Because I love Star Wars, and want to give the game credit where it deserves it, I'll start with the good. The visuals in SW:TFU2 are truly stunning. Lucas once again proves that he has created easily the prettiest, shiniest, and highest definition science fiction universe ever. The animations are smooth, and the worlds are very real. Every particle effect is brilliant and the force looks cooler and more powerful than ever in the hands of our hero, Starkiller. Facial expressions look very human, and the detail put in to making Starkiller and Kota come alive is astounding. Other reviewers have said it, and I agree, that this is one of the best looking games I've played.
Also worthy of note is that, in typical Star Wars fashion, the audio work is spectacular. From our favorite familiar tunes and some new ones, to the sounds of battle, your ears will always be in the game. The voice acting, combined with the aforementioned attention to detail in facial expressions and character designs really makes it a true Star Wars experience. See the video below:
Unfortunately, no matter how glossy the coat of paint, the remainder of the experience falls somewhat short. I bought the game last night, and started playing it at 9:00PM. I was finished by 1:30AM. For those of you who have trouble with math, that's a 4 hour 30 minute run time. Granted I played it through on easy so I could get the story, but even so, thats a disturbingly short game.
During most of that time I found myself endlessly cutting through swaths of enemies with very little variety in order to get to the next cutscene, boss fight, free fall, or button mash sequence, which, in all fairness, are pretty cool when you get to them. The problem is, those sequences make up less than a quarter of the playtime, so most of the time it's just hack and slash. The levels feel needlessly drawn out for the sole purpose of extending playtime, though at least they look good enough to keep you hypnotized by the environment while you cut through the ranks. The Boss fights (all 3 of them) are neat, and epic, but overall pretty simple and repetetive. You fight the big Gorog from the trailer, a big droid, and (SPOILER) Darth Vader...Raise your hand if you're shocked. The free fall sequences are a nice touch, though I'm glad they only had three of them, as they, like much of the rest of the game, are fairly repetetive.
Combat is nearly identical to the original game, with the interesting new power mind trick, which is rarely useful, though rather amusing. The enemies are all very simple to kill. You either hack/force them to bits or only hack them to bits, or only force them to bits.
And now we come to it. The story. Even with all the bad parts, you'd still expect the story to hold up, right? Well, it's a mixed bag. I liked it overall. I'll give you a rundown.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Darth Vader is trying to clone Starkiller on Kamino. He tells you that you are the latest attempt, but that the process is imperfect. You have a vision of Vader killing the original, freak out and run away. You go get Kota because you've had visions of him and you think he can lead you to Juno (your sweety from game 1) who you've also had visions of. You get Kota who tells you Jedi can't be cloned and that you must in fact be the real Starkiller. Meanwhile Vader sends Boba Fett to capture Juno. You go to Dagobah and do some crap in the Dark Side Cave where you have more visions of yourself and Juno. Yoda is there. Just as you are about to reunite with her, the rebel fleet is attacked and Juno is captured by Fett. Jerk. You and Kota and the rebel fleet chase Fett and the Imperials to Kamino where there's a space fight and you crash a ship into a Kamino city. Kota tries to get you to stay with the army and help destroy the Imperials on Kamino, but you say you only care about Juno, so you chase her down. You kill a bunch of dudes then have some visions, then confront Vader, who runs away from you while simultaneously releasing clone versions of you for you to fight. Wimp. He escapes, sort of. You chase him into a room where he has Juno, and he tells you he'll kill her if you don't submit to him. You do so, he lets her go, and she tries to kill him. He force throws her through a window. That pisses you off so you pummel him and then have the option to either be good or evil, which comes down to a single button press, unlike in the first game where this choice determined who you fought for the final boss. If your good, the alliance captures Vader, Juno is alive, you kiss, and the game ends with you still being unsure of whether or not you're a clone, and Fett following you into space. If your bad, another clone of you comes up behind you, kills you, kills the Rebel alliance, and Juno is dead.END SPOILER
The story is decent. Not good, and not bad. It's very disappointing that we don't get clarification on the main mystery of the game. But at least it wraps up the the Juno thing pretty well, and reunites us with favorites like PROXY and Kota from TFU1. It's a cool adventure over all, and definitely intriguing, but unlike the original, it does very little to affect how we perceive the events of the original or prequel trilogies unlike the first game which dropped a very well done bomb on the Universe, and explained how the alliance was formed. For the most part it serves in a similar manner to the Empire Strikes Back, in that it is mostly just a connector between part one and the inevitable part three. That's OK with me, because now I know what the intent of these games are. They're not supposed to just be Episode 3.5, but rather a whole new stand alone trilogy within the 6 episodes. My other big disappointment was that characters like Yoda and Boba Fett, which were made out to be important in the trailers, served only as cameos, though I would bet money that we get to fight Fett in the third game.
Overall I enjoyed the experience, though only because I am a Star Wars fan. If I wasn't, this would have been a real waste of money. For those of you interested in the game I have two pieces of advice:
1) Make sure you played the original first, as you will be lost otherwise, and
2) Rent it rather than buy it if you can.
You can literally beat this game in an afternoon, and it's simply not worth $50. The story is OK, but not OK enough to excuse the other bad aspects of the game. Honestly, with all the work they put into sound, acting, and visuals, this would have made an awesome feature length CGI movie.
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