Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

"*waves hand in Jedi mind trick motion* You don't need to read this review"

This is the game your looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

If you can't tell by my Obi-Wan impression, you shouldn't bother even reading this review, just go out and buy the game. Let me start of by saying that I am probably the biggest Star Wars freak you will ever meet (no joke.) If you liked the first Lego Star Wars, get this game, it's better than the first. If you like Star Wars in general, still get this game, it's awesome. If you want to, play it safe and rent it, just to be sure. Ok, enough of that, let's actually talk about this awesome game.

Game play- 9/10

To tell you the truth, there isn't much to this game, it's fairly simple. You play through the original trilogy episodes(A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi), each of which is broken up into six different missions. You start off in the Mos Isley Cantina. From here you can access the different episodes to play in, the bar(where you can purchase various items with your Studs), and the parking lot(where you can view the various vehicles you have assembled throughout game play.) We will come back to that in a minute. What are Studs you ask? Simply put, they are the currency of the Lego Star Wars world. They are little round-shaped Lego pieces that you can find almost everywhere. They come in many different values and are very useful. In each mission, you play through an important chunk of the respective movie as a wide range of characters from that movie. Most of the levels involve on-foot characters, but a few allow you to pilot different vehicles. For example, an X-Wing in the Death Star trench. There are two modes to every level: Story and Free Play. The first time through that level, you can only choose Story mode, but once you have completed that level, you can go back and play through that level in Free Play mode. The only difference between Story mode and Free Play mode is that you can change characters at will during Free Play, by simply pressing L or R. You can then cycle from the selection of characters the game randomly selects for you when you start the level. Don't worry, it's a pretty wide selection, and you automatically get a character for each type of scenario you can encounter. This is extremely useful, and is sometimes necessary to obtain one of the many secrets hidden within each level. There is a set of ten mini-kits, four Gold Bricks, and one Red Brick per level. Mini-kits give you a crazy amount of Studs and a new vehicle to view outside the Cantina once you have obtained all ten in a level. Gold Bricks don't do anything until you have obtained quite a few of them. They are used to build useful objects in and outside the Cantina. Red Bricks are used to make special bonuses and cheats available for purchase at the bar. All of these are hidden very well throughout each level, so keep on eye open for them. You will notice that every time you pick up Studs, a little mater appears on the top of the screen. You must collect a crap-load of studs per level to fill this up. This is the True Jedi Status Meter. If you get fill the meter up, you will have obtained True Jedi Status for that level. You can get True Jedi status twice per level, once in Story mode, and once in Free Play mode. If you get True Jedi status in all levels and modes, you'll unlock something cool. You get four hearts and if you get hit four times, then you explode and loose a huge amount of Studs. This can get very annoying when trying to obtain true Jedi Status. There are many secrets in this game so try to find them all!

Story-10/10

This games story, is Star Wars's story, so naturally I am going to give it a perfect score. Everything is the same as the movies except, well, almost everything is Lego. A little humor is added in from time to time, which actually made me chuckle a little in one cut-scene, but once again, I won't spoil anything. That's pretty much it. If you don't know the Star Wars story, then unfortunately your out of luck. As much as I like Star Wars, this is not the purpose of this review.

Graphics-10/10

Well, there isn't much to judge here. I mean, they are Legos after all. It all flows nicely, I have yet to encounter lag in this game. I gave it a ten because for being animated Legos, this is the best your gonna get.

Sound-10/10

I have always loved the music in all of the Star Wars, I have the soundtrack to almost every one. If it was in the movie where your playing, chances are it's in the game too. The music stays the same unless you are under attack by some enemy, then it changes to usually more fast paced music. Once the battle is over, then it changes back over to the normal music. Your dealing with John Williams music here people, it's good, really good.

Difficulty- 4/10

The main game is not hard in any way whatsoever, it's some glitches and annoying situations and some really hard-to-get secrets that makes it so frustrating. There is nothing more frustrating than having your True Jedi Status meter this close to being full, and then some damn Stormtrooper comes up and shoots you once and you loose four thousand Studs. Then you finish the level with 99% percent completion status. This has happened to me several times and it is so annoying it's not even funny. The thing is, on some levels, you have to literally collect almost every Stud you see to fill up your meter, and if you get killed and don't get the Studs back, and there are no more Studs left in the entire level, your out of luck. This is very annoying, and is difficult to handle the frustration. That's why the difficulty level isn't 1. There are a few glitches too, which, unfortunately, you can get yourself caught in. Like if an enemy walker just keeps running over you again and again and again. You can't really do anything about it, you just have to get lucky and get out.. You will loose many a Stud this way so make sure not to get too close to enemy walkers. Other than these few annoyances, this game is easy, and is quite fun, once you get past all that annoying stuff.

Replay value-5/10

This depends how you view “beating a game.” If you think “beating a game” is just completing the main story then there is a lot of replay value. If you think “beating a game” is getting every secret and every little hidden bonus, like me, then this game doesn't have much replay value. The reason is simply because this game has a crap-load of secrets for you to find. So once again, it all depends how you look at it. Once you have all the secrets, there isn't much reason to come back and play this game.

Multi-player-5/10

There are pros and cons of playing multi-player in both Lego Star Wars games. The good things are, that you have two people fighting off annoying enemies, and two people collecting studs. The bad things are that the camera gets all messed up when one character goes too far one way, you have to stay close to the other player, and there IS such thing as friendly fire. If you want to just screw around with a buddy, or you need to get True Jedi status easier, than go with multi-player. If you want to enjoy the normal game play, and you don't want to stay close to the other player, than go solo. I would recommend finding all the secrets by yourself if you can, and only play with a buddy if you intend to screw around. It's kind of difficult to enjoy the game with another person always in the way. But like I said, if all you want to do is screw around, than grab a buddy and have a good time.

This is a very fun game with loads of secrets and stuff to keep you busy with it for a while. I still haven't found every secret myself. Just as one last tip, don't use cheat codes. It ruins the game and it will last you so much longer if you take the time to save up your Studs to buy that bonus or to get that last character. Just take my word for it, from gamer to gamer, don't use cheat codes on this game. It's not even than hard anyway. It might take you a lot longer, but that's the point now isn't it. To make the game be enjoyable for as long as possible. Well this is the end of my review for this kick-ass game, and I hope it helped you decide whether to get this game or not, or to help you pass the time away because you were bored.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/06