Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force (GBA)
Considering the absolute juggernaut that is the Star Wars franchise and the colossal footprint it has left on popular culture, it’s no surprise that the films, particularly the original trilogy, continue to get adapted into video games across a variety of systems. While games such as LEGO Star Wars and Super Star Wars are more well-known adaptations of Episodes IV through VI, Ubisoft decided to try their hand at capturing the feel of the original trilogy on the Game Boy Advance with Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force. Unfortunately, the results are less than spectacular.
Focusing solely on Luke Skywalker’s actions during the original Star Wars trilogy, the game seems to tell the three movie epic as if it was a children’s story book. Huge details are glossed over and only functional information really seems to be present, but it is all presented through Luke’s perspective, perhaps in an attempt to have us follow his development into a Jedi. Naturally, keeping the focus on Luke necessitates missing some pivotal moments from the film franchise, but don’t expect some of Luke’s more important moments to put in a showing either, as the game mostly tries to find moments from the films it could conceivably squeeze some action platforming from. Strangely enough, Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force feels a bit like a mix of a platformer and a beat-em-up of all things, the game’s challenges mostly involving leaping over pits and then getting boxed in with a bunch of enemies that must be defeated before you can move on. It’s an incredibly consistent and repetitive loop of jumping across a few platforms before you find the next swarm of bad guys, the game only breaking away from this structure for one space battle, the famous Death Star trench run, and the speeder bike segment from Return of the Jedi. Those segments aren’t particularly fleshed out though, the space battle involving a slow-paced chase with TIE fighters and the trench run and speeder bike moving forward automatically as you avoid crashing and shoot enemies. The change away from the basic gameplay is appreciated but sadly underutilized, the game sometimes even taking moments like taking down the AT-ATs on Hoth from Empire Strikes Back and quickly resolving them in a cutscene to avoid giving you something new to do in a space ship.
The game relies mostly on its combat and platforming to sustain it, but neither is particularly well developed. For platforming, it mostly just involves trying to sometimes clear a pit and dying instantly if you don’t. Some areas might have you running back and forth between areas to make it a bit less basic, and there are moments you must safely escort R2-D2 or Princess Leia away from trouble. R2 is mostly baggage you need to protect so he can open doors, but Princess Leia will join you in battle and shares your health and special weapons to make her less of a damsel in distress. When you’re playing through Episode IV’s segment of the game, Luke relies solely on a blaster pistol, and besides picking up some more powerful weapons that only last for a few shots, that’s your only way of dealing with the moments where combat seals you in until it’s over. You do get a dash and a roll, but they exist mostly for navigation and you just need to fire at foes until they die. Health is incredibly abundant early on, so you don’t really have to be very careful during most fights. In addition to having both of the space segments, Episode IV’s portion feels the longest and most thought out, even if that just means finding out more ways to insert navigation of the desert planet Tatooine into the early segments.
Episode V swaps out your gun for the lightsaber, combat made slightly more interesting now that you must get in close to deal damage. Platforming is made a bit more treacherous as well with many areas where you have to make drops of faith. The game does put pits at the bottoms of these drops sometimes, but death doesn’t set you back too much, it just helps expose the tedium of progression. The game does start pulling back a bit on health pick-ups though, but it starts giving you some Force powers to compensate. Although you have a Force meter that depletes when you use these skills, you can still begin to push things around from afar and get some other helpful platforming skills like the double jump so that the game can at least make things harder even though the variety is still mostly visual. Almost every enemy in the game is a Stormtrooper or Stormtrooper variant, but it does start throwing in droids and giant bugs that require tactics besides walking up and slashing until they die. These tactics mostly boil down to jumping at them at the right time, but it is at least something different.
Episode VI wraps up the game by stripping away most health pick-ups, instead giving you the Force Heal skill so that you must find safe moments to execute it and you can’t just use your burgeoning Force powers like slowing down time and a screen wipe all willy-nilly. This does mean you’re more likely to die then ever, especially with more devious instant death pit placement, but things don’t really evolve so much as just increase. Everything’s a bit mindless, but both the Empire Strikes Back segment and Return of the Jedi segment do at least include boss fights with Darth Vader. The combat system’s lack of complexity does mean it’s not exactly a major shift, but Darth Vader can block attacks and you have to avoid more powerful moves to find breaks in his defense.
The easy conclusion to come to here is that this game is meant for much younger Star Wars fans. The story stripping things down to the bare essentials of Luke’s tale and making the gameplay repetitive and accessible certainly speaks to a game designed for a young fan to eventually work their way through, even if they might keep dropping into pits along the way. It feels like a pretty poor way to experience the tale of Star Wars though, the game glossing over any details that would require too much effort to show.
THE VERDICT: Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force was released the same day as the 2004 DVD release of the original trilogy, but it feels a poor companion for such a stellar series of films. Looking more closely at Luke’s story wasn’t a bad idea, but they did so by straining out most of the substance from the trilogy and adding in a bunch of uninspired platforming and constant combat that doesn’t really have the depth to justify its repeated presence. It’s not hard to imagine someone enjoying the mindless monotony, but it’s not a compelling game and certainly fails to capture the thrills and heart of the series its adapting.
And so, I give Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force for Game Boy Advance…
A BAD rating. The main thing about Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force is that it is overwhelmingly plain. While the platforming and combat gradually evolve and get more difficult, the steps taken are too small and the game puts far too many simple challenges too close together. Even the more interesting battles aren’t exciting and navigation just involves doing a jump right or not and sometimes needing a keycard to open the way forward. It will keep a person occupied in the same way that thumbing through magazines at a doctor’s office might. There’s not much to impress here, your ability to beat the game mostly relying on finding health pick-ups or later knowing when to heal. Had the game made more interesting enemies and given you more reasons and means to vary your attacks, perhaps its combat focus wouldn’t have felt so misplaced, and shifting platforming away from hoping you don’t fall into pits you can’t always see seems like it would be a no-brainer improvement as well. That way, you could at least tolerate the game’s aversion to anything but the bare essentials of both gameplay types.
If you want a Star Wars game for your kids, the LEGO Star Wars games deliver on a more charming yet still accessible take on the trilogy, but Apprentice of the Force almost feels forced to include anything outside its constant battles where both you and your enemies can’t really do much but look at each other and do the same attack until one of you dies. While the entire experience is not entirely homogeneous thanks to a few deviations and tiny advancements in gameplay, it never shakes things up for long and you’ll be back to slowly working your way through Stormtroopers until you’ve found the end of the level. Sorry Luke, but this game certainly fell to the Dark Side of Star Wars video games.