YMMV / The Force Unleashed

• Alternative Character Interpretation: At the beginning of the second game, when the clone of Starkiller questions why he's having such distressing visions and recollections, Darth Vader explains that the cloning process is incomplete and that, like the clones before him, this Starkiller is fated to be driven mad by the memories of the dead man he was cloned from. Due to his armor, we can't see his face during this conversation, but Vader's body language and tone seem somewhat and surprisingly remorseful up until Starkiller turns on him. Was he pitying the clone that seemingly had no chance to live a mentally-stable life due to the flawed methods of its creation, did he actually just feel annoyed that even after all this time and all these permutations the process still isn't working, or was it a combination of the two? Or was he just feigning that so Starkiller wouldn't see his backstab coming?
• Anticlimax Boss: Done on purpose in the first game’s Dark Side ending. The Light Side ending requires that you Earn Your Happy Ending by fighting the True Final Boss (Emperor Palpatine) in a duel far more difficult than anything before it. The Dark Side Ending is an underwhelming quick time event against a weak and near-defenseless Darth Vader that allows Starkiller to easily get revenge against his old master, but doesn’t feel satisfying in the slightest. This point is driven home soon after when Palpatine almost immediately attacks Starkiller, murders all of his friends and turns him into an agonized, twisted man-machine hybrid living on borrowed time.
• Awesome Music: The fact that the original soundtrack for this game is not available for purchase is downright criminal.
  • One specific example from the game itself occurs at the beginning of the final confrontation. The scene begins with Starkiller charging down a corridor on the Death Star toward the throne room where the rebels are, but suddenly he halts as the door at the end of the hall opens and Darth Vader marches through. Starkiller visibly steels himself for the battle ahead as the two draw their lightsabers and slowly walk towards each other. The main theme blaring in the background makes it a truly epic moment and arguably makes this specific moment◊ the game's Money-Making Shot.
  • The music during the battle with General Kota is heroic and epic.
  • The main battle theme while escaping The Empirical has a powerful brass score, combined with a few other Star Wars melodies.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Debatable in the first game, with the scanty outfits on Shaak Ti and Maris Brood, young Leia dressed suspiciously like Padme in Attack of the Clones, and Juno's non-regulation uniform. Also, for the female/male gay side of the audience, there's one of Starkiller's outfits that shows his muscular shirtless body. Some fans criticized the second game for only having one important female character (two if you count Jedi Leia in the DLC), and she's missing for over half of it. Whether that's due to The Bechdel Test failure or missed opportunities for gratuitous fanservice is another question.
• Complete Monster:
  • First game: Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, is the despotic ruler of the Galactic Empire. Upon discovering that Darth Vader had been training a secret apprentice, Starkiller—born Galen Marek—to overthrow him, Palpatine commands Vader to murder Starkiller to prove his loyalty. Initiating a plan to wipe out all enemies of his Empire, Palpatine, through Vader, manipulates a revived Starkiller into gathering all members of Rebellion in one place. After capturing the Rebels, Palpatine intends to torture information about their allies out of them and then execute them. When Starkiller arrives to save the Rebels and defeats Vader in a duel, Palpatine tries to convince him to kill Vader and become his new apprentice. In the game's non-canon Dark Side ending, where Starkiller kills Vader, Palpatine slaughters most of the rebel leaders, then orders Starkiller to kill the latter's own mentor, Jedi Rahm Kota. When Starkiller refuses, Palpatine responds by torturing him and having Starkiller rebuilt into a cyborg, outright saying that he intends to use Starkiller as a living weapon before casting him aside as soon as he finds someone better.
  • Second game's Endor DLC: Emperor Palpatine learns that Darth Vader cloned Starkiller, but allows the latter to kill hundreds of Rebels and Imperial Forces to stop the rebellion from destroying the second Death Star's shield generator. With the Rebellion crushed, Palpatine kills Vader and sends his forces to kill Starkiller.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Imperial Purge Troopers in the first game and their insanely precise shoulder-mounted homing lasers. Their shots are unblockable, are harder to dodge than anything any boss will throw at you and will easily perform nigh-immediate 180 degree turns to smack you in the event that you do somehow manage to duck under or jump over one of them successfully. Oh, and if the shot hits you, it'll take about 20% off your health and knock you down. If you dared to jump in an attempt to dodge it, the knockback effect will last long enough for him to shoot it at you again, this time without any chance at all for you to avoid it. If you manage to get close to them, however, they're easier to kill, at least if you're fighting them alone. Now imagine, if you will, facing off against four of these guys at a time, each one at a different range. It gets a tad hard to get through something like that.
  • More literal examples with the Terror Droids in the sequel and the assassins that accompany them. They Teleport Spam so that you can't hit them and have to come up with creative ways to kill them, such as going into Force Fury or blowing out a window or something. They've got attacks that can paralyze you and frequently close in for melee while teleporting away from you when you try to counterattack.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Among detractors of the game, the story about Vader's apprentice and the formation of the Rebel Alliance is more appealing than the Hack and Slash gameplay.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The fanbase seems to absolutely adore Maris Brood even though she was a minor character in the first game. You can even see people claiming for her return in the sequel.
  • The Shadow Guards get this as well, from a merchandising standpoint. When Legends characters need to win fan polls to get made into figures, the Shadow Guard received an unprompted Funko Pop as well as a 6" Black Series figure. As for Starkiller? He barely lost a fan poll in a narrow race with Jaina Solo and Darth Talon.
• Escapist Character: Playing as Starkiller is basically an excuse to completely destroy anything and everything around you with the Force.
• Fanfic Fuel: Rahm Kota leads a private army of soldiers from regional militias, mercenary companies, and defected Separatist POWs against both the CIS and the Empire, with the survivors eventually becoming soldiers in the bigger Rebel Alliance. Not a single one of Kota's men is named, but there is a definite impression that some author could write a whole book series about all of the stories that those soldiers doubtlessly have to tell.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A common treatment of Starkiller's adventures given he retcons so much about the early Rebellion. Other fans vehemently disagree. Nevertheless, with the acquisition of Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company, the game, as well as other Expanded Universe stories, have been declared Canon Discontinuity, much to the dismay of some fans.
• Game-Breaker: Force Lightning allows Starkiller to immobilize most enemies and deal massive damage in a relatively short amount of time. It and lightning-infused melee attacks can be used to melt Stormtrooper squads and minibosses alike.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • In the Wii game, any enemy using a jet pack. They can't be thrown, have an impossible-to-block flamethrower (for close range), encourage you to whack them with your saber (in which case, they blast you with a flamethrower), have tons of hit points, and can attack you while you electrocute them. Luckily, you can quickly kill them by dangling them over a ledge and impaling them.
  • In the PS3/360 version, you can short out their jetpacks with lightning. Its Goddamn Bats are the Scout Troopers, imperials with sniper rifles that outrange Galen's force powers.
  • The Lightsaber Training Droids in the Jedi Temple.
• Goddamned Boss: The Gorog in the second installment is a very long fight with repetitive mechanics.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Go here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Ho Yay: Not too particularly tangible in this game, but the way some mooks grab onto each other when you're throwing them around with the Force seems a little suggestive at times.
• Informed Wrongness: Many players feel that a lot of the "evil" player choices in this series just veer too far into this territory instead. The first game's Light Side ending paints Starkiller as He Who Fights Monsters if he kills Palpatine... Never mind that (A) Starkiller has repeatedly used Dark Side methods and powers for good purposes before (including in this very battle) anyway, (B) he clearly just wants to finally be rid of this complete Sociopath rather than outright replace him, (C) Palpatine has frequently proven throughout the Star Wars franchise that his continued survival is only an overwhelming negative for the Galaxy, and (D) Palpatine is not above feigning defenselessness to throw the good guys off guard, which means he remains an active threat so long as he's alive, and he proves this less than ten seconds later in this very scene, forcing Starkiller to make a Heroic Sacrifice that would have been unnecessary if he had just killed him without distraction when he had the chance. Likewise, the respective Dark Side ending paints Starkiller's decision to kill Darth Vader as a Moral Event Horizon deserving of a Fate Worse than Death... even though (A) Starkiller has already suffered plenty in advance because of the guy; (B) Vader here retains little-to-none of his famous Noble Demon qualities from other parts of the franchise; and (C) Starkiller still tries to help the good guys afterward, thus being more of an Anti-Hero instead of actually invoking Face–Heel Turn. And the sequel's Dark Side ending doesn't even give the main Starkiller clone the chance to act on anything remotely consequence-worthy, simply giving him a Diabolus ex Machina death right then and there (in the form of another Starkiller clone, the Dark Apprentice — who, mind you, makes absolutely no appearance in the respective Light Side ending — suddenly appearing and stabbing you from behind with his lightsaber)... In addition to this, the Dark Side ending also somehow results in the death of Juno; instead of merely being unconscious like she was during the Light Side ending, she's inexplicably dead.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One of the biggest criticisms of Force Unleashed II is that the entire game can be completed in a few hours and is significantly shorter than the original game. Not helping is that one of the chapters (Dagobah) is pure filler, the two Salvation chapters are basically the same level in reverse, and the game begins and ends on Kamino.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • General Kota might be a gruff, hardassed old man, but he lost almost everyone he ever cared about to the Empire, gets blinded while trying to fight back, and in the sequel, is forced to fight off endless enemies in a gladiator pit for a week.
  • Darth Vader. Starkiller recognises that his master hates himself, and in the novelisation, even comes to pity Vader. This becomes especially poignant when, in the novel, Starkiller realises that Vader didn't just want an apprentice, he wanted a son, and given what Vader thinks happened to his child, this, along with Vader being ordered to betray Starkiller, adds a whole new element of tragedy to Vader. On top of that, Vader is nearly cast aside by his master after being badly beaten by Starkiller, and in the Dark Side ending, is quite brutally killed by Starkiller.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many people have admitted that the first game is worth the money just to see Jar Jar Binks frozen in carbonite.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "You agreed to stay away!" "I lied..." ^ExplainationGalen's protest to Vader after he attacked the Rebel leaders he assembled per his instructions and Vader's Wham Line response. Has lead to several edits including one where Vader responds "Hitler promised not to invade Czechoslovakia... Welcome to the real world."
  • "If you fail, she dies." ^Explaination From the sequel when Vader holds Juno hostage, coercing clone Starkiller to follow a long list of demands, each and every one of which predicated with "If you resist/fail, she dies." The narmy nature of this scene made it seem like an unintentional Overly Long Gag, with some people adding additional ridiculous demands in a similar vein to Vader's "I have altered the deal" line from The Empire Strikes Back.
  • "Your feelings for her are not real." "THEY ARE REAL TO ME!!" ^ExplainationIn the second game, the Final Boss, Vader, tells clone Starkiller that his feelings for Juno are not real with the first line, considering he's a clone of Galen Marek, followed by the clone retorting with the second. It's recently become something of a joke to post the above two lines alongside a picture of a (usually female) fictional character to demonstrate a fan's Perverse Sexual Lust.
• Moral Event Horizon: See Player Punch.
• Narm:
  • During Emperor Palpatine's Large Ham moment near the end of the game.
  Emperor: You will give me the names of your friends, and your allies...andthenyouwilldie.
  • In the second game, Starkiller's enraged yell when Vader kills Juno sounds more like a bird mating call than an impassioned roar of fury.
  • The physics engine can be a bit wonky at times and lead to some unintentionally hilarious moments. There's nothing more pathetic (or funny) than seeing an enemy rush towards Starkiller, only to stumble on some debris or uneven terrain and fall flat on his face.
  • Failing the QTEs during the boss battles results in them looping back to the previous action with no penalty. This can happen indefinitely.
• Older Than They Think: The developers spent a lot of time talking about the game's materials system in pre-release interviews like they were the first ones to implement such a thing. They were late by four years, and ironically, one of the criticisms of the game found in many reviews is that the system is ultimately underused to the point of being barely noticeable.
• Padding:
  • The key criticism of Force Unleashed II is that it had a half-hour of substance stretched to four hours, resulting in a game that is too short to justify the cost and yet feels like it lasts eons. One level, Dagobah, is a very short run that leads to a cutscene. The levels on the Salvation are especially egregious, because the game forces you to play through most of the level twice (albiet in reverse the second time) to finish it.
  • The Jedi Temple levels added to the Wii, PS2, and PSP versions have no bearing on the main story, on top of being poorly designed, and are only there as an attempt to make up for the hardware limitations of the respective systems.
• Player Punch:
  • In The Force Unleashed II: DLC Edition's Endor mission, the Dark Apprentice (that's the player character) kills Chewie and Han. You also kill Princess Leia too.
  • From the Ultimate Sith Edition's non-canonical extra missions, you (as a fallen Starkiller) kill Ben Kenobi by stabbing him in the shoulder and disintegrating his body with the Millennium Falcon's engines. Then you destroy his Force Ghost with Sith Lightning for good measure. Damn.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: While not as well regarded as the first game, The Force Unleashed II is praised for its overhauled combat, physics and graphics, but criticized for its shorter and shallower story.
• Polished Port: The Wii version of the sequel was handled by Red Fly, the company responsible for the surprisingly good Wii port of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and as such featured different level designs and actions that some critics and gamers felt was superior to its HD counterpart.
• Porting Disaster:
  • The company responsible for the PC port did the absolute minimum necessary to have the game run on a computer. The system requirements are ridiculously high, the graphics and controls have to be changed before launching the game (and the graphics options are limited to screen resolution) and the game itself is riddled with bugs and prone to CTDs. Oh, and game data is duplicated for each level, making the full game take 27 GB of disk space. Not to mention the fact that if you change the key bindings (which you can only do in the game launcher), while you have to use the new keys in QTE's it doesn't show the button change, forcing you to memorize what you mapped the old key to! It's a direct port and nothing more. The second game did much better, although in that case it was developed alongside other console versions and not just blindly ported.
  • The PS2/Wii/PSP version of the original tried to compensate for the unsettling graphics and smaller levels imposed by hardware limitations by adding in more levels in all 3 versions and motion controls for the lightsaber in the Wii version, but the extra levels were poorly done and became unwelcome Padding and the incompetent wiimote controls often turned the game into a Luck-Based Mission. Not helping matters is that the Nintendo Switch version is based on the Wii version rather than the HD release.
• Retroactive Recognition: This series was Sam Witwer's first encounter with the franchise, and he would later go on to voice Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
• Signature Scene: Starkiller using the Force to pull down a Star Destroyer. So iconic, in fact, that it's used as the main page's picture.
• Special Effect Failure: The physics engine is impressive, but it sometimes will lead to hilarious results. Such as a bent metal beam wobbling around on its own like it's made of rubber.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The second game looks much better and plays far smoother. It also applies to the Wii port of the first game, which used waggle styled motion controls for swinging the lightsaber, which proved unpopular with Wii-owning Star Wars fans due to the action in the game being very frequent to the point of tiring arms (and not offering 1-to-1 styled controls that games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword would later benefit from). The sequel, handled by another company, instead used standard button presses for attacks, making it more appealing to gamers who don't like waggle. The Wii sequel also saw much better graphics and unique level designs.
  • Contested Sequel: However, the increased story elements and the character shifts to a clone of Starkiller, the rushed job of the HD versions of the second game, the vastly shorter story mode, among other fractures-result in a more divisive reaction to the second game.
• That One Boss:
  • Kazdan Paratus nearly always blocks all of your moves except Force Lightning, and, if you play on a difficulty above normal, starts blocking Force Lightning too, if it's used repeatedly. He has hard to block light-lance attacks and can hit for about 70% of your life if he catches one of the objects lying around in his Force Push. He's not as bad in the Wii version, though, despite having a double-bladed lightsaber instead of his lightsaber pike. Taking his place however is the ghost/hologram of Galen's father, Kento, who not only blocks every attack you throw at him, but also seems to move and react twice as fast as you.
  • On higher difficulties like Sith Master, most of the bosses of this game fall under this category, unless you know the "trick" to beating them.
  • The Terror Walker in II. While relatively easy to beat one-on-one, it summons so many Terror Droids and Assassins to help that you can't really focus on it, allowing it to keep stepping on you as you take damage everywhere.
• That One Level:
  • The hangar in the Death Star (PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 version) isn't called the "Hangar of Death" for nothing. It's filled with snipers, Elite Mooks, and AT-ST's on all sides with you in the middle. However, fans discovered a cheap way past it- Force Repulse the doors you need to get through, and if you fall through, you'll automatically cause the cutscene to begin. At the opposite end of the Death Star level, the final massive room is an enormous pain. With two AT-ST's stomping around on the bottom level, a top level full of way too many jetpack troopers to zap before running out of Force energy and being rendered helpless and snipers supporting them, Purge Troopers on the middle levels, the ever-present threat of being blasted off a top-level walkway to fall to your death, periodic Death Star laser beams that will instant-kill you and some of which run across the walkways (where the aforementioned concussion-shot enemies can leave you dazed on the ground right in the path of if you're unlucky), and a fight against an entire squad of elite guardsmen on a small platform between you and the game's ending, this room is a fierce challenge even on Apprentice, and a goddamned nightmare on Sith Master.
  • The level before that, Imperial Raxus Prime, can also be a massive chore on higher difficulties. Between Purge Troopers, AT-ST's, and a viciously difficult fight against PROXY transformed into Darth Maul. And then there's the bit at the end of the level where you pull a Star Destroyer out of orbit—to explain, the "guide" for how to aim the pull is completely off.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The second game compared to its novelization: the book gives just as much page time to Juno and the fledgling rebellion, and even sends her on a complicated infiltration mission with Admiral Akbar and Proxy. The game could have made the story more substantial and extended the gameplay by depicting Juno's story alongside Starkiller's
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Rahm Kota urging Starkiller to not kill Palpatine when he easily could is intended to be seen as him imparting the enlightened beliefs of the Jedi onto Starkiller, for his own well-being. Instead, it comes off as Insane Troll Logic, especially since Kota himself has killed people, and his only objection is to not kill Palpatine in anger. It also doesn't make any sense that Kota couldn't Take a Third Option and kill Palpatine instead, being more in control of his anger, which also implies that Kota is okay with killing so long as you do it without emotion. Predictably, as soon as he convinces Starkiller to let the most dangerous man in the galaxy live, Palpatine attempts to kill him with Force lightning, forcing Starkiller to sacrifice himself to save the Rebellion.
• Vindicated by History: Many hold the first game in higher regard than at its launch due to its complex narrative and surprisingly well implemented force mechanics, among other factors. Many people hope to see Galen Marek reintegrated into canon after Disney rebooted the EU.
  • The first game also gained some regard due to how unabashedly 2000s edgy it is, from the naming conventions, story, gameplay, and even bosses (the DLC where you fight Obi Wan's Force Ghost being the biggest offender). While the edge is viewed in a far more humourous light than the serious portrayal it was meant to be, it's gained some fans nonetheless. The excessive, over the top Force use adds to this, fitting in perfectly with the unintentionally funny edge.
• The Woobie:
  • Starkiller's entire life qualifies, but most definitely the scene in the sequel where he starts hallucinating that Juno and Kota are rejecting him.
  Juno's voice: Who are you?
  Starkiller: Juno, it's me!
  Juno's voice: You're a monster, a thing.
  Starkilller: (sounding like he's about to cry) Juno, please!
  Kota's voice: You're Vader's puppet. Just a body filled with the memories of a dead man.
  • To a lesser extent in the tie-in comic, Starkiller wouldn't know what Juno really has to say about it no mater what Boba Fett tells her.
  Juno: You know he will follow us.
  Boba: Yes. He's already run halfway across the Galaxy for you. No reason to think he'll stop now.
  Juno: And when he finds us, he will kill you.
  Boba: Maybe, but I have some experience with Jedi.
  Juno: He is no Jedi. A Jedi controls his emotions and his powers. But Starkiller... He does not know restraint. He will bring down an entire Star Destroyer on your head, if that is what it takes to kill you.
  Boba: The Starkiller you knew? The one who could pull starships out of the sky? He's dead. Vader had him cloned. That's who is searching for you... A half-mad copy who only thinks he loves you. And you're gonna draw him right back to Vader.
  Juno: You must have loved someone, anyone... So you know how I'm feeling right now... You know how I ache, just thinking of him being hurt. Don't let Vader use me to destroy him.
  • Kazdan Paratus. Wracked with guilt for fleeing the Jedi Temple when it was attacked, he made statues of the Jedi Council members, who he talks to as if they were alive. He's devastated when Starkiller destroys them.
  • Juno Eclipse. Particularly in the novelisations, which go into depth about her troubled relationship with her father, her guilt at Vader tricking her into causing a massive ecological disaster, her sense of betrayal when the Empire turns on her for basically being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and her deep sense of loss after Starkiller's death. Then, in the sequel, not only is she unable to get over Starkiller, but she's used by Vader to manipulate him. Even while Vader is choking her, Juno is desperately begging Starkiller not to give in to Vader's demands, and she ends up nearly getting killed by Vader almost immediately afterwards. The woman never gets a break.

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