LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the Ultimate LEGO Star Wars Adventure

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Review

Developer: Traveller’s Tales | Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment | Genre: Action-Adventure | Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series One/X/S/, Microsoft Windows | Reviewed on: PlayStation 5

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Traveller’s Tales’ newest entry in the long-running LEGO game franchise that began with 2005’s LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, feels very much like a culmination of everything that came before it. It’s difficult to understate exactly how much content is in The Skywalker Saga compared to every other game in the developer’s catalog. Not only is there at least 20 hours worth of high-quality adaptations of Star Wars movies both old and new but there is also a colossal amount of side content that both enriches and occasionally detracts from the overall experience. It is a completionist’s nightmare, and that is an important aspect to consider, but it is also a Star Wars fan’s paradise. Either way, The Skywalker Saga is a remarkable achievement that will be remembered for years to come.

Reimagining a Galaxy Far Far Away

By far the most appealing feature of The Skywalker Saga is its representation of all three eras of the mainline Star Wars films—prequels, originals, and sequels—in LEGO form, and in the case of Episodes VIII – The Last Jedi and Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker also making their debut appearance in the LEGO game format. Each episode only takes a small number of hours to complete given how short many of the levels can be, ranging from vehicle missions to boss fights to other set-piece story moments, but each of these levels are meticulously crafted and littered with well-placed humor and quality voice acting. Certain story moments are upsettingly glossed over or relegated to short cutscenes in-between the main story levels, but a level of overall coherence is maintained throughout.

Each episode feels like a selection of ‘greatest hits’ from its respective source material in terms of which scenes are selected to be dedicated levels. Episode II – Attack of the Clones, for example, begins with a chase sequence against the bounty hunter Zam Wesell, before moving on to pursue Jango Fett in the asteroid field, and then skipping straight to the droid factory on Geonosis. Bear in mind this is only referring to the levels themselves, and plenty of other story moments are represented such as Obi-Wan Kenobi’s visit to Kamino to view the clone army and fight against Jango Fett on the landing pad, but this all happens outside of the traditional level framework. As a result of this, replaying the levels to get all the collectibles becomes a highly streamlined experience compared to previous LEGO Star Wars titles.

In terms of collectibles, much has been retained from the predecessors but a surprising amount of change is also present. Each level contains five Minikit pieces, unlike the usual ten that existed in many previous LEGO games, and this is emblematic of the shortening of the levels in general. The True Jedi gauge—requiring a certain amount of in-game stud currency to be collected for a bonus reward—is still a prominent feature of each level, but this time has been split into three distinct sections that reward one Kyber Brick (the main collectible in the game) each. Three optional objectives can also be completed in each level, ranging from incredibly easy challenges that are difficult to miss to frustratingly vague objectives that require looking up guides to figure out how they actually work.

The gameplay of these levels is exactly what has come to be expected from Traveller’s Tales titles, but refinements have been made to the formula to prevent it from becoming stale. Small puzzles and enemy encounters form the bulk of each level, and having to switch between different character classes to perform class-specific tasks such as operating terminals and using the Force to manipulate objects is extremely common as expected. New additions include blaster battles with cover as well as dedicated multi-phase boss fights that have telegraphed movesets, and both of these are incredibly welcome additions that enhance the flow of the overall gameplay. For fans of LEGO games, it is an extremely familiar gameplay experience but feels polished and consistently engaging throughout.

Building a Beautiful Galaxy

In terms of presentation and graphics, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the most visually stunning game that Traveller’s Tales has ever made. The attention to detail in the landscapes, character models and animations is incredibly impressive, as is the dedication to giving as many characters as possible (but sadly not all characters) their own voiced lines outside of the main story. Depending on which characters are switched to during free play mode, these minifigures can also communicate with each other using one-liner quips and in-jokes for Star Wars fans to enjoy. There is a sense of repetition if the same character is used too frequently (General Grievous saying every Kyber Brick he collects is “a fine addition to my collection” is funny but not 100 times in a row), but given the sheer breadth of characters available to choose from this is barely an issue.

Characters will not only leave footprints in the ground as they walk around each planet but these footprints are also tailored specifically to the chosen character, meaning that astromech droids such as R2D2 will leave flat lines behind them and characters with non-traditional minifigure legs will see their respective footprint left behind also. Caped characters will see sand accumulate at the bottom of the cape when on a desert planet such as Tatooine. There are tiny scratches on many of the minifigure models, adding to the sense that they are real LEGO characters and not pristine glossy figures in a video game. There are many more examples of attention to detail but these alone showcase the dedication to making a LEGO game that goes far beyond its predecessors.

On PS5, The Skywalker Saga runs smoothly and beautifully the vast majority of the time. Crashes were so infrequent that it happened once in an 85-hour completionist playthrough. There were a variety of very small issues such as music playing abnormally loudly, music occasionally overlapping, space battles not appearing, and characters falling through the ground to their death, but thankfully not a single one of these issues caused any difficulty aside from reloading the game to fix it. There appears to have been a legitimate effort to prevent players from becoming stuck through no fault of their own. During one mission in Empire Strikes Back, a buildable object was accidentally created on top of a mission-critical item, but said item slowly shuffled its way out so it could be picked up. The number of times The Skywalker Saga saved itself from breaking was appreciated, but still mildly concerning.

An Enormous Open World

Outside of the main story, a tenth menu option called Galaxy Free Play exists, and within are all twenty-three explorable Star Wars planets each littered with side content and collectibles. Strangely, however, this is not representative of how large Galaxy Free Play actually is. Of the twenty-three planets, some have more than one explorable region such as Coruscant and Tatooine, and even more split their one region into multiple sub-regions that can only be accessed using on-planet fast travel. Additionally, there are five Capital Ships that can be found in space and conquered to gain access to even more explorable areas with Kyber Bricks to collect. On the other side of the spectrum, the planet Kijimi is not explorable at all outside of the story despite taking up one of the twenty-three planet slots on the galaxy overworld map. This inconsistency is baffling, but the rest of Galaxy Free Play makes up for it.

So what is there to do in these explorable regions? The answer, to cut a long story short, is side missions and puzzles. To be more accurate, 140 side missions and 731 puzzles, as well as 38 time trials, 10 shooting galleries, and nine additional galaxy-wide challenges. This side content makes up the additional 65 hours that it takes to complete the game outside of the 20-hour Skywalker Saga story, and unless side content is completed as soon as it becomes available after each planet is unlocked, this will quickly become overwhelming. Kyber Bricks are the primary reward for completing puzzles, while characters and ships are the primary reward for completing side missions, and Kyber Bricks can be used to unlock upgrades for character classes as well as generic upgrades to stats such as health and damage.

Naturally, due to this enormous scope, there is a great deal of repetition on display. Many side missions require going to either a different location on the same planet or locations on multiple planets to pick up items before being teleported back to the mission giver for a reward. There are numerous Scoundrel class missions that require smuggling goods through space and taking out two or three waves of enemies along the way, as well as Bounty Hunter class missions that tend to involve hunting down a specific target. Some missions will require escorting a target across the map and having to protect them from danger and can be instantly restarted if the NPC health bar depletes to zero. All of these missions are repeated many times across the galaxy, to the point where completing them can become nothing but a chore, but on a smaller scale this variety works perfectly fine.

Praise must be given to the side content that stands out among the otherwise repetitive formula. Some side missions were so enjoyable and amusing that they made up for the less interesting content on that planet. A ‘Robot Wars’ style mouse droid battle arena competition on Kef Bir was well worth the tedious preparation that it took to make it happen purely because of how entertaining the end result was. Likewise, a Gonk Droid beauty pageant on Pasaana had the same result, as did one of the slightly more unique puzzles on that planet which involved falling down quicksand in a very specific location. These small scatterings of unique and fun puzzle gameplay go a long way to make the game more engaging than the otherwise bland repetition of puzzles that amount to firing at targets in a time limit or searching behind the correct rock in a wall.

A Game of Two Halves

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the definitive LEGO Star Wars game, and should also preferably be the only one of its kind attempted on this scale. On the one hand, The Skywalker Saga provides a gorgeous and meticulously designed reimagining of one of the most influential movie franchises in existence, packed with humor that both children and adults can laugh at as well as fun and engaging levels that help shake up the tradition LEGO game formula. On the other hand, however, The Skywalker Saga is a collectathon game that pushes itself arguably too far in the direction of filler side content and repetitive open world gameplay. On a pure numbers basis, the value for money here is high, but if the question is instead regarding whether The Skywalker Saga can keep its content compelling for 80 hours, the answer is hardly at all.

Fans of Traveller’s Tales’ previous work and the Star Wars franchise, in general, will adore The Skywalker Saga and sing its praises for years to come. It deserves said praise. Its cutscenes and story will seldom leave players with straight faces and the game oozes a level of charm that is rarely seen in the LEGO game franchise given how stale some of its entries have been in the past few years. That being said, it is difficult to ignore the tedium of the experience for those who wish to delve deeper into everything the game has to offer. The content itself is perfectly harmless and rarely genuinely frustrating, but is best enjoyed in small bursts so as to not overwhelm with its sheer size and scale. In every meaningful way, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is three LEGO games in one, and when enjoyed through this lens it quickly becomes one of the most entertaining and memorable games of the year.