And now I’ve hit the point of no return
I was genuinely on the fence about getting LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, but I took a chance that my burnt-out Star Wars fandom wouldn’t botch what seemed to be the culmination of TT Games’ tried-and-true LEGO collectathon formula. Now, I’m one of three million people zipping around the galaxy in search of near-endless Kyber Bricks.
To my fellow collectible obsessors — to folks like me who love Donkey Kong 64, hold the caveats — this game is pretty sweet. It’s the kind of experience you can breezily chip away at for months on end, and it’s a near-nightly co-op pastime for me at this point.
To put it in perspective, ‘s Trophy Roadmap breakdown marks LEGO Skywalker Saga as a 2/10 on the difficulty scale with a 70- to 90♉-hour Pla🍌tinum trophy estimate.
I expected a pleasant enough slow-burn experience as a fan of prior LEGO games like Jurassic World, Lord of the Rings, and Marvel Super Heroes (the GOAT), but I was blown away by the sheer scale of this nine-film juggernaut. The whole game could’ve just been the Free Play hub worlds, and I would’ve been fine with that; in fact, I might’ve preferred it.
A rocky start on Naboo
You can begin the story on Episode I,𓆏 Episode IV, or Episode VII. But choose carefully.
Running back and forth to NPCs in Episode I without any excitement between beats felt like a bad omen, but the worst segments of LEGO Skywalker Saga won’t last too long. On the flip side, the best bits — scenes that clicked with my nostalgia — also felt super brief. It’s fascinating to see what did, and didn’t, make the cut. ~So much~ didn’t.
When everything was said and done, I ended up skimming , which I had zero expectation of doing going into this game. As someone who hasn’t really thought about Star Wars since seeing Episode IX in a theater, there’s mental whiplash. LEGO has been a palatable way for me to reopen some wounds and heal others.
All told, the campaign was a nice main-series refresher, though I’m not looking forward to re-running some of these levels for optional hidden trinkets. Unfortunately, I’m at the point of no return. I’ve accumulated enough Stuff that I won’t be able to leave my save file hanging until everything — everything — is scratched off the game’s monstrous checklist.
Co-op is the way to go if you can swing it
It took quite a bit of convincing to get my fiancée — who isn’t into Star Wars and doesn’t care for LEGO games —ℱ to join me. But she did,♐ so long as I stayed one session ahead.
Our joint Episode I excursion did enough damage that I then had to complete the entire rest of the story on my own so that we’d have access to new, not-yet-100%’d worlds in the Galaxy Free Play mode — she refused to tag along for any other story missions. Randomly exploring open-ended landscapes to find and solve light puzzles, though? We’re both hooked. We go through a couple of planets a night now. It’s nice!
LEGO Skywalker Saga is easy and only seems to get easier as you go. There’s an obscene amount of content with an understandably high amount of repetition. There are only really so many puzzle solutions for the collectible Kyber Bricks with only so many uniquely capable characters to leverage, though I don’t necessarily hold that against it.
I’m loving the ability to mostly shut off my brain and still make steady progress night after night. Alone, the core gameplay experience can approach diminishing-returns dullness; in co-op, our divide-and-conquer approach works wonders. It’s more interesting to split up and earn collectibles as fast as possible. The urgency of co-op adds another layer.
Quick aside: If there was a Most Valuable Minifig statistic, Jango Fett would be off the charts for me — his jetpack and upgraded blasters make such short work of so many platforming puzzles and combat challenges. I almost feel guilty skipping 99.9% of the playable cast, but I’ve got my core crew solidified. Shaak Ti is also locked in.
Free Play is where it’s at for collectible hunters
Galaxy Free Play — just running around and grabbing shiny pickups — is my preferred way to experience the game. And that’s really it. That’s the point of this article.
If you’re a collectible-minded player who hasn’t had the best track record with LEGO games in the past but thinks this one might be different for you (or the timing might now be better), I hope some of these thoughts give you the nudge you need. That said, it’s natural to want more from LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. I do have hangups.
The more hours I burn away by grabbing “just a few more bricks,” the more I see technical cracks in the foundation with small-but-irritating bugs and even random crashes; the more I realize just how thinly stretched some of these story levels are; the more I wish I could skip takeoff and landing sequences on drawn-out, multi-planet fetch quests.
With respect to the bugs, I am afraid about certain goals, like finding the on every planet, somehow wigging out before I wrap them up. I’m trying not to dwell on that fear, though. If it happens, it happens, and I hope the patches are frequent.
Speaking of, for other co-op players’ sake, I hope the developers add horizontal split-screen. It’s vertical only right now, which I’m used to, but you very well might not be.
Let the post-Elden Ring recovery begin
While it’s easy to pick apart so much of LEGO Skywalker Saga critically speaking, weirdly enough, this has ended up becoming the exact right kind of collectathon game I needed to throw myself at after Elden Ring. It’s perfectly low-stakes. Comfy, even. There’s a lot to like about it, even as an infrequent LEGO player who’s (otherwise) tuning out Star Wars at large.
If nothing else, take this advice: before you’re in too deep, consider listening to a podcast or music or literally any other audio source every now and then as a shakeup. Otherwise, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will fill your head with unshakable earworms. I hear John Williams fanfare when I go to bed, and the music is still playing when I wake up.
Published: Apr 26, 2022 04:00 pm