LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Review – Xbox Series X

In 2007, I played LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on the Nintendo Wii. At the time, I thought TT Games had really set the bar on LEGO video games. The game was fun, funny, and perfectly captured the essence of the (at the time) entirety of the existing Star Wars movies. The combination of the magical stories of Star Wars and the whimsy and lightheartedness of LEGO combined together to create a perfect recipe for fun.

Now, 15 years later, TT Games has somehow done it again. When I first saw the announcement for The Skywalker Saga, my first thought was “I already played that game” and wondered if it would even be worth it to get what I assumed would be not much more than a remake, granted with three new movies worth of content tacked on.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The game is so much more than a remake. Obviously, with 15 years of technological advancements, it’s easy to assume that, graphically, the game will look better, and it does. While the various LEGO games have always done a fantastic job of bringing the feel of LEGO to the games, this one has really gone over the top with making everything look and feel like they are made from actual LEGO. The characters even have a subtle plastic-y shine to them. But it’s the magic of getting to play with the LEGO in a way that you never could with real ones that makes The Skywalker Saga so much fun.

Beyond expected visual improvements, the game is so much better than its predecessor in almost every way. Getting to assemble and destroy LEGO structures, discover and collect hidden secrets, building your collection of unlockable and playable characters (around 300 in all), add to the expansive and enjoyable experience of going through each movie moment by moment and feeling the freedom of exploring the major set piece areas of each of the nine Star Wars movies.

TT Games has had plenty of practice to perfect the LEGO game formula over the years. Even from the beginning, there has been a focus on certain puzzles needing certain specific skills or even specific characters to progress. Another thing that is particularly enjoyable with The Skywalker Saga is the focus on cooperation and teamwork to complete challenges.

One of the only things that concerns me with The Skywalker Saga is that there are so many planned DLC packages. I understand that this is the current trend across the board, and these packages are included if you shell out for the Deluxe Edition of the game. These DLC’s, however, look like they’re going to add a lot to the existing base game, even more characters, and stories from the ever-expanding Star Wars franchise, including The Mandalorian series, as well as the spin-off movies like Rogue One and Solo.

The game can be played solo, and is fully enjoyable alone, but really shines when you play it cooperatively. Couch co-op with a friend is so much fun. The game feels like a real LEGO playground that you can mess around in and explore with friends of all ages. As they have always done, too, the perfect mixture of staying true to the stories, as well as throwing in perfectly timed humor never gets old.

Even with my concerns about the DLC trends, I still can’t recommend this game enough. Fans of LEGO would enjoy it without necessarily being fans of Star Wars, and fans of Star Wars would feel the same. People who don’t like either…if they even exist…are probably terribly boring people that wouldn’t like anything at all, so we don’t even need to worry about them. Kidding aside, I think that even people who aren’t a fan of either LEGO or Star Wars would likely be able to find something enjoyable about this game. But those who fall in the middle of this Venn Diagram of fun, would doubtless have a near limitless amount of enjoyment ahead of them with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.