As a fan of Star Wars and Ubisofts open world games, like Far Cry, I was excited for this one. While not a bad game and I'm liking it so far, it could have been better.
It took a while to really get the ball rolling, get through the opening tutorial, and enter the open world. At that point, I fell in love with the vast landscape of Tatooine. I can't remember the last time I felt such freedom of movement in a Star Wars game.
The story was decent and gave opportunities to experience the cruel and seedy criminal underworld of Star Wars. But Kay could have been given more depth and backstory, but to me she came off as just a being a cookie cutter female version of Han Solo.
The aesthetic is beautiful and captures the Star Wars atmosphere entirely. The enormous and well-detailed worlds are captivating and fun to explore on foot or by vehicle. There are even classic Star Wars landmarks, such as Jabba's Palace, Mos Eisley's Cantina, and others. Besides, Tatooine, you'll also explore the planets Cantonica, Akiva, Kijimi and the moon Toshara. Space exploration is a possibility as well and gives you the chance to take off flying in your very own ship and explore space like I never have in a Star Wars game.
The graphics are excellent for the most part, with realistic looking environments, weather effects, water ripples. Everything looks amazing pixel by pixel. The character models, especially Kay's, could have used more work though.
The gameplay ran fairly smoothly, both in open combat and stealth. The missions felt a little too easy at times, except for when you raid Imperial Bases. There's plenty of mini games to enjoy as well, like gambling, arcade games, hacking, and others.
Now here's my main gripe: the bugs. I really hope the people working in the testing department got an earful, because they could have done better. There's aggravating bugs and glitches every so often that water down the experience, such as falling through the ground or clunky speeder bike controls ending with frequent crashes and Kay being thrown off. Avoiding this requires resets or constant saving. But personally, I didn't experience them too often and I didn't find them especially bad, so I still consider the game playable and enjoyable.
Overall, any serious fan of Star Wars and open-world sandbox games will at least want to give this a try via rent or borrowing it from a friend. But if you can't deal with the technical issues, then better titles exist.
