Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Review

As you can probably guess, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a game based on the movie of the same name. The game features lots of scenes taken directly from the movie and a heavy dose of lightsaber dueling, but the combat becomes repetitive pretty quickly and it feels more like a $50 ad to hype the movie than a good game on its own.

Story

Unless you are completely new to the Star Wars universe, you probably already know what happens in Revenge of the Sith. If you don’t already know, here is a hint – Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. This movie and game follows Anakin’s fall from the light side of the force to the dark side. The game chops the story up into bite size pieces that follow Anakin and Obi-Wan so it skips a lot of what happens in the movie. It spoils some things, but like I said, it doesn’t cover everything and most people already know most of what happens anyway, so you shouldn’t worry about ruining the movie for yourself.

Gameplay

At its core, Revenge of the Sith is a beat-‘em-up. Basically, you walk through a level killing everything that gets in your way. The main difference between this game and every other beat-‘em-up is that instead of using your fists or guns to get through the game you have lightsabers and force powers. For Star Wars fans, this is basically a dream come true because this is the absolute pinnacle of lightsaber combat in videogames. The controls are pretty simple – you have two types of lightsaber attacks along with a kick/lunge attack. Different combinations of these buttons produce combos and different attacks. You also have some force powers such as force lightning, mind control (you can make enemies fight for you), and force push. As you make your way through the game you gain access to different combos and powers and you also earn experience which you can use to power up your abilities.

Most of the time you’ll be hacking up droids and clone troopers, but occasionally you’ll come across a turret section where you have to man a big turret and blast away. These sections aren’t very well put together and only serve to break up the good stuff which is hacking enemies up with your lightsaber. Thankfully, these sections are short.

The best part of Revenge of the Sith is when you get to take on a boss. Boss battles include a couple of giant spider droids as well as most of the major battles from the movie. Locking up lightsaber to lightsaber with Count Dooku or General Grievous is definitely a thrill which makes this game almost worth it.

However, Revenge of the Sith is a very short experience. You can play through all 17 levels in about 5 hours. The gameplay is simple and this is by every definition a “button masher” type game, but it is fun and interesting enough to play through once. After that, you have been there and done that and the gameplay starts feeling pretty repetitive.

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