsaber laser reflection. We can change lightsaber color and tilt type but it's just for cosmetic. Around 2/3 into the game we can choose if we want to keep using single lightsaber, or switch to 2x1 or double lightsaber. There is no explanation about combat differences between different lightsabers, but we can always change lightsaber type in the menu. |
🕵️♀️ Abilities | Force speed, push, pull, sense are available from the start, and upgraded at fixed points in the game. Heal, damage shield, power shield, mind trick are available for light side. Dark side has lightning, force steal, choke and one more. No restrictions for power selection, we can learn and upgrade any light/dark power. Power points are limiting factor in the power use, and there is no way to boost their number. It takes all 100 points to heal 50% HP, 50 to use force speed or shield. Points also don't regenerate when power is active. If we have 70 points and use speed we won't be able to use shield unless we deactivate speed. Push and pull are used only for puzzles as they can't even push or pull weak enemies. They just drop them on the ground. I was so disappointed I can't throw storm troopers from the edges. In general abilities don't seem powerful but they are necessary to beat enemy Siths. Without power shield they will just choke or electrocute us to death, without damage shield they will kill us with sword in 2 hits, and without speed it's really hard to deal damage to them. So each encounter ends in boring combo of wait-heal-wait-heal (not enough force points to get healed with one force use) - wait for force to replenish - save - find next enemies - cast buffs - hope to kill enemies in 5s before they chop me to pieces. |
🤖 Companion and enemy AI | Enemies are brain dead. Storm troopers and officers will stand and shot us while Siths will charge on us and attack with melee / force. |
🥊 Combat | I rally didn't like it. Feels half of the time it's luck that allows us to get past enemies. I may be able to kill some Sith knights in a row and then get killed by Sith apprentice as I forgot to cast a buff. Or they just jumped down from around the corner and surprise us (their favorite strategy, just drop from the ceiling behind us when we walk through door). I either see new players that complain how bad combat is, or people who played it 20 years ago with "git gud" approach. Meh. This game is too old and too many games with good combat mechanic were released in past 20 years to torment yourself with "git gud" in game that aged really badly. |
Technicalities:
Music - ⭐️☆☆ - Generic star wars theme. Voice acting is bad
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't really encounter any
Beyond: Two Souls (Q4 2013) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆
Choices Matter Walking Simulator17h (13h base game + 4h easy achievements) | 34 of 45 (76%)
- I liked fact we follow one person life vs few people from Heavy Rain way more
- QTEs are wayyyy less extreme than in Heavy Rain
- Controlling Aiden and flying around gives nice sense of freedom
- Playing in original format (so where scenes are jumping back and forth in timeline) did not feel as confusing as I thought they would be
- Possible to play in chronological order if we want to
- Firstly seeing later parts of life did made me wonder what I will see in chronologically-previous chapters
- Exploration is not really time sensitive, so there is no anxiety bad scene will be shown if we spend too much time walking around
- A lot of choices but they sadly end in being telltale-type ones. Except for few bigger ones that change story in other chapters
The bad
- Some of the choices can be skipped by mistake due to visual clues merging with bright background
- Camera still has problem but way less than in Heavy Rain
- No option to skip cut-scenes, dialogues or credits. If we want achievement for seeing all endings we need to watch whole credits 10x!! Ridiculous
- Game keeps reset language to my native option
- Checkpoints are quite spread out, so turning out game may end up re-playing longer parts of game
- Not possible to replay chapter from specific point for achievements
Conclusion:
I firstly beat Heavy Rain and was so disappointed. It was mix of punishing QTEs, bad controls, ugly graphic and history of unhinged dad trying to rescue kid I saw for 5 min in-game. Not best way to make me emotionally invested. I learned Beyond: Two Souls is the same genre and lost all interest in playing it. I didn't need more of Heavy Rain. And now it was one of the last games I had still to play. And it's so much better than it's predecessor. More fluid controls, no screaming kids, freedom of flying around with Aiden and focus on one character that allowed me to actually emotionally invest. It's not revolutionary game and still have annoying things like inability to skip dialogues or scenes we don't want to re-watch. I also know many people dislike story in not chronological order but I did not mind. It's also possible to play it in chronological order in remaster.
Story:
Gameplay:
💸 Microtranzactions | None | 🏆 Achievements | Tied to making specific choices, which means 100% requires at least two game plays + replaying chapters numerous times. |
📊 Performance | No problems. | 💾 Save system | One automatic checkpoint that IMO is too rare. |
🦚 Game customization options | Basic graphic and sound options. For some reason game keeps resetting to Steam account language. And there are only two difficulty levels - hand holding and "this QTE looked like I must press another button". |
🌍 Map | There is no overworld map, no level map, no mini map. Game is divided into chapters played in specific order and levels are corridor-like so it's not possible to get lost. |
🎮 Controls | We can walk and interact with environment in specific points. I played with controller and left stick is to walk, right to look around (in limited way). There are some QTEs which are way more forgiving than the ones from Heavy Rain and difficulty can be dropped in options. As Aiden we can fly around, go through walls etc., only limitation is that we can't go too far away from Jodie. Controls are nice and responsive while flying. Only complain I have is that developers simplified whole interface to seeing a white dot on the screen for interaction spots, for movie-feeeeeel. Which makes it easy to miss in bright background. And setting difficulty to easy changes how Aiden controls work - we can jump only between fixed positions (marked as orange blobs mid-air) which is extremely limiting. I would prefer to have separate difficulty setting for Aiden and Jodie, as having Aiden on easy actually feels like game is harder to play. |
📇 Inventory | No inventory. We can't carry any objects or chose anything. |
🏹 Weapons | No weapons or combat. |
🕵️♀️ Abilities | No real abilities. If we press triangle on controlled we can fly around as Aiden while Jodie stays in place. |
🤖 Companion and enemy AI | No companions and all enemy encounters are scripted QTEs. |
🥊 Combat | No combat. |
Technicalities:
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Voice acting is nice and believable. Music also really nicely fits into scenes
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Game kept resetting my sound options which I kept forgetting about till I heard bad polish dubbing. Lol.
Side note
I have 4 games left to beat on Steam \o/. One is Planescape Torment which is on hold as 30h save did not sync when I was home, and I’m not starting from scratch now. And some simple games, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos and Unravel 2 may be beaten this / early next month. So I may finally be able to beat my backlog at the end of next month. Exactly after 6 years of posting on BLAEO. After that it would no longer be possible to call it backlog, as games will be added and played on manageable rate :thinking:
Plan for now is to replay KOTOR 2 to get those last pesky achievements. And then grab some nice games on Winter Sale. I played through so much junk when beating my library now I want to focus on games I think I will enjoy. Instead of adding stuff that just look nice. Like Final Fantasy XIII :sweatsmile:
Congrats on (almost) beating your backlog, yay!
Just want to tell you, I really like your post, it’s a perfect, so detailed review but still neat, and pleases the eye. Gonna stay tuned to your post :D
Honestly, it’s a pleasant surprise to see a game review like this on BLAEO (a web that is not focused on review), thank you very much!
Thanks :D
I had more descriptive reviews, but then realized I keep focusing on specific aspects. So it made sense to divide it into section like this. Most people would not focus that much on how detailed is map or how’s situation with saves. But I’m an avid supporter of F5 / F9 quick save / load combination, and get easily lost in games without good enough map.
I’m playing Heavy Rain right now and I definetely think Beyond Two Souls is a big step up. Especially playing it with a friend cause one person can control aidan. Makes him really feel like a seperate intentity. If you haven’t already, you sould check out Detroit: Become Human. I personally think its the best of games from them. Plus the choices really matter since there are 85 endings. I’ve never played a Star Wars game before but if I do, I won’t start at that one! Thanks for the amazing reviews!
I’m playing Heavy Rain right now and I definetely think Beyond Two Souls is a big step up.
I gave up on Detroit after I’ve beaten Heavy Rain. But after Beyond Two Souls I will definitely try it out.
I’m too used to games having the same mechanics and formula forever with just small tweaks (like ubi games), and assumed I will not like any Heavy-Rain-like game. Gives me more faith in gaming future. I’m still not picking up another Ubi game though :hehe:
Plus the choices really matter since there are 85 endings.
I will need to look up the best place to make a save game (like copying save to another location for save magic :]), I’m not beating agame few times to see a lot of endings, unless game is short or phenomenal. 15h for Detroit does not put it in “short” category :D
Unless there is skip dialogue and cutscenes option. Then I can rush through to see a different ending|
I’ve never played a Star Wars game before but if I do, I won’t start at that one!
There are piles of various Star Wars games. So try to pick the one in genre you like. They have piles: LEGO, racers, hack&slash, RPG, FPS… pinball :hehe: Problem with Jedi Knight series is that it’s really dated. Just like KOTOR is dated and many people may not be able to go past it. And if someone would try to re-make it (simple re-master would not do) it would go more into action game like Force Unleashed. Hard core fans would rage, and random people would most probably not buy it without huge marketing. So it would be a loss of income.
In detroit it gives you a flowchart after every chapter that tells you which choices led to the chapter ending and how many other chapter endings there are. If you beat the game once, it will let you go back to any chapter and change your choices. It might be easier to beat it once and then go back and mess with the chapters. Not only the endings change but characters change and you grt new scenes as well. Any way is fine though! Thank you for advice on the star wars games! I’m not big into Star Wars but I always wanted to try some games
Wow, so close to the goal, congrats! And too bad about the lost save, I hate it when that happens -.-
It’s not lost-lost but I need to fly back home to Poland to get it. Hope it will be around Christmas.
More time for Python study then :D