LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Review – The Farce Awakens

When you’re hopping into a LEGO video game from Traveller’s Tales, you know exactly what you’re in for: A ton of chaos, jokes aplenty, and a learning curve more gentle than the geology of The Netherlands.

After a few years in development, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga checks all of those boxes on the LEGO game playlist, while also adding a number of subtle changes to the formula that add to create something substantially different to the franchise’s long-running formula. This makes for a LEGO game that isn’t just bolder and braver than previous entries, but possibly the best LEGO game to date.

If you have picked up any LEGO game in the last… decade, you’ll immediately recognise a few familiar elements. Running around, bashing blocks, and pew-pewing Stormtroopers across locations that have been explored in a thousand other games feels like second nature at this point, but there are some great tweaks that help freshen up the experience. A camera that zooms in so that you can admire your mini-fig as they fend off First Order soldiers gives the game a more dynamic feel, the cover-based shooting is satisfyingly snappy, and the amount of detail that the game oozes is a pure visual delight.

Characters now also feel more versatile than ever before, thanks to an upgrade system that you can invest Kyber bricks in to grow their skills. These rare bricks are dotted across stages and hubs, and can be plugged into one of several classes that each character is slotted into. Invest enough bricks in the Jedi class for example and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with as they boomerang lightsabers across enemy heads and use their Midichlorian-powered skills to hurl objects across stages.

There’s also a new combo system for battle that opens up encounters, allowing you to juggle enemies into the air instead of mindlessly flailing away at them. All of these improvements are utilized in a staggering number of locations and missions pulled from the mainline series of Star Wars films, with each world recreated in gorgeous detail and serving as a hub for main missions and a galaxy worth of diversions. If you choose to stay on target and follow the film plots solely, you’ll find that each of the nine films generally clocks in at around an hour of wacky hijinks and wild escapades, while the plethora of side-missions keeps the action rolling for far longer. I’d sunk around 25 hours into the game before I started writing this review, and I still have so so much to do.

Aside from some technical issues, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is also a gorgeous game. While some last-gen elements do hold it back from fully realising its potential, what’s there is breathtaking to behold. Planets look lush, space appears wonderfully hostile, and my favourite graphical flourish is seeing how my figures become used and tarnished in these sandboxes. Sand. It’s coarse and grainy; I hate it so much.

A sandbox is an apt description, though, because The Skywalker Saga is a game that knows who its core demographic is. This is a game squarely aimed at children, an audience who won’t care about the game having a simplistic structure, a myriad of fetch quests, and other repetitive environments. This is a forgiving game, the anti-Elden Ring, and it knows it. And you know what? I absolutely adore The Skywalker Saga for sticking to its guns.

Even as a–barely-functioning–adult, I can’t help but find this LEGO game to be charming. It’s comfortably familiar, packed with some of the funniest gags I’ve ever seen in a LEGO game. It’s also packed with love and attention to the franchise that only dedicated fans could create. There are parts of it that could use some more work, like the squished in perspective of the co-op mode, but I’ve been having a Death Star blast of a good time as I soak up the scenery and engage in low-risk gameplay.

Playing solo–on my own; not as the handsome shoot-first rogue–has allowed me to take a tour of Star Wars at its best. featuring well-crafted boss fights, each film tribute is built around ferrying you to iconic highlights from the sci-fi franchise, like unleashing a horde of TIE Fighters in your direction as you attempt to escape through a derelict star destroyer while flying the Millennium Falcon. It’s these cinematic moments, given a LEGO makeover, but which fully embrace the epic nature of Star Wars, where the game shines at its absolute brightest.

I honestly can’t wait to dive right back into that galaxy that’s not so far, far away from me now. It’s a trip down the hyperspace memory lane that proves to be as appealing as ever; lovingly recreated and enhanced with the playful silliness of LEGO. The farce is strong with this one.