LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

I have wanted to love the LEGO games for years. I tried starting a few, but I would get distracted and stop playing before making any real headway. Watching others play or hearing about friends has always kept me interested though.

Well last week, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga came out. I have been enjoying the trailers building up to the release. The humour has kept me going a couple of mornings. I am also excited about the new open-world options, with more of the world and space itself explorable.

My biggest decision wasn’t if I get The Skywalker Saga. It was simply if I would play through in episode order, or the movie release order?

In the end, playing in Episode order won out. The Skywalker Saga lets you pick the start of any trilogy (episodes 1, 4 or 7) and the rest unlock when you complete the story.

The Skywalker Saga holds the player’s hand a lot more than any other LEGO game I remember. You always know where you are headed, as the waypoint appears only a short distance away. Following the marks creates a path that lets you power through the story.

I did spend a fair amount of time exploring to start with. As I said, I hadn’t made much headway in any other LEGO game, so it took me a while to work out what seems a common theme. Power through the story first, then come back in Free Play mode to explore as much as you like!

Playing on PlayStation 5, there was one major glitch that threw me. Following Jar Jar a lake, I assumed that a cut scene showing the Jedi heading to the Gungan home would start. Well, the screen went black, and I could hear gurgling music.

In the end, I had to shut down the game and reload a save. Not the end of the world, but it did pull me out of my immersion for a little bit. The other gripe I have is the strange camera behaviour, but maybe I need to get used to this.

I am hoping every couple of nights to be able to sit down and power through an episode of The Skywalker Saga. This should see me through the main story pretty quickly, and unlock the basics of the game.

Fingers crossed that come my break after Easter, I will then be able to explore the galaxy in Free Play mode. Then I will see what The Skywalker ruly has to offer!

Last week I had grand plans of knocking over an episode of the Skywalker Saga every night before my break. This would leave me plenty of free time to partake in free play mode and explore at my leisure.

That was the intention. The extra build up when you are about to take time off work is something I mismanage every time. I did get to finish the first trilogy story though. I didn’t miss playing the Skywalker Saga completely!

One night, I was flipping up between trying Episode 4 or watching something before bed. Thinking clearly, Episode 4 wouldn’t work as that would be a good couple of hours to finish it. And I didn’t feel like watching anything. I did have some pre-order characters to play with though…

Yep, The Mandalorian and Grogu are now part of my available characters. Well, I say and Grogu. If you pick The Mandalorian, Grogu automatically gets added as an extra character.

It’s adorable seeing him float around with you. And if the action gets heavy, the doors on his carrier close for protection!

Walking around I also noticed I need a ‘villain’ character to use a terminal. There were a couple of villains I had unlocked, but not bought. Now that I was messing with free play, there was one villain that I felt The Skywalker Saga had overlooked.

Buying General Grievous, the first thing he did was toss a grenade on a breakable. Running around and ripping into everything with 4 lightsabers was as fun as I thought it would be.

General Grievous also has the ability to shoot with a blaster, making him a great combat character. You can’t belt through The Skywalker Saga with only him though. He can’t build for example, and a lot of puzzles need The Force.

So not too much of a dent in The Skywalker Saga yet, but I am still having a blast running through it!

So this week, I finished LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Episodes 4 to 9 story missions finished, with True Jedi reached in each. I am still a long way from Completing them though – right now, only Episode 1 and the planet Dagobah are 100% complete. A literal drop in the Skywalker Saga ocean!

It’s a little hard to explain, but the episodes in the Skywalker Saga are changed from the source stories. The changes make things very fun, and allow challenges in knowing how to continue the story.

For example, in Episode 4 there is the sequence where the heroes rescue Leia. It’s an iconic sequence, culminating in Han Solo’s “Boring conversation anyway”. In Skywalker Saga, you need to get the lifts working again to get to Leia’s cell. It looks like there may be multiple ways to achieve this, but I laughed out loud at the path I chose.

As Ben Kenobi says, whether I played the right way or not depends on a certain point of view. I did discover that in some ways, I completed the Skywalker Saga in the ‘wrong’ order.

While playing the early episodes, it was obvious there were skills I missed to get to some extra areas. Nothing to stop you from finishing the story. Areas where you could nab Kyber bricks early for example weren’t accessible.

Figuring I would need to put some thought into it later, I let it be. Making my way through Episode 8 though revealed the truth. Until the story unlocks some powers, you can’t do anything, even in Free Play. So if I had played in film release order, I could have done some bonus things faster.

Now that I have finished the story, I began the task of collecting everything for a Platinum run. Here, the true scope of the Skywalker Saga hit me. Hard. I played for almost 3 hours in Mos Eisley on Tatooine (one of the game areas), and I am still not 100% done with that area.

If I had been following a guide, I could have reached the level of completion in about half the time. I would have also known that some solutions required completing items off-planet. There is a huge amount of items to collect, and a vast amount of area to explore. An entire Galaxy, to be precise!

Luckily, the humour of the Skywalker Saga still keeps me interested. The entire game is full of ‘little things’ that are as fun to find as the actual collectables. Some things you need to be looking in the right place at the right time, like Grogu’s idle animation.

Others are sprinkled through the levels, such as a Raiders of the Lost Ark callout in Episode 7.

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. The question I have to ask myself now is simple – how much do I enjoy playing it? Do I enjoy it enough to go for the Platinum trophy?

There are hundreds of collectables I need to find. Most of them are scattered around the galaxy now, but I still have story missions to complete. Story missions are particular tasks you need to complete, and doing all of them unlocks a brick. I also have to find all the mini kits scattered around the missions for the Kyber bricks and ships.

Even with a guide, there is a good chance there is at least another 50 hours of gameplay ahead of me. The number of collectables is now overwhelming me quite a bit right now. That said, the Skywalker Saga is also quite relaxing to play through. So a few nights destressing once I am back at work might work well.