STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy™ Reviews

Played the campaign 5 times. Gonna make a new character and do it again every year.

Best Lightsaber combat this side of the Mason-Dixon

Once you calibrate your control settings, it's level of detail of light saber and force power play are unmatched

Just like Jedi Outcast but way less cryptic. A- for not being able to play as Kyle and hear his scream when you jump off a cliff

I replayed many years after and it remains a great game!

Poorly tuned. Nearly everything about this game feels at least a little wrong, almost like it wasn't playtested enough or something. The movement and shooting both feel very awkward, way below the standards of what you could expect from a game released in 2003. The weapons are a mixed bag; the ones that let you skip the bad shooting mechanics (basically any AoE weapon) are the most fun. Level design and enemy encounters are boring and repetitive, though they do try some unique tricks here and there which work out OK (like the prison escape level with the rancor). There are fixes for the performance but by default the framerate fluctuates like crazy on modern systems. And the story, to my taste, is just totally forgettable, managing to suck the charisma out of Kyle Katarn, one of the more memorable characters from previous iterations of this series. I think this game implements the John Williams score really badly too--I managed to get really sick of it by the end of the game, which I can't say for other Star Wars games that feature Williams' music, like Battlefront 2 (2005). The saber combat is very impressively animated, and upon a google/Steam guide investigation it seems like there's a lot of hidden depth to it. But there's nothing preventing your average novice to the 3rd person-action genre--me, in other words--to just mash left-click while wiggling the mouse around for 95% of the game's many lightsaber duels, which actually works perfectly fine. I don't feel too bad about not trying to master complex mechanics that the game makes absolutely no effort to teach me--I took the cheesy path instead. The problem is that you get to the 5% of those fights, the bosses and mini-bosses, and the game expects you to actually know how to fight. So I won't lie to you, I cheesed my way through the last 3 or 4 of those fights by spamming force lightning and running away. Not exactly the most authentic experience to have with this game, but actually trying to learn the mechanics at a deep level just didn't seem to me to be worth it, especially since 1) again, the game doesn't teach you any of it whatsoever, 2) the game mostly doesn't require any deep knowledge of its systems, and 3) the game isn't very good. At least force powers are fun, kind of. Your character becomes very overpowered very quickly, which is for the best for a game like this. Powers synergize well with both blaster and lightsaber playstyles, enhancing the enjoyment of both. The jankiness of the game's physics makes it so that force lightning will blast enemies way off into the distance team-rocket style, which is pretty entertaining. But the meter-management involved is just painful--those platforming sections in the endgame involve repeatedly waiting for your force power meter to regenerate in order to complete successive jumps, not fun. In fact there is generally a lot of waiting for force power to regenerate in this game, killing the flow of action with unnecessary pauses. I've never played the mods for this game but it seems like that would be the reason to buy it. Otherwise, you're much better taking your 9-hours or more of play investment elsewhere.

playing this for the first time and it's pretty fun and the controls hold up. Only complaint about this game is that you have to make sure to delete old save files, because if it's full you can't save your progress beyond the checkpoints.

I'd say no game comes close to its lightsaber combat, even 22 years later. It does have kind of a steep learning curve, but it is so much fun once you really get it. Everything except the story (which is a bit worse here) is improved compared to its prequel, Jedi Outcast. The graphics, although dated, weirdly enough do not feel out of place. P.s. movie duels mod rules

This game (and Movie Duels mod) is everything I wanted from a Star Wars game

They don't make games like that anymore. No wonder more and more players are coming back. Especially with the Mod Moviebattles II this game is an absolute masterpiece.