Return of the Sith

Return of the Sith Review
by: Orias Obderhode

When I was assigned to review Return of the Sith, I wasn’t sure what to think. Even though I have seen all Star Wars movies, I could hardly say that I am a die-hard fan. I watched the movies and enjoyed them a good bit, but I didn’t come close to remember storyline details. With that said, the story probably made less sense to me than it would if I would have been a die-hard Star Wars fan, so bear that in mind!

Story:

I had a very hard time following the story. I got bits and pieces of it, but my limited Star Wars knowledge prevented me from probably understanding the full cast of characters. I am assuming that many of the characters introduced are characters many Star Wars fans would recognize, but in my case, I couldn’t recognize any of them.

I couldn’t get attached to any of the characters. You’d simply be told what to do, and in the very beginning, you have absolutely no direction whatsoever. You start out on what I presume to be a spaceship. After some walking you discover that you are to help a woman, Ayla, find her brother who was taken by the empire (I think?). You also learn that you used to fight in some war (I’m really sorry, it probably was an actual Star Wars war but I don’t know what it was) and you are now a mercenary.

You then go off to a desert looking town to find a long lost friend of Cail (the protagonist) and find a shuttle that takes you to some other desert planet. Then you get ambushed by desert people twice and then I didn’t know what to do. I walked around, slowly I might add, to figure out what was to happen next and could never figure it out.

However, my copy of the game came with several save files, so I decided to give em a go! Obviously the story didn’t make much sense because I had missed so much, but it felt like more of the same. The final save file allowed me to see the final CS in which you would think there would be a boss, but there was not.


Great… and who is Danvir?



But, I did run into one character I recognized (or so I thought!) I saw this NPC and thought it bared a striking resemblance to the protagonist of a certain Final Fantasy game.


Cloud, I finally found you!



Gameplay:

The battle system is default RM2k3 if I am not mistaken. Being default in it of itself is not a bad thing. I generally enjoy it. However, there were so few abilities to use and the ones you did have seemed so weak that the battles consisted of me mashing Attack as soon as I possibly could. Generally having no battle music didn’t help either.

However, from playing through a few of the other save files, you see that Killer Wolf added some features. Depending on what Light Saber you have, you get to use different abilities. This is further improved in that the way you fight with the weapon (idk what this means) influences what you learn.

From playing other save files, I also noticed Cail had some abilities he could use outside of battle. He could use the force to jump over obstacles and reach items that previously could not be attained. However, I never got to experience any of the new features much. The save file that allowed me to play around with these features ended soon, telling me that this was just a demo and I could continue to play through the buggy untested areas ahead if I really wanted too… unfortunately, I didn’t, so I stopped.



Graphics and Audio:

Graphics were just a mess. Some areas looked decent, but there were always tiles that just didn’t seem like they belonged. I always say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I have added some pictures to demonstrate my point.


This was one of the better looking areas in the game. This was Cail’s ship if I understood correctly. It took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to leave the ship. Can you spot the exit?


Oh, that’s a door?


Not only are the sand tiles beautiful and non-repetitive… the house looks great!


I really apologize. I am normally not too picky when it comes to graphics. I think the general layouts of the areas are totally fine, but could be enriched if all graphics seemed to fit and you just added a level of detail and polish that was not present in Revenge of the Sith.

Final thoughts:

I really gave this game a genuine good try. I tried to follow the story, and I tried every possible thing I could think of when I got stuck. I saw bits and pieces of the whole game and finished with watching the last CS. Adding a bit more the plot, refining the battle system (even just adding music and a few more abilities would be enough), and fixing up the graphics would go a long way in improving the game!

Cons:
- I think it would be impossible to walk more SLOWLY. It takes forever to trudge through the wide barren maps.
- Where is the battle music!? Battles are boring and monotonous without music.
- Everything feels so rushed and fast paced. Perhaps adding a few more cutscenes and explanations would be of great help.
- I eventually just stopped talking to NPCs because they never said anything helpful. In the desert place all of them outside speak alien language and say the same thing no matter what you say in response. (However, when I was stuck, I literally talked to everything and still couldn’t figure out what to do).

I award Revenge of the Sith a 1/5. I wish I could rate it higher, but I did not enjoy my experience playing through the game. Typically, a game has about an hour to hook me, and while this one did not, I really wanted to continue to it give a fair and honest revie