Star Wars: Episode I - Jedi Power Battles Review (jimbobslimbob)
Overview
Jedi Power Battles is a port of the Dreamcast version of the original game from the early 00's. It's not so much as a remaster (and more like a re-release), since the game is almost completely unchanged from its initial release, bar things like high resolution and widescreen support and some unlocked characters. All the frustration, bugs and jank of the original are still here - for better or worse.
Graphics and Sound
It supports high resolution and widescreen gameplay and looks fairly decent for a game over 20 years old. It seems textures have seen a slight uplift - probably via some form of AI upscaling. HUD elements and menus have also been re-done and look pretty good. The limited number of cutscenes have also seen an upscale.
Sound is exactly as it was in the release version. Although the effects are pretty good for the most part, they are of noticeably low quality and bugs like repeating and missing sounds are still present. Not much else to say here.
Gameplay
Anyone familiar with the old version will notice immediately that this is exactly the same. No tweaks or improvements have been made, bar a "modern" controller setup and auto-targeting nearest enemies. If you found the old game annoying, frustrating and unwieldy, do not come into this expecting anything else. This aside, it's still a great fun beat-em-up with platforming and always felt like a precursor to the PS2's Episode 3 game to me.
You get a multitude of characters to play through the game with and upgrade abilities. They included additional characters that were previously locked behind achievements and VS mode for the main game also, although I found none of them worth your time. For me, I wanted new Jedi or Sith characters, not generic NPC's as controllable characters. An absolute bare-minimum effort was made for this re-release.
Plenty of bugs also exist still. Some I came across include: If you step on the wrong fan in Coruscant, your character flies off screen and a re-restart of the entire level is required. On the swamps of Naboo I got pushed through the floor by the end boss.
Frustrations that existed before are also still here - like on level 4 if the queen dies you do not restart at the last check-point, but have to do the entire level again. Things like this really do not need to be here and could have surly been improved upon, given in the instance I mention here, this is at the end of the level and it's a real slog to go through it all again.
Jimbo Rating: 6/10
I really wished a little more was done with this re-release - including fixing some bugs, providing the ability to change key-binds/controller buttons and allowing run to be bound to a button. This aside, it's a PC port of a classic from my childhood so I enjoyed my time in it. Your mileage may vary.