It is time for yet another LEGO video game – This time, a massive compilation of all current Star Wars movies. Here we have LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the 85th LEGO video game, and the 6th Star Wars-themed game brought to us, of course, by developer Traveler’s Tales, who have created most of the licensed LEGO games and almost all of the Star Wars versions. With all the previous success I am pretty keen to see what they do to change up their already solid game style, especially since this will be the first entry into the Next-Gen consoles.

This is the complete saga, however, that title has already been used, and now we have ‘The Skywalker Saga,’ spanning all nine movies. You can probably imagine that this would make for a rather large game, and you would be right. Starting off the game, you can choose to begin at the start of any of the three trilogies, all of which have five main missions and I do not even know how many puzzles and side missions.

Along with this onslaught of content, there are also several little things that you can do. Crazy, funny things only LEGO games can do. I won’t spoil them, just know that you could spend hours in just one area uncovering so many secrets. The metric tonne of content is not the only upgrade I noticed. There has been a significant buff to the controls, especially in the combat area, but even in the special access controls. With the combat, the only real but significant change is now a combo system where you can string attacks with knock-ups, ground slams, and force abilities. This does mainly focus on melee rather than ranged, and more specifically, lightsaber users.

With the special access controls, or what I call them being the specific control panels or interactable objects, there are several specific abilities that only certain character types can do like some alien species speaking their specific languages, so you need a protocol droid in the party to translate. There is a heap of these types of mechanics, even in stages where you do not have that certain type of character, and that’s where Free Play comes in.

In Free Play, you can replay completed stages using whatever characters you have unlocked. To unlock the massive pool of characters, you can complete different challenges and side quests. Also coming out are characters from the Mandalorian and Bad Batch series, and I almost gave up on this game because I noticed Ahsoka Tano was on the list of possible characters. I am petty like that. Joking, of course. It did make me a little sad as she is my favorite character. I was pleasantly relieved that at least the Mandalorian version will join the cast.

Sorry, moving on from my story, but being able to use any character will allow you to complete those role-specific puzzles. Along with unlocking characters, you also collect ship parts. You can go to orbit, fight Separatist ships and Bounty Hunters, shoot asteroids, or compete in time trial races – all super fun.

Now I can only compare the look of this game to the past generation versions, but on the Playstation 5, it looks good. The cinematics in particular are impressive and are almost like watching a LEGO movie. Even the game graphics themselves look amazing. Although I did encounter one issue only once in Episode Three, I believe when fighting Anakin, we got into a saber lock, but my lightsaber did not show up on screen and neither did the button mash mechanic. That was the only real in-game performance issue I came across which in the grand scheme is not bad at all.

There is not a lot to say about the music. It is Star Wars music. It is perfect. What more can I say? Saying that though, I loved the voice acting, it is just that some of the characters were hard to listen to because you can tell that it is not the same actor or voice actor from the movies or TV shows. Not to say that they were bad, it just took a bit to accept that others can voice the characters, which is more of a ‘me issue’ as a pretty hardcore Star Wars fan.

All in all, a solid performance by all, and I did appreciate the fact that they had some of the iconic lines in there. As an adult, it does kind of suck that it is very much a kid’s game, only because it leaves out some of the more mature parts of the saga. This is not a gripe or anything, it is just that some of the biggest story moments are the more mature parts, not that it will be much of a worry for kids. As an example of one iconic moment that is missing, I will just say younglings. If you get the reference, it is moments like this that are missing.

As far as new games are going at the moment, we have been seeing a lot of rushed work with a fair assortment of bugs. Luckily, LEGO Star Wars is pretty solid. I only came across two issues one I mentioned above that only happened once. The other issue happened twice but at the very start of my playthrough, when the screen was changing to a new area the screen went black and stayed there, forcing me to restart the game. As I said though, it happened twice at the beginning, in like, the first half-hour or so, and I did not lose any progress, so it was more of a very minor inconvenience.

So, what do I think of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga? Well, it has to be the best LEGO game I have played so far, and I am pretty keen to see where they will go with some of the other licenses. Great for all ages. I even think you could play it and smaller children would enjoy watching it as a show.

For me as a Star Wars fanboy, I think they did a pretty good job and a free idea, they could even create DLC with iconic moments from the Clone Wars show that you could play. Also, since they are bringing in characters from Rogue One, Solo, and Mandalorian, maybe some missions from those movies and shows. They may already be doing that, but either way, this is definitely a great game worthy of a play-through.

Written by: Adam Brasher