Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles Review

Following Star Wars: Return of the Jedi's release in 1983, the franchise took a step back from the spotlight for the better part of two decades. But Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace brought the franchise back in full force in 1999, arriving alongside an onslaught of merchandise, novels, and, of course, video games. Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles was one such game.

Originally released in April 2000 for the PlayStation, Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles received a very divisive reception on launch. But like most Star Wars games, it became a core part of some fans' childhood. Developer/publisher Aspyr is tapping into that nostalgia with its 2025 port of Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles, but that nostalgia might not be enough to paper over all the cracks in this modern port.

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Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles is a Fun But Flawed Piece of Nostalgia

Condensing the events of The Phantom Menace into 10 levels, Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles is a side-scrolling action game that sees players hacking their way through hordes of Battle Droids and hopping across a variety of well-themed levels. It's a fairly simple game, but there's a key component that's kept it in the memories of fans for well over two decades, and that's its difficulty.

Jedi Power Battles can be a challenging game, and that can be both a blessing and a curse due to some outdated gameplay design. For instance, while hard-hitting enemies do a good job of keeping players engaged in the action, that paired with the game's infamously floaty platforming mechanics can quickly lead to frustration, with many enemies being able to hurl the player off the map. These cheap deaths are made worse by Jedi Power Battles' arcade-like "lives" system, which requires the player to restart the entire level if they die too many times.

A key strength of Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles, however, is the game's variety. Each level takes players to a new Star Wars locale ripped right out of The Phantom Menace, complete with its own unique layout that matches the environment well and adds a nice layer of verticality to the gameplay. Jedi Power Battles' roster of playable characters is also fairly diverse, offering six Jedi with distinct combos, Force Powers, and attack animations.

Sound design is a bit more of a mixed bag, though. While John Williams' iconic score is implemented well throughout the game, switching each level to match the tone of the stage, sound effects aren't so graciously integrated. Though the effects themselves sound authentic, there are only a handful in the entire game, leading to a lot of repetition. This is particularly egregious when a level is dominated by a specific enemy type, such as the Tusken Raider-laden Tatooine stage, where players will hear nothing but tribal screams for the level's entire 20-minute duration.

Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles Drops The Ball on its Biggest Selling Point

A core part of Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles' appeal both back in the day and now with the release of Aspyr's port is its couch co-op, letting two players battle together throughout the game's 10 campaign levels and a handful of bonus stages. Unfortunately, this part of the game doesn't hold up.

Hacking away at waves of Battle Droids together can be fun, but the cracks begin to show the moment two players start to move across the screen. While common at the time for co-op games, Jedi Power Battles' screen-drag is incredibly harsh. Players need to stick within just a few feet of one another, or they'll quickly end up pushing their co-op partner off-screen.

This is fine for close-quarters combat sections, but it makes Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles' already finicky platforming nigh impossible, with both players needing to jump at exactly the same time or risk dragging their partner to their doom. To be fair, this can lead to some pretty humorous moments, but it doesn't remain funny for long, and it certainly won't last throughout Jedi Power Battles' 4-hour runtime.

Boss fights also become much more difficult in co-op. If players are not standing right next to each other, bosses will swap targets flippantly, often in the middle of an attack sequence. This makes it virtually impossible to learn boss attack patterns, making them feel less like tests of skill and more like tests of patience.

Essentially, every element of Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles is made worse via co-op, which is the opposite of what a side-scrolling beat-em-up should be, and likely the opposite of how fans remember it. In all fairness, these issues were present in the original game, but they're much more noticeable 25 years later given how much the genre has evolved.

Jedi Power Battles' 2-player VS Mode is exceptionally janky, but the lower stakes of the mode makes its jank feel much more amusing.

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It's Hard to Say This is The Definitive Version of Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power BattlesAspyr Adds Little to The Original Jedi Power Battles Experience

Just like most of the studio's past Star Wars ventures, Aspyr's Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles is not a full remake or remaster, it's a port that brings the original 2000 game to modern consoles. More specifically, the Dreamcast version of the game, which itself improved upon the original PlayStation version in numerous ways.

The graphics are probably the most immediately noticeable change in Aspyr's Jedi Power Battles, with environmental textures and character models being perceptibly cleaner and lighting effects being less blurry. But in general, things don't look vastly different from the Dreamcast version of the game. Similarly, though the frame rate during gameplay is consistent in Aspyr's port, that was the case with the Dreamcast iteration as well.

A key selling point in Aspyr's marketing for Jedi Power Battles has been the 13 new playable characters it adds to the game's VS Mode. Sadly, these characters are a pretty big letdown. The vast majority of these characters are just enemy types brought over from Jedi Power Battles' campaign mode, and though each has a unique moveset, it's extremely limited, featuring just a few basic attacks and no combos, no special moves akin to Force Powers, and not even a dash attack.

The only non-generic Star Wars character to join the roster is Jar Jar Binks, and he's a barebones reskin of the Gungan Guard character. There's no reason for players to choose these new characters over any of the Jedi (or even Padme and Panaka) from the original game.

A "modern control scheme" has also been mentioned in Jedi Power Battles' marketing. This is also pretty rudimentary, simply changing the face-button layout so that "A/X" is jump, and binding the Force abilities to the left trigger so that players can now use them without needing to block.

A neat addition, however, is the ability to change some Jedi's lightsaber colors. Launching before characters like Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, and Plo Koon wielded a lightsaber on screen for the first time, the original Jedi Power Battles' lightsaber colors don't conform to the current Star Wars canon. Aspyr's port gives players the option to fix that.

Aspyr Brings Some New Issues to Jedi Power Battles

Aspyr has a fairly mixed track record when it comes to Star Wars ports and technical issues. While some previous ports have run perfectly, others have been completely broken at launch. Aspyr's Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles lands somewhere in the middle.

During my time with Jedi Power Battles I experienced a swathe of technical issues ranging from mildly irritating to game-breaking. Starting with the mildly irritating, the handful of cinematic cutscenes in Jedi Power Battles suffered some major frame rate issues. Enemy pop-in was also a consistent issue throughout the game, occasionally leading to Battle Droids appearing out of nowhere and landing a cheap shot before I could react.

Two separate audio issues also occurred during my playthrough. One of these occurred during the Theed Palace mission, in which one Battle Droid's STAP Speeder could be heard for the entire duration of the mission. The other happened during the Coruscant stage, where the audio cut out completely for about half the mission's length.

By far the worst technical issue occurred in co-op. Upon finishing a mission, Jedi Power Battles simply stopped recognizing any controller inputs for either player, locking us at the upgrade screen. The only way to resolve the issue was a full restart of the game. Luckily, progress was saved for both characters, but it still wasn't ideal, and it occurred on two separate occasions.

Aspyr's Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles has some nice graphics and quality-of-life improvements, but it doesn't really add anything substantial that wasn't there in the Dreamcast version. And unfortunately, Jedi Power Battles is far from the best Star Wars game out there.

This might be the most apt example of why Aspyr's steadfast approach to authenticity might not always result in the best player experience. While Jedi Power Battles is very authentic to the original game, that original game had a plethora of well-documented issues, all of which have only become more apparent in the 25 years following its release. And the lack of any proper fixes on Aspyr's part might have some wondering why it was brought to modern consoles at all.

For this reason, and the range of technical issues experienced, it's difficult to recommend this port, especially to anyone who has never played Jedi Power Battles before. But for die-hard fans of this game or Star Wars in general, the $20 asking price might be worth it for a fleeting hit of nostalgia.

Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles will release on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S on January 23, 2025. Game Rant was provided an Xbox Series X code for this review.