Trigger Cut Game Reviews

Ubisoft’s greatest strength has been in creating beautiful worlds.  This strength is at play in SWO and is the best part of the game. The cities they created here feel authentic to the source material and it is great to just hang out in these areas and soak in the vibes, visuals, and sounds of Star Wars.  Ubisoft has always struggled with inserting interesting gameplay into the beautiful worlds they create and they continue to show their weakness in this game as well. While not as bloated as most other Ubisoft games, the gameplay is shallow with weak gunplay that lacks punch, it has boring and generic stealth mechanics, and an open world that looks great but is not reactive to the players action at all. If you are looking for Star Wars GTA, you will be disappointed. You cannot go on crime sprees here. I am guessing this has to do with the IP being decidedly PG. This makes sense yet it is still disappointing. The faction system is a let down as it is a pretty shallow system that doesn’t really affect your play experience in any meaningful way.  The narrative has its moments, with some strong characters. Kay Vess is a likable protagonist with an interesting backstory. Her relationship with Nix is believable and will hit you in the feels if you are a pet owner.  Unfortunately, the best parts of the story are at the end. SWO is similar to other Ubisoft games in that the narrative is dictated by its structure. In this case, you are recruiting people to help you pull off a big heist. The structure is similar in that you can tackle any of these storylines in any order you want. It naturally leads to pacing issues and lack of narrative cohesion. If you do decide to play this game, I recommend you mainline the story and ignore most of the open world fluff as it will provide you with a more straightforward, guided playthrough that only takes between 15 to 18 hours to complete.