Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™

I would give this game a 4.5/5. Not a masterpiece but an incredibly fun game. If you want the best lightsaber combat ever made in a game, look no further. Also has solid gun play with a lot of fun weapons. The level design is where this game shines. Such varied and fun levels make you feel like you are in the Star Wars universe. Also some really good voice acting and the story is pretty good. Far better than Fallen Order and was made 16 years prior. Also check out the second Jedi Knight game, Jedi Outcast.

I think this game gets rave reviews from fanatical star wars fans, not from normal gamers. For a 2003 game this was fairly good looking, it has a nice story that's worth seeing, had little to no glitching, and had a huge selection of maps. This feels like they didn't know what kind of game they really wanted to make so they just included as much as possible without making sure it all worked correctly (looking at you speeder bikes). The AI even for 2003 is pretty basic, the controls are okay sometimes and bad at others, and many of the guns and powers are useless the second half of the game. I did have a pretty good time taking advantage of the stupid AI to get enemies to fall off of building, bridges and other stuff. As a shooter its kind of lack luster do to enemies that just stand there as you shoot them. As a light saber fighting game it's controls are terrible but the AI is so bad that they have to outnumber you or put you in scripted fights you can't win to make enemies a threat. There are also a few weird level that don't really fit with a shooter/fighter game and keep it kind of interesting, but control kind of funny. Still I had some fun and the pre-disney story was way better. I wish this had been the basis for the 7th movie, I would have watched more than half of it.

Amazing game that I happily come back to every 5 years. Neither better not worse than Jedi Outcast (to me), Jedi Academy stands next to its predecessor as a perfect complement. Story is much better in Outcast but Academy almost doesn't bother with the story - it skips to running around with the saber right away and sticks to it. And it works. The result is an enjoyable distilled action game, without boring blaster rifle levels and Outcast's puzzles that I myself didn't enjoy. Oh, and multiplayer is super-fun if you are lucky to gather a few friends (vanilla, i haven't tried modded). I will dare say that this game is absolute #1 of all star wars games when it comes to replayability. Story based games like kotor, you'll play through once or twice and that's it... But this game is a therapy for brain, and I come back to it every few years. Plenty of stormtroopers to mow down to recharge your batteries (totally therapeutic, trust me), but also plenty of gritty fights against three dark jedi where you have almost no room for mistakes. Quick hint for first-time players: pick a single saber style; it's a lot more interesting than saber staff or dual-saber style.

This is hands down the best Lightsaber game ever! If you're a Star Wars fan, buy this now! I played the single player no telling how many hours when I was younger. It was a lot of fun and still is, but now that I'm older the dialogue is kinda... meh. But what I really enjoy now is multiplayer saber dueling. It's incredibly fun, makes you feel like a real jedi! I'm not going to go into to much detail about saber combat but I will say it's skill based and it's a lot more than just "mash mouse button 1". You have different stances and can do different swings and combos. The multiplayer is still pretty active and the community is mostly very friendly. First time I played MP since years ago I was able to find an experienced player that took me under his wing and trained me as his padawan. Quite the RPing experience. This game has been open-sourced by the developers and has been ported to Linux and Mac. You can get get binaries (executables) for Mac, Linux, and Windows here: https://github.com/JACoders/OpenJK/ May the Force be with you!

This game is all about the gameplay. The force abilities and puzzles requiring rapid use of those abilities are SOOO fun. So while the story is much weaker than the other Jedi Knight games, it is still an installment worthy of your time. This game is just fun, pure and simple. The lightsaber and force battles are difficult enough to frustrate you while still feeling like you have appropriate control (whereas Dark Forces II sometimes felt like your light saber strikes and blocks were a bit random).