Summary And Another SW Game...

Pros: Interesting fast paced gameplay; Some-what custom leveling up system; Sweet storyline with a 'canon' plot!
Cons: Waaay too friggen easy (with the exception of Sith Master, which is actually fun); Too short; The control layout could have been better; Many skills are completely useless or unbalanced.

Reviewer's Comments

Graphics:
The graphics were surprisingly good. For being little skinny sprites on screen, the character models are actually quite detailed. The environments are astounding and filled with 100s of objects to interact with.

Sound:
The sound was...well...pretty much exactly like every other star wars game ever made...ever. Still, with all the cool sound effects (vader, blasters, lightsabers and such...) it makes for a sweet audio experience. While the average NPCs never have anything intelligent to say, the voice acting in the cinematics is top-notch. This is where the game really shines in my opinion. The actors really get into their roles and sound convincing.

Control:
The controls could have used a lot of tweaking. You can get around the many flaws, but they are very inconvenient on the last two difficulties. For some reason Vader's ultimate apprentice is only capable of grabbing objects 10 feet in front of him...and when given the chance to throw said object at a deadly sniper...90% of the time he throws it 100 feet off into the distance. When trying to grab the gunner off of a turret, you're likely to grab the turret itself 15 times...or the surrounding objects AROUND the turret before you actually manage to neutralize the threat.

Also, there's maybe 3 points in the entire game where jumping into a stationairy combo slash is actually useful. (Mostly when fighting AT-STs or other large enemies) God forbid you accidentally press jump and then slash on Sith Master. While you're genius character sits helplessy in the air for half an hour, EVERY enemy on the map will rip you down in about half a second.

The last main thing i'd rant about controls...is the lack of a "Get the hell up, you idiot!" button. If fate hates you, and you're knocked down on Sith Master...don't bother even holding onto the controller. You might as well go out for lunch or something. Even if your character finally decides to get up...you're likely to just be knocked down halfway through your casual 'get up' animation. Apparently all the big guys with lightsabers and blasters are of no REAL concern to vader's apprentice. He'll just take his time on this one.

Gameplay:
Despite the glaring problems in the control scheme, the gameplay is still fun. The fast-paced action and skills give you a wide variety of options. You can focus on melee and whipping around your lightsaber, gripping and throwing things, pushing, or just zapping everything around you with force lightning. The level design is usually pretty straight-forward. There's rarely 2 "different" paths that don't connect in 20 feet.

The Jedi fights are interesting but fall to the problem of ninja-gaiden. Instead of actually taking "skill" to defeat your enemy, there's usually some cheesy way to beat them that you repeat over and over again. Most boss fights can be done without even taking damage if you don't run in and swing like an idiot. This "weak point" is almost always right before every jedi in the game puts up this stupid little barrier of god-hood, and you can't hurt them until they enter their weak-point again.

Replay:
Everyone praises this game for some replay value I haven't been able to find. I guess you can collect the holocrons...but if you just looked around the first time then there wont be any left. Even so, you'll probably have all your skills and stats maxed out with one play-through. So the dozens of holocrons that only give you EXP are now...totally worthless! Whoo! The only REAL replay value is playing through the same game on Sith Master, the only difficulty where the enemy has a shot at killing you. While the cinematics are capturing and well plotted...you can't skip them. So if you really want to replay this game, you're forced to watch all the cinematics you've seen before...in their entirety. (In case being FORCED to watch all the cinematics everytime isn't enough, they add a cinematic viewer to the main menu.)

Overall:
A fun game, but I don't know if I'd hunker down $60 on it without trading it back soon. You will probably beat it in one sitting, if not two (depending on time constraints). Once you beat it, there's almost no reason to pick it up again. There's a total lack of multiplayer, but that's ok. God knows it would just be a button mashing nightmare. The saving grace for this game is that it's actually canon (accepted as fact and part of the real story)...I think. It cleverly manages to sink into a time frame shortly before the original Star Wars trilogy, without killing off anyone important.