LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Deluxe Edition [Xbox]
Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a LEGO retelling of the entire Star Wars series, with a brick-like appearance and a humorous spin. We’ve played our fair share of LEGO games over the years, with the first of the Star Wars titles being released back in 2005, and boy - have they come a long way since then. Starting with a nice little intro cutscene of key moments from the movies, in LEGO form, with full voice acting - a new addition for the series - and giving you the choice of where you want to begin. All nine movies are available, with the first of each trilogy unlocked, allowing you to choose which order you want to play, whether release order or chronological timeline order.
As fans of the Star Wars franchise, it’s really enjoyable to play through all of the tales, recognising specific areas and moments - as well as appreciating all of the added humour and fun little things you’ll often notice hidden in the background. The story keeps you interested too, as cutscenes will deviate from the way things were presented in the movies, changing things up slightly with a humorous flair, to keep you interested and catch you off guard. It’s a fun way to keep the game loyal to the series, without rehashing the whole thing verbatim.
Getting to play as all of the characters is fun, and experiencing the slight differences in their playstyle is interesting, with a range of different classes and different skills available across them. Reaching some areas might need a specific class typez, encouraging you to come back in Free Play once you can open things up to other available characters from the main story. Jumping around with one character may feel different to another, and this really adds a level of uniqueness to them - as having all of the characters feel identical would make it feel less worthwhile switching. Aiming and shooting within levels is different to before also, with free aim instead of automatic and all of these changes - whilst seemingly minor - together make things feel significantly improved. You can even use cover, though it’s often not required, but at least the option is there. There’s various hub worlds to visit, and you’ve got the freedom to explore more of the areas than ever before. Interacting with NPCs will uncover side-quests and you can also take part in various Minigames, and this all bulks out the activities, making the world feel vibrant and alive. Outwith the planets, you can explore a little bit of space, taking part in dog-fights and shooting asteroids, and this feels great, too.
Visually a massive step up from previous LEGO titles, with beautifully rendered scenes and far more realistic mini-figure characters. We’ve got a tighter, third-person viewpoint this time round, which makes you feel far more involved than the looser, more distant viewpoint of games past. The lighting is stunning, with realistic highlights shining off of the plasticky figures, and reflective surfaces. The snow-filled environments of Hoth, the deserts of Tatooine and the asteroid-filled galaxies show the impressive texture upgrades, and everything is absolutely gorgeous. We’ve had the original trilogy, as well as the prequel trilogy done before in LEGO games, and of course, most recently we’ve seen LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens; so this revisits a lot of areas we’ve previously seen in LEGO format, but with enough change to make it not only look improved, but feel improved, too. Having full voice acting is a big change, though if you prefer, you can opt to change to ‘Mumble Mode’ which changes the audio back to the old LEGO style. The voices are really well done, with only a handful of characters being voiced by the original actors - though many are indiscernible from the movies. As always, there’s tonnes of humour in the level cutscenes, with slapstick tomfoolery that adds a playful vibe.
As with previous LEGO games, there’s tonnes of stuff to do and see - with a wide variety of collectibles to be found on your journey. There’s over 300 characters available to be played as (as well as alternate skins), and whilst playing through the Story will restrict you to specific characters at certain points, Free Play will allow you to revisit areas as whomever you choose. You can find and collect Kyber Bricks, which will unlock new features as well as upgraded abilities for your characters, though some of these upgrades feel less important than others. You can also purchase rumours in order to show things within the menu, without having discovered/triggered the characters in the world yet, which can be helpful if you’re missing something and can’t seem to track it down.
Overall, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a fun time, and gives you plenty of content to keep you busy. The main story can be completed in around 20 hours - around the same as it would take you to watch the movies, themselves - however, there’s a tonne of additional content and stuff for you to find that will keep you going far longer - reaching around the 80+ hour mark by the time you reach 100% completion. One downside we found is that co-op seems to have been added as an afterthought, with horrible split-screen that just detracts from the gameplay. Additionally, the second player gets a bit of a bum deal when it comes to boss fights, as only the main player gets to take part and these are some of the most exciting parts of the story - so we’d recommend playing through alone, if possible. Available on the Xbox Store for £49.99 for the base game, or £59.99 for the Deluxe Edition (which includes the game as well as 7 downloadable character packs), it’s a fairly standard price for the LEGO games, and the added tenner to upgrade to Deluxe gets you the extra character packs at a discount, which is decent if you’d already planned to pick them up. It’s definitely the best of all of the LEGO games currently available, and we look forward to seeing where Traveller’s Tales goes from here.
In the end, we decided to give LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Are you interested in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Warner Bros. Games for the LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Deluxe Edition Xbox review code!
