Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Review
Introduction
I'm not much of a Star Wars fan I've seen all the movies one time like everyone else, but I barely remember them except for the heavily memed scenes from the prequels. I have however played a lot of Star Wars games, like Lego Star Wars, The Force Unleashed, and Jedi Outcast this games sequel but this is my first time playing Academy.
Plot
When the game starts, you make your own character, who is named Jaden Korr, who is an up and coming Jedi that enlists in to the Jedi academy and takes on missions to keep peace in the galaxy.
Gameplay
When Jedi Academy was suggested to me, I was told that it was very hard and suffered from old video game-isms. I wouldn't say the game is hard for the most part, I played on Normal and most of my deaths were due to instant kill environmental hazards and certain level involving vehicles that I'll explain later. In terms of combat, you have a Lightsaber, some guns, and force powers that you can unlock and upgrade. The Lightsaber functions how you would expect, it lets you deflect laser shots and when you swing it someone dies, it doesn't feel very powerful normally since when you slash someone they just fall over and die. However it is possible to enable dismemberment in the game files which fixes the problem of it feeling weak. I know that the reason why this feature was hidden inside the game files was to prevent it from getting an M rating, similar to what the original Mortal Kombat did on its console release, but its not like people who saw the movies would've been shocked to see someone lose a limb after getting slashed by a laser sword.
Jedi Academy's guns look and feel good, and they all use the same type of ammo so you can use whichever one you want, whenever you want. They also all have an alternate firing mode, which is very rare in games nowadays. The only issue I have with the guns is that the E11 blaster is easily the best weapon, its very accurate and kills most enemies in only a few shots.
Regarding the enemies, most of what you'll be fighting are Storm Troopers (shocker, I know) and the occasional Lightsaber user. The games enemy AI for the most part is fine, and the lightsaber users are the most challenging enemies by far, however sometimes the standard enemies of moments of extreme stupidity, this is most obvious in the level "Meet Contact, Zonju V" where you have to fight enemies on speeder bikes, I'll let this video speak for itself how that level is.
The speeder bikes themselves aren't very good either, they turn very slowly and you can only fire its weapon in front of you, which makes equipping the lightsaber and letting the enemies chasing you to get close and slash at them easier.
Finally, the force powers are split in to three categories. The base powers, which you can upgrade through progression includes Force Push, Pull, etc. The Light powers, which include Force Healing and Mind Trick, and the Dark powers, which include Force Lightning and Force Grip. Both the Light and Dark Powers can be upgrade upon starting a level. The powers are a lot of fun to use although some are kind of overpowered, fully upgraded force healing makes it almost impossible to die from combat, and force lightning can kill several enemies at once if they're in close enough proximity.
Aesthetic
Jedi Academy's environments still look pretty good, and the music is alright, I don't know if its from the movie or just made to sound like it is. The character models for Human Characters are pretty rough, probably because they were made to look realistic which usually doesn't age well unless its stylized.
It's also worth mentioning that running the game in higher resolutions, like 1080p requires editing the configuration files, since the game doesn't support them by default.
Verdict
If you're a star wars fan and want to play as your own Jedi, and don't mind dealing with some of the flaws of an old game, then Jedi Academy is worth your time.