YMMV / LEGO Star Wars

• Anti-Climax Boss: Emperor Palpatine in Episode IX of The Skywalker Saga is nothing more than a quick time event, which is especially jarring considering how several villains who never got proper fights in the films, like Jabba the Hutt and Captain Phasma, got full boss fights in the game. This is likely due to him already getting two boss fights in the main campaign as well as the Knights of Ren and his guards serving as a decent fight already, though it does mean that the final proper boss in the campaign ends up being BB-9E, of all characters.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • Darth Maul, because come on, he's friggin' Darth Maul. His boss stage has an excellent mix of platforming and lightsaber dueling sections that set the pace for the series' later boss fights, all scored to "Duel of the Fates".
  • The final level of the first game recreates the Mustafar duel from Revenge of the Sith and introduces what many consider the best boss in the series, your friend! After working together the entire game, player 1 and 2 are forced to fight each other in a shrinking arena as John Williams' iconic score swells in the background.
  • Palpatine, due to a change made to the movies to match with how the games play: Vader pulls his Heel–Face Turn early, leading to Luke and Vader vs. Palpatine. Helps that he's something of a Final-Exam Boss.
  • The Zillo Beast, as hard as he may be, is memorable simply for being one of the largest bosses in any LEGO game.
  • Phasma, in both The Force Awakens and The Skywalker Saga, because she has become far more competent than her canon self.
• Awesome Music: The various "dance floor" remixes throughout the series reinterpret the franchise's iconic themes... To say nothing of the music used in the movies and brought over into the game.
• Broken Base:
  • J. J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy ^note Director of The Force Awakens (and eventually The Rise of Skywalker) and the President of Lucasfilm being playable characters in The Force Awakens. Some find it funny, while others dislike it due to favoring newer talent and omitting franchise creator George Lucas from the game.
  • The use of dialogue in cutscenes starting with The Force Awakens. While the original games established the precedent of reducing all dialogue to Voice Grunting and giving the series something of a silent comedy vibe, the newer titles in the series added dialogue from the movies to be consistent with later LEGO Adaptation Games. As such, there are fans who much prefer the original approach — which led to many of the most notable jokes in the early games — and those who prefer actually hearing the cast of characters speak. The Skywalker Saga does includes a "Mumble Mode" to return the dialog to classic grunting, which helps bridge the gap even if it doesn't perfectly replicate the original silent comedy exactly.
  • While both are agreed to be great games in their own right, there’s been some debate of whether The Complete Saga’s approach to adapting all of the film’s events through levels or The Skywalker Saga’s approach of having most events happen in the Wide-Open Sandbox and saving levels for the specific set pieces was better. Some think this makes The Skywalker Saga’s actual levels feel very sparse and short, while others see it as a worthy trade off for how rich the open world is in that game and allows it to adapt set pieces The Complete Saga’s six stages didn’t have the runtime for (like the Gungan army’s assault on Theed and the duel between Yoda and Palpatine)
• Catharsis Factor: When the first game came out, a number of reviewers joked that one of the joys was that it was the first video game that allowed you to beat up and/or kill Jar Jar. The Complete Saga took this further by turning doing so repeatedly into an achievement.
• Character Rerailment: In a strange reverse example, Obi-Wan's goofier and more immature portrayal in this version of The Phantom Menace is closer to the reckless Padawan that Obi-Wan implied he used to be in the original trilogy. The Skywalker Saga even retroactively adds references to his friendship with Commander Cody.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Having Leia break down crying after Alderaan is destroyed? A Tear Jerker. Tarkin immediately pointing and laughing at her like a schoolyard bully? Hilarious.
  • The screams characters such as Jar Jar and Young Anakin make when they die are particularly entertaining.
  • In The Clone Wars, Jango's death is a lengthy Black Comedy sequence. After Mace Windu decapitates him, the heroes play with his helmet like a hacky sack until it gets to Dooku's balcony, where Boba grabs it and immediately gets it stuck on his head. His death in The Skywalker Saga where he is trampled by droids, the Reek, and then the clone gunship lands on top of him, while Bowdlerised, is still just as mortifyingly hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Likely the reason Darth Maul was included in The Clone Wars, presuming that the developers weren't in on the knowledge that later seasons of the show were going to resurrect the character.
  • The Gonk Droid has always had a half-serious following, due to its funny design and name, but its LEGO Star Wars form made it one of the biggest joke characters in the franchise. Its status as the game's unrivaled worst character at base, combined with Super Gonk in Complete Saga turning it into a legitimate Lethal Joke Character, while maintaining an adorably simple design and its infamous catchphrase, all combine to make Gonk Droid one of the franchise's longest-running jokes. Speedrun sites for Complete Saga even include "Gonk%" (playing the game long enough to unlock the Gonk Droid) as an official category. The Skywalker Saga makes this an Ascended Meme, as it includes 1: a rideable Gonk Droid mount, 2: a souped-up Super Gonk that lets you summon a golden, invincible, self-destructing, mustache-donning Gonk Droid at your leisure, and 3: a string of Gonk-related missions across the galaxy that allows you to unlock a ship shaped like a giant Gonk.
  • "Rebel Friend", the nameless Rebel who inexplicably shows up in the second half of Episode IV's "Secret Plans", has also gotten a half-serious following despite just being a simple Palette Swap of the generic Rebel character you can buy in the store. Why the fans? Well, aside from being one of the few Canon Foreigners in the series (and an Anti-Frustration Feature to boot), his questionable role^note Questions such as: Why is he wearing a red shirt? Is it a reference to Red Shirts? Why is his title so informal, instead of something like "Rebel Ally" or "Rebel Commander"? Why not just make the generic Rebel Trooper character playable in the Secret Plans level instead of a blatant Palette Swap? makes him a good target for jokes. There were even petitions out there dedicated to adding him to The Skywalker Saga — which he actually was.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • The original LEGO Star Wars was great, but rather limited; for example, only Force wielders could build objects. When II came along, it got rid of several of those limitations, and additionally let you unlock the characters from the first game to sweeten the pot.
  • The Complete Saga could count as well, since it revised the original game's levels to take in the newer gameplay elements of the second game. The same can somewhat be said for the following games after those.
  • The Skywalker Saga, meanwhile, is effectively The Complete Saga... plus the graphical enhancements and content of The Force Awakens... plus brand new content adapting the last two sequels and more new content on top of that.
• First Installment Wins: This series is the most well-known and beloved of the LEGO Adaptation Games, since they were the first to be adapted into this format. As a whole, the LEGO Star Wars games have sold over 30 million copies, more than any of the other adaptations.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • At first, the inclusion of Fennec Shand and Moff Gideon in the Mandalorian Season 2 DLC pack wouldn't make sense to players who recall them making their formal debuts in Season 1. However, LEGO began selling their minifigures in the Imperial Light Cruiser, a set inspired by the Season 2 finale. It also makes sense because neither Fennec nor Moff Gideon played significant roles in Season 1. Fennec appeared in a single episode before seemingly dying and while Moff Gideon was the mastermind behind the whole thing he didn't have much physical involvement until season 2.
  • The new collectable brick in The Skywalker Saga is the Kyber Brick, a glowing clear crystal brick, referencing the kyber crystals that are found all across the galaxy and used to make lightsabers, as well as their implied rarity.
• Friendly Fandoms: Two unexpected ones:
  • Upon the reveal that The Skywalker Saga was going to be utilizing combat more akin to a Hack and Slash, fans of games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Astral Chain, Ninja Gaiden, and No More Heroes flocked to the game quickly as a result, due to the combo-based fighting system that was a change from previous LEGO games.
  • With Xenoblade Chronicles, due to Adam Howden (voice of Shulk) having a bit role where he says the infamous "I'm really feeling it" line. This increased when it was revealed that David Menkin (voice of Malos) was Luke Skywalker's voice actor in the game.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In LEGO Star Wars II, you can unlock the Force ghost versions of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda from the end of Return of the Jedi. They are 100% invincible and don't even lose studs if they accidentally walk over a ledge. Granted, they're extremely expensive and can only be unlocked after you've completed all the levels, so they're more of a Bragging Rights Reward for normal gameplay. Where they truly shine is the Challenge Mode of The Complete Saga, which completely disables Extras but lets you use Free Play characters. Bringing one of them to these levels allows you to ignore the need to constantly avoid damage, simply needing to switch to other characters for puzzles then switch back for invulnerability.
  • In general, many characters mix-and-match traits of others, resulting in very strong fighters that render chunks of the roster obsolete. The generally-agreed most powerful characters, besides the Force ghosts, are Droideka, General Grievous and his Bodyguard, and the Fetts (Jango and Boba). Droideka is fast when rolled up, has a very effective double-blast as its main attack that can shred multiple hearts off bosses, and puts up a deflector shield when stationary. Grievous and his Bodyguard are high-jumpers with powerful melee moves, making them good in combat and platforming. Jango and Boba can hover with their jetpacks, get past Bounty Hunter access points, throw thermal detonators, and use their blasters (two pistols for Jango and a huge rifle for Boba), which deal double damage. Because of this, you're bound to use at least one of the above when going through Free Play levels, since they cover a versatile range of skills.
  • The custom characters in Star Wars: The Complete Saga mainly have the advantage of Combo Platter Powers. They can use the Force with or without a lightsaber, have connections to the Empire to get past Imperial guard points, and be a bounty hunter, allowing them to get past Bounty Hunter access panels and use thermal detonators.
  • Another game breaking combination of extras is the following, from The Complete Saga: Deflect Bolts (laser bolts are deflected off of you) + Perfect Deflect (deflected laser bolts always return to sender) + Exploding Blaster Bolts (laser bolts traveling away from the player, no matter if their own or not, explode) = if you get shot, the laser bolt is deflected back and explodes in your attacker's face, killing them.
  • The score multipliers are some of the biggest game breakers. You can get up to five: ×2, ×4, ×6, ×8, and ×10. Enabling one causes the score to multiply by that amount, so picking up a stud worth 10 means you actually get 20 with ×2, 40 with ×4, and so on... but the multipliers stack in the console versions. Enabling all five at once results in a score multiplier of ×3840.
  • The Torpedo Generator for ground assault missions in III. They attach to the back of your vehicle and, when fired at an enemy core, destroys a random structure, irrelevant of whether it’s shielded or what it’s made of. This lets you blitz tougher enemy bases in seconds while only spending money on the structures necessary to unlock the generator. The only weaknesses are that the cores can be directly shielded (something very rare even in the tougher missions) and the occasional Baseless Mission preventing their use.
  • The Skywalker Saga moves the Stud Magnet bonus to the Skills system, making it both able to be upgraded and allowing it to be bought extremely early into most people's playthroughs.
  • Though The Skywalker Saga is generally better balanced than The Complete Saga, there are still some standouts.
    • Droideka, though not quite as busted as its Complete Saga counterpart, still has its usual kit of a shield, a roll that makes it one of the fastest characters in the game, and rapid fire. It can trivialize Target Practice challenges simply by holding down the fire button and spraying bullets in the direction of the problem.
    • General Grievous has a monstrous melee game with his four lightsabers, a passable ranged game with his blaster, and the ability to toss grenades via being a Villain. Add in his upgrades, and you have a character who shreds through bosses very quickly—and that's before realizing that he has a reset that enables him to pull infinite combos. In other words, he's 2003 Grievous.
    • The scattershot upgrade for Bounty Hunters allows them to deal a lot of ranged damage, essentially turning every blaster shot into a shotgun blast, and makes shooting gallery side missions a lot easier by reducing the required precision.
    • The Flametrooper and Incinerator Trooper both use flamethrowers—which, in a thorough aversion of Video Game Flamethrowers Suck, boast some of the highest DPS of any weapon in the game and can't be blocked. They can chop through bosses extremely quickly simply by holding down a button.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Droidekas are tough enemies to deal with; their shields protect them from most forms of attack, and the only easy ways to take them down are to deflect their bullets or use the Jedi stab. Otherwise, it'll take several hits, all while they're firing back at you. The upside is that they're just as broken when you play as them.
  • Probe droids fighting in the Battle of Hoth will launch their own tow cables to pull the bombs you tow, and the wonky vehicle controls combined with their tiny size means it can be a bit hard shooting them before the bombs explode on nearby AT-STs, forcing you to get a new one.
  • Literal bats in the Dagobah level, which instantly hit you upon touching you and can attack in swarms. Once you meet Yoda and lose Luke's blaster, fighting them is a chore without well-timed ground-stabs with the lightsaber.
• Goddamned Boss: The end of the side mission "Bouncy Bounty" in The Skywalker Saga has you fighting Bossk. Bossk doesn't try to fight back and has very little HP. The annoying part is that he spends the entire fight jumping on trampolines and making himself hard to hit, sometimes throwing a smoke bomb to stun you if he ends a string of bounces right next to you. Having a Villain character with the Defense Droid upgrade helps with getting some hits, but his health will go down slowly.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In The Skywalker Saga, Younglings don't take damage from players, but aren't invulnerable, meaning that players can knock them around and attack them as much as they want. Combine this with attack combos that lift the player of the ground, and you get child abuse-powered flight.
  • One glitch in the Mandalorian Season 1 DLC Character Pack let you build a Mandalorian army, by swapping the non-controllable Grogu for another Mandalorian, then swapping his Grogu for another Mandalorian, then repeating the process as many times as you desire. Not only can you have a Mandalorian army, you can swap out each one for other characters, allowing for whole clone armies of other characters or bringing multiple characters together to hang out in a group. Tt Games patched it in May 2023, only to add a cheat code in July to reactivate it: CLONE15.
• Growing the Beard: Traveller's Tales was not particularly recognized until LEGO Star Wars, which makes the game series this trope for the company, who completely rebranded as TT Games.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Go here.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Skywalker Saga extends Leia's Rogue One appearance with a line about entrusting the Death Star plans to "an old friend." After the game's release, Obi-Wan Kenobi would show fans how deeply that friendship runs.
• Improved Second Attempt: Several fans feel that the games improve aspects that were controversial about the source material.
  • In general, many people enjoy the prequel trilogy in The Skywalker Saga more than the actual films, thanks to the game skipping over maligned scenes like the political drama, while at the same time incorporating hilarious gags and fun gameplay scenarios.
  • One of the most maligned aspects of Revenge of the Sith was Anakin fatally wounding Padmé with a force choke, which has been seen by many as a Kick the Dog moment. The Skywalker Saga has him force choke his topper on their wedding cake (an allegory for his inner frustration and self-loathing), which accidentally strikes Padmé when it breaks. It is also implied that instead of dying from a broken heart, she dies of something much simpler like a brain injury.
  • Unlike 2011 onwards prints of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader doesn't scream a Big "NO!" when Palpatine electrocutes Luke, restoring some gravitas that purists lament the Blu-ray took away by Filling the Silence.
  • The Last Jedi's contentious reveal that Luke contemplated killing Ben Solo after finding out that his mind had been taken by the Dark Side is changed to Ben Solo attacking him first after Luke found out that Snoke had already corrupted him.
  • Finn and Poe getting more Ho Yay moments in the game has been treated as this by fans of the pairing, after The Rise of Skywalker infamously gave them both female Satellite Love Interests seemingly just to discourage the pairing.
  • The scenes where Rey strikes Finn with her staff in Jakku and throws him away with the Force in Kef Bir are not adapted to LEGO. Both of those scenes were low points for Rey, so their absence makes her more heroic.
  • Rey kissing Kylo, who was a toxic influence for her in all three movies, caused many complaints. Here it was changed into a hug and Rey completely rejects Kylo as a love interest.
  • Admiral Ackbar gets one last Fandom Nod in before his death, often panned for how quickly it happens, by trying to say his memetic "It's a trap!" line again before being sucked out the window.
  • Even the final lines of the sequel trilogy end up getting tweaked, removing the common critique of "Rey who?" being unintentionally hilarious.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: In general, a common critique of The Skywalker Saga is that the game has five levels per film instead of six, as well as those levels being somewhat shorter. This means that a number of big scenes (some of which were even in prior games) fail to make the cut or are solely depicted as cutscenes, such as Lando's assault on the Second Death Star, the retaking of Theed Palace, the Battle of Crait, or especially the space battle over Coruscant.
• It Was His Sled: For the first game, getting True Jedi status on every level unlocks a bonus level based on the opening of A New Hope. Originally intended to be a rewarding surprise for completionists (evidenced by the fact its entrance is just a question mark and it's never explicitly mentioned in the manual), virtually everyone is aware of it before even turning on the game nowadays.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Plenty of characters from the original games are pretty crappy to use. Some are just regular Joke Characters, but others are required for portions of the game, and blatantly inferior to others, with Yoda (extremely slow on the ground), Chewbacca (unwieldy melee attack, can't dodge), and Jar Jar (no abilities aside from high-jumping, is Jar Jar) being particularly bad examples, since all of their abilities are rendered redundant by any Jedi/shooter/jumper character. Later games took efforts to mitigate this, with The Clone Wars giving every character the ability to attack in some form, The Force Awakens giving each at least three abilities that make them decently useful, and The Skywalker Saga elevating this to grouping everyone by Classes, giving all members of a class the same Combo Platter Powers, with just the implementation being different, alongside almost all characters having at least one melee and ranged attack.
• Magnificent Bastard: In The Skywalker Saga, Bossk, a notorious Bounty Hunter, plans on locating a treasure on Mustafar for himself. When seemingly caught by Aurra Sing and the Player Character smuggling trampolines to utilize for the treasure, he convinces them that he's planning on giving them to the workers, even hiring the player to smuggle them into Mustafar's atmosphere for him. When caught with the treasure later, he lure the player into an arena to fight them, having put trampolines all around to bounce on and make him harder to hit. Being bested, he gives them the treasure with little fuss, even offering his services to them, having been impressed by their "bouncing skills".
• Memetic Badass: LEGO Gonk Droid has been jokingly described as the most powerful character in the Star Wars universe. Traveller's Tales apparently noticed this reputation, since not only has it appeared in every game, The Complete Saga introduced the Super Gonk extra that turns it into The Juggernaut, while the Skywalker Saga introduced a rideable Gonk Droid and amped up Super Gonk to allow you to summon a golden, mustache-wearing version of the infamous terror at will no matter where you are.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The earlier games have started to gain a sizeable following of young adults who grew up with said games. Gags about The Complete Saga being the greatest game based on the franchise became fairly common in the wake of the controversies surrounding EA's Battlefront II.
  • "A Sense of Pride and Accomplishment" ^ExplanationIn response to complaints about the lootbox system in the 2017 Star Wars Battlefront II, EA defended their choices by claiming they wanted to give players a "Sense of Pride and Accomplishment." Some people responded by claiming they felt more "Pride and Accomplishment" collecting characters in Lego Star Wars games.
  • The Yoda Death Sound, and by extension, Lego Yoda himself have seen a huge influx of ironic appreciation mid-2019.
  • On a lesser note, Jango Fett's death noise, simply because of its bizarre sound effect (often written as "Ya yeet!").
  • One memorable scene in LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens has General Hux eating a pink ice cream cone while he's on the job, and accidentally(?) splattering it in Kylo Ren's face. This led to the Fanon idea that Hux's favorite food is pink ice cream (flavored strawberry or cherry depending on who you ask), and plenty of fan art on Tumblr followed.
    • There's also Hux's garish yellow-and-pink Aerobics outfit, which also has a lot of fan art for its sheer ridiculousness on someone like Hux.
  • On social media sites such as Twitter, Discord, Instagram, and TikTok, several people have been using LEGO Star Wars character icons as profile pictures.
  • Execute Order 67.^Explanation The "Villains Trailer" for The Skywalker Saga has a clip of Palpatine giving Order 66, except he says 67 instead causing the clone troopers to start dancing.
  • Lego May Cry ^Explanation The combo system in The Skywalker Saga has earned comparisons to the Devil May Cry series, and for good reason.
  • Youngling Abuse ^Explanation Related to the above, due to child characters not taking damage from players, and being readily accessible, many of the combo videos take full advantage of the fact to use them as practice dummies for both comedic and practical reasons.
  • Malos Skywalker.^ExplanationLuke Skywalker's voice actor, David Menkin, has previously voiced Malos in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, leading to quite a few memes from Xenoblade fans.
  • The character duplication feature involving the Mandalorian was quite the meme, with people posting all sorts of wacky armies and groups.
• Memetic Psychopath: LEGO Yoda is often portrayed as a mentally ill ketamine-addicted maniac who is willing to commit heinous acts related to racism or general degeneracy for the sake of fulling his drug addiction or simply because he can. How this happened is anyone’s guess.
• Moe: Grogu has some rather cute idle animations in The Skywalker Saga, such as napping, gulping at how high his pram can float, and gleefully swallowing frogs. He also marks the chattiest character across all of the Mandalorian DLC packs, babbling and giggling through stock audio of babies.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sound that plays when you collect a Minikit is incredibly satisfying, but that applies for most LEGO games.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: As with most of the LEGO Adaptation Games, the Star Wars games are considered to be very good adaptations of the series, due to having fun gameplay, lots of collectibles, tons of customization, and expanding on parts of the movies.
• Obvious Beta: The Nintendo DS version of LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, which is full of Game-Breaking Bugs that can render entire levels impossible to complete in Free Play (such as Jabba's Palace), Minikits that are impossible to get (such as in Speeder Bike Chase), and characters that are impossible to unlock without cheat codes even when they should be normally available (such as Slave Leia).
• Older Than They Think:
  • Numerous features introduced in the LEGO Star Wars sequels actually made their debut in the Game Boy Advance version of the first game. For example, the Jedi Mind Trick, Invincibility Power-Up, and lightsaber throw, which would not be introduced to the console versions until The Original Trilogy, The Complete Saga, and The Clone Wars, respectively.
  • Challenge Mode, a Timed Mission to find ten blue minikits in each level, is known as a feature in The Complete Saga. It was first an exclusive mode for the PSP version of The Original Trilogy.
  • People who haven't played any LEGO games since The Complete Saga may find the shift in The Skywalker Saga to an open-world hub telling the story in combination with shorter levels that focus more on boss fights and vehicle experiences more surprising than those familiar with the evolution of the LEGO adaptation games. In particular, LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues did much of the same thing when they revisited the films previously adapted in The Original Adventures, focusing on boss fights, vehicles and smaller set pieces and using the hub worlds to help bridge the gaps.
• Padding:
  • The standalone game for The Force Awakens has been accused of this in trying to squeeze a full-length game out of one movie. One level notoriously consists entirely of walking through the Resistance base and getting supplies for the Millennium Falcon, and the final official level of the game is literally just Rey making her way to the top of the island on Ahch-To to find Luke.
  • A criticism of The Skywalker Saga is the considerable increase of walking in between levels, whereas previously you could immediately move from level to level. For example, after the Yoda vs Palpatine level, you as Obi-Wan walk to Padme's apartment, talk to/switch to her, then walk her all the way to her ship, and then select Mustafar. Only then will the next level (Obi-Wan vs Anakin) start.
• Periphery Demographic: Due to the surprisingly complex combos one can pull off in The Skywalker Saga, that game had an unexpected fanbase from fans of the Stylish Action genre.
• Polished Port: The Complete Saga not only brings the first two games together and brings them in HD (moreso in the first game's case; the second game had a standalone Xbox 360 release prior), but also adds content to both games, including some things that were meant to be in the original versions, but had to be cut out due to time constraints.
• Questionable Casting: Bringing in Daniel Logan (who played preteen/teenage Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars) to voice the adult Boba Fett in The Skywalker Saga while making sense and giving him a chance to shine again, turned out to be a strange choice, since Logan's voice is higher pitched than Temuera Morrison and Dee Bradley Baker, who voices the Clones as well as Jango Fett in this game, (and to a lesser extent, Jason Wingreen, Boba's original voice actor) making Boba sound too young.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: It's generally agreed that the more comical writing and lack of dialogue (in the older games) does a lot of favors for disliked or controversial characters like Jar Jar and Anakin. Even in The Skywalker Saga where the characters talk, the writers do a good job re-working their formerly annoying quirks so they mix better with the writing of the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens a collectible detector is one of the most useful Red Bricks you can have, which places arrows on the map to let you know where items or their unlock conditions are, in true series tradition. Unfortunately, it doesn't apply to ship-flying sequences, making it a trial-and-error "shoot everything" scenario in order to find and complete the tasks that will grant you items because there is nothing pointing you toward them. In scripted sequences where you're not flying around an open area, it can be a nightmare to shoot the right things along the path without missing and having to retry the level.
  • In The Skywalker Saga, Scavenger characters aren't able to make use of their special abilities until they come across the blueprints for their contraptions in one of two specific story missions, making them the only character class in the game whose unique abilities are locked behind story progress. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't be an issue, as most (of very few) Scavengers in the game are unlocked after those missions and you can get the blueprints early if you play Episode VII first (which is available from the start as a trilogy-beginning episode). However, if you have a specific trilogy-order preference and purchased the Tusken Raider character early in Episode IV (or got any of the Scavengers included in DLC packs), you're not going to be using them for anything that other readily-available characters can't already do (blasters are very common among the roster and they share the ability to pole-jump and wall-run with Force-users) for a long time until Endor in Episode VI (meanwhile, the Prequel Trilogy does not have any associated Scavengers). If you don't have the blueprints, the game's hint system doesn't tell you that you need them to make their contraptions until those story missions (with only a cryptic image of one of their contraptions being shown at puzzle spots).
• Spiritual Adaptation: Since many of the voice actors from Star Wars: The Clone Wars are featured in The Skywalker Saga voicing their respective characters, many are calling this the closest thing to a Clone Wars adaptation of Revenge of the Sith we'll ever get.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • The Complete Saga offers an achievement, "Crowd Pleaser", for killing Jar Jar Binks twenty times.
  • Jar Jar is also on the receiving end of Chew Toy levels of Slapstick in The Skywalker Saga. While this does fit his comic relief role and the general tone of the game, his well-known reputation means it's very unlikely to be a coincidence.
• That One Level:
  • "Mos Espa Podrace" in the first game. The player must finish three different sections of the race in three laps under very strict time limits and even slightly grazing anything is instant death and a restart of the section, with the final lap being the most difficult due to a combination of the Tusken Raiders perennially shooting at you with boulders in your way, and bombs rolling about in the final two stretches, respectively. Furthermore, you must place your dependence on speed panels to beat the limits, which are usually spread apart and easy to pass by, adding to its frustration. Oh, and good luck trying to get True Jedi for this level because you'll be losing some, if not most, of your hard-earned studs every time you crash or fail to beat the time limit. Thankfully The Complete Saga removed these problems but left the original Nintendo Hard version in as a Secret Level.
  • Flying levels tended to be some of the more frustrating ones in the earlier LEGO Star Wars games, mainly due to the piloting controls. But the original version of “Gunship Cavalry” takes that frustration to ridiculous levels. It starts out in an autoscrolling isometric segment. For starters, using an analog stick instead of the d-pad to move will make controlling your gunship all the more difficult, especially since it’s easy to go flying into a bottomless pit or off a cliff during this part. Not only do you have little time to react as you try to dodge enemy fire, destroy terminals to get past gates that will stop you in your path, and avoid laser cannons that can quickly drain your health, but only being able to shoot forwards can result in missing enemies that keep firing at you from behind, even while you’re trying to avoid the lasers. And that’s just the first part of the level. In order to destroy the core ship at the end, you need to first destroy 8 of the aforementioned laser cannons before you can destroy the main terminals, which give you little time to hit them in between firing... all while you can only move and fire in 2-D space from left to right, all while still needing to avoid enemy fire. Oh yeah, and you have less than a minute to do all this. And if that doesn’t sound hard enough, try to get True Jedi status while you’re at it, which can be extremely difficult since it can be very easy to die and lose 2,000 studs at a time, and a lot of objects with studs don’t respawn. And if you die during either , you have to start all the from the beginning of that segment. Thankfully, this level was remade in TCS with II's vehicle mechanics, which removed the autoscrolling and changed the camera angle, made it possible to move and shoot in 8 directions for the entire level, and fixed the latter half by requiring towed bombs to destroy the laser cannons and removing the time limit. It’s not entirely annoyance free; the towing physics are pretty wonky and it still takes some precision to hit things, but it’s much more manageable than the original. Still, like the above mentioned Podrace, the original version is available in TCS as an unlockable bonus level, but you only have to clear the level to get a gold brick and there’s no True Jedi meter, so dying is less irritating than when it was mandatory.
  • "Defense of Kashyyyk" has a section where you have to move through a beachhead. The main issue here is that you have to fight both droids and clones. They are both content to infinitely spawn from the water, and fire upon you. It's especially frustrating when you're going for True Jedi, as the stud total required is pretty unforgiving and you have to keep switching back and forth between Yoda (for force powers) and Chewbacca (who's fast enough to gather them up).
  • "Darth Vader", the final level of Episode III. Time limits, platforming, and lava = utter hell. It's especially bad on the first part, where you're running towards the fixed camera and thus can't see where you're jumping, resulting in many death-causing blind jumps as you trial-and-error the timing.^note It seems like almost a deliberate form of compensation that this is one of the only segments in the game where stud drops infinitely respawn no matter how many times you die; careful planning and a bit of patience can let you farm hundreds of thousands of studs before completing the level.
  • "Death Star Escape" in Lego Star Wars II has one incredibly frustrating sequence where you must build a huge object in order to continue. Enemies infinitely respawn and use a pair of doors that need to be shut, and unlike future games, the player character is not invulnerable to damage while building constructs — if you take any damage at all, you lose a lot of build progress. That means you have to carefully build only few pieces, stop, take out the respawning enemies, shut the doors, and repeat, and if you're just a fraction of a second too slow to stop building, all your work is going out the window. After this happens just a few times, don't be surprised if much swearing and hair-pulling follows. That said, this part of the level becomes much easier when you have the Invincibility and Fast Build power bricks equipped. In The Complete Saga, smashing nearby stuff reveals a power-up sphere in the area, which provides Invincibility and Fast Build for you.
  • The Zillo Beast, from The Clone Wars, may as well be the hardest level in a LEGO video game. First, you need to take down a titanic army of droids, like in other levels in the game but this time, it is much more difficult; it goes on for extremely long and gets extremely boring. It may take you up to 25 minutes to kill the army on your first attempt. Then, you are enjoying yourself, but the level is not named "The Zillo Beast" for nothing. In the second part of the level, you need to destroy the actual beast, which may be the hardest boss in a LEGO video game. The monster cannot be approached directly and it is constantly throwing rubble at you. The cannons cannot damage it, as the Zillo Beast itself is protected by some kind of a gold shield. You need to scramble across the battlefield and build three cannon emplacements to access the air support so you can call for an RX-200 tank to subdue the beast. Extremely difficult.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Many a longtime fan was disappointed by the absence of a character creator in The Skywalker Saga, something that's been a mainstay feature in nearly all LEGO games since The Original Trilogy. Especially for fans of Legends, as that leaves no way to play as main characters like Mara Jade without mods.
  • The shift of emphasis on playing through parts of the story in segments of the overworld as opposed to dedicated levels has received some criticism, as it limits just how much of the story can be replayed and leaves the levels that are present feeling shorter in comparison.
  • Since The Skywalker Saga provides fully-voiced cutscenes, some players felt disappointed in how the Luke, I Am Your Father scene, while funny, feels inferior to the clever and hilarious use of Voice Grunting and non-verbal communication in The Original Trilogy.
  • Many of the scene alterations in The Skywalker Saga has been criticized by fans, such as removing part of many lines of dialogue, removing the context of so many scenes as well, and what some perceive the overuse of slapstick and unfunny jokes in places where it shouldn't be necessary, compared to how the original games managed to recapture the scenes without dialogue and putting some healthy amount of slapstick that doesn't really feel out of place.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Complete Saga has ended up being this for LEGO adaptation games as a whole, due to its massive amount of content, subtle but solid comedic writing, and general-purpose charm. Other games since then have often had trouble with the fanbase simply because Complete Saga set a rather difficult standard, to the point that changes to the formula (such as the addition of voice acting) are often scoffed at. Even The Skywalker Saga, for all the acclaim it got for modernizing the LEGO game formula, doesn't quite stand out from its predecessor's shadow completely.
• Underused Game Mechanic: This is a common remark on the combat system in The Skywalker Saga: it's surprisingly deep, especially when compared to prior games, allowing for rather complex combos and maneuvers and with almost every character having their own tricks to them, but the game doesn't contain a lot of opportunities to let it swing with its full strength, as the enemies aren't particularly tough to deal with.
• Unexpected Character:
  • The Complete Saga includes the guest character Indiana Jones. While it is an Actor Allusion and a promotion for the next LEGO game, he still qualifies since, you know, he's not even a Star Wars character.
  • The Clone Wars has a few secret characters, one of them being none other than Starkiller from The Force Unleashed (called "Vader's Apprentice" in-game). A bit of a surprise considering the family-unfriendly nature of the game and character, though in fairness he was featured in an actual LEGO set.
  • The Clone Wars also included R2-KT — a pink Palette Swap of R2-D2 created by fans as a tribute to Katie Johnson, a young girl who died of brain cancer. At the time of the game's release, R2-KT had only made small cameos in the TV series, making her quite an unexpected surprise. She eventually made her debut in the films with The Force Awakens, leading her to become a recurring character in the LEGO adaptations as well.
  • The developers of The Skywalker Saga said they left no stone unturned (besides Legends of course), bringing lesser-known characters from the series to light as hidden options.
    • A particular favorite of the developers? Yaddle, a member of Yoda's species who only briefly appears in Episode I. She was so out-there that the first gameplay trailer made a point of showing her character model off!
    • Mama the Hutt appears as an unlockable character, a rather out-there choice considering she only appeared in a single episode of The Clone Wars, and several other more recognizable characters from the show were absent until the release of The Clone Wars DLC pack.
    • Roger, a heroic battle droid exclusive to the "canon paraphrase" LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, is unlockable via password.
    • Perhaps the biggest of these is the battle droid known as Mister Bones, who only appeared in a series of novels, yet is a playable character here.
    • There's also an unexpected ship in the Ghost. This is due to the fact that, prior to the second wave of DLC, the game lacked any other Rebels-related content, including Hera Syndula, the Ghost's pilot.
    • While they don't appear physically, one puzzle in Ewok Village involves putting together a picture of Cindel and her family from Star Wars: Ewok Adventures which is rather surprising considering a) That duology is one of the most obscure Star Wars media ever and b) It's part of Legends and not the reboot.
    • Another obscure part of Legends made it into the game with Nobot, a beaten-up protocol droid only given a name and backstory thanks to an Official Fan-Submitted Content contest all about writing backstories for Blink-and-You-Miss-It background extras (The Phantom Menace in this case). While Nobot's not playable, it's almost impossible to miss his side mission after completing the podrace.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Skywalker Saga has beautiful graphics and environments that in most cases are extremely accurate to the movies. TT Games even made an entire engine from the ground up to make it. One subtle, but very immersive feature is that your characters will get covered in sand/snow/dirt depending on the planet you're on, as if you're playing with LEGO minifigures in those environments.

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