Also on: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: Aspyr
Medium: Digital
Players: 1-2
Online: No
ESRB: T
As I wrote just last week, I’m of two minds about the fact that Aspyr is consistently bringing sixth-generation games like Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles back from the dead.
On the one hand, as someone who wasn’t really into gaming when a lot of these games first released, I love that Aspyr is helping me remedy all kinds of blind spots from the era – quite a few Star Wars games, obviously, but also other relatively under-the-radar games like Stubbs the Zombie. So from that perspective, it’s neat to play Jedi Power Battles. As someone who has a soft spot for the mid-tier of games that barely exists anymore, I love seeing similar games from decades past.
On the other hand, however, there’s the fact that Jedi Power Battles isn’t a particularly interesting game. It got middling to average reviews back when it first came out, and there’s nothing about this re-release to suggest that it’s a hidden gem. It’s basically a generic action game with Star Wars slapped on top, featuring some fairly easy platforming and plenty of hacking and slashing your way through forgettable enemies. I suppose the draw here is being able to revisit locations and enemies from The Phantom Menace, but the game is so lacking in personality and so repetitive that unless you really need to relive The Phantom Menace specifically, it feels like you could get similar experiences from all kinds of other sources (including many of Aspyr’s other Star Wars re-releases).
It’s worth noting that, as re-releases go, this is pretty barebones. You can play as previously locked characters like Darth Maul and Queen Amidala, and you can input cheat codes, but beyond that? The graphics are nicer, obviously, but not to the extent you might expect – this version of the game is an HD update of the Dreamcast version of the game, and if you go hunting around YouTube for video of the Dreamcast version, you’ll notice the visuals here aren’t that different.
Just about the only thing memorable from Jedi Power Battles is that Jar-Jar Binks shows up around the beginning of the second level, and immediately demonstrates why he was so loathed back when Episode 1 first came out with a constant, high-pitched scream as he runs for his life. As someone who, somehow, has never seen any Star Wars movies, I only knew about Jar-Jar because of how universally despised he was back in the day, and it literally took five seconds of him appearing in this game for me to fully understand and support the hate.
All of which is to say, there’s not really much good reason to seek out Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles. It doesn’t do anything remotely interesting and there are plenty of other Star Wars games from the era that are available to play, so unless you have some very specific nostalgic memories tied to Jedi Power Battles, you’re definitely better off revisiting one of those other games and leaving this one alone.
Aspyr provided us with a Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles PC code for review purposes.
