Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™

Out of all the Star Wars I have played in my life and out of all the ones available now on gog, this one stands alone as my all time favorite. There are two kinds of Jedi Knight fans: those who prefer Outcast and those who prefer Academy. I am obviously the latter. The reason for this is twofold: the improved saber combat and the mission selection. The saber from Outcast was given many, many more options and moves than in Outcast. You even have the ability to eventually choose between single, double-bladed, or dual sabers with 3 fighting styles each. This allows for insane replayability and extraordinary variation in the multiplayer. On top of this is the fact that you begin the game with your saber itself. Some people might criticize that as making the game too easy, I'll just say that I consider it making the game too fun! The shooting in Outcast for the first few levels was a weak point IMO because the horribly slow nature of the blasters just isn't that fun to shoot when it's all that's at your disposal. The single player missions in Jedi Academy are uniquely presented to you selectively. As the story progresses you are given 5 missions to complete but are only required to do 4 of them. This allows you to either prolong or quicken the pace of the game to your liking as well as find a level or two that you don't like and skip it every time if you wish! I prefer this when it comes to replaying the game as sometimes I just want to do all the quick missions and get to the endgame as soon as possible where the whole thing consists of dozens of amazing saber duels. However, massacring stormtroopers is its own kind of fun. This game is a top notch Jedi combat simulator from beginning to end that is unmatched when it comes to the gameplay. Yeah the story might be a little cheesy but it more than suffices. If story is what you want, I'll point you to KOTOR II. If you're here for the most addicting and fun third person combat you've ever played, look no further.

This game is a gem, because not only that it is based on the Star Wars universe, but it has the best and most rewarding light saber combat system from all the SW games. It is a story driven action game in which you get to be a Jedi apprentice at Luke Skywalker's Academy. You can customize your Jedi hero by choosing the gender, race, clothing, and then choose your light saber (hilt and color). Only the Jedi colors (no red) are available in single player, including Mace Windu's purple. The saber can be upgraded later on to staff or dual sabers, which is awesome. By doing missions, you get to choose between light and dark force powers, like heal, mind trick, force lightning. These can be upgraded with time, while the "core" powers (jump, push, pull, etc), upgrade automatically with your in game progression. After several missions you become a jedi knight and you can upgrade your sword to Darth Maul's staff, or dual wielding light sabers. Again you get to pick the colors, you can have a blue and green sword if you like. Each saber style has it's own combo moves, the jedi can do lots of acrobatics with the saber which need some time to get used with, but after some practice they add a lot to the combat system. The missions are varied, you even get to ride creatures or vehicles. Some missions are quite long and you get to kill lots of imperial troops. However they aren't boring because with time you get to fight more and more sith. The light saber duels are the best part of this game. Sometimes these fights can be quite unpredictable, you can die quite fast or waste two sith warriors at once in a spectacular combo in Matrix style slow motion. You also get to meet several key figures from the Star Wars universe, like Luke, Chewbacca, Kyle Katarn (from previous SW games), and Boba Fet. In the last missions the sith you will meet can be quite challenging, but this only makes the game more interesting. The music is of course the music from Star Wars, it is epic...

I personally felt that the first Jedi Knight game will be one of 3 all time favorite Star Wars games and my personal all time favorite video game of all time. (1. Jedi Knight, 2. S.W. Knights of the Old Republic, 3. XWing II: Tie Fighter). I played the CDRom version of Jedi Knight for Windows 98 2nd Edition on with 64 MB Ram and a brand new NVidida RivaTNT graphics card. It was Star Wars gaming nirvana for me. I also really liked the Sequel Outcast. Didn't enjoy the first 2 levels where you didn't have force powers or a light saber. The 3rd and final game of the series was this: Jedi Academy. I really loved how the game started as a fun adventure from the Get Go. The fun factor of being a Padawan from the start of the game made this a very enjoyable sequel. I liked it more than Jedi Knight 2 Outcast, but I still feel that Jedi Knight was a better game. Academy was also the last game from LucasArts that focused on this game style light saber/Force combat. There wouldn't be this type of game up through the TakeOver by Disney. This was also the last use of the Quake 3 Graphics Engine and it was showing at the time of it's release. Compared to other action games that came out during this era the Quake 3 Engine could still look good but was starting to show it's age. The fact that no other games would be released in the Jedi Knight franchise made this game the sad/bittersweet farewell for me after finishing it. I will always remember the joys of playing as and along side Kyle Katarn. In fact, I will probably load this game right now and play it again. May 4th is just a day away as I type this, so to all my fellow SciFi/Star Wars geeks out there. May the 4th be with you.

I have this on steam and 100% recommend it. The saber combat is way better than Jedi outcast and the multiplayer is much more active (Yes, people still play multiplayer, mostly japlus and Movie Battles 2). It is more action packed than outcast with less puzzles etc (Which I'm not very good at, partly why I prefer Jedi Academy). It also has a better story. Overall however, Jedi Academy is better than Jedi Outcast and A superb game.