Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes is a game based on the new Star Wars animated series that takes a highly stylized look at the galaxy far, far away. In Republic Heroes, you are fighting in the Clone Wars for control of the galaxy and the Jedi are the generals calling the shots to try and restore peace. You play as either famous Jedi, like Obi-Wan or Anakin, or clone troopers as you fight some battles across the planetary systems.
What’s Hot
The Clone Wars art style is something that more closely resembles moving sculptures. It’s definitely one of those love it or hate it styles, but for this game and the story they are trying to tell, it works well enough that even if you hate the style, you’ll admit it goes well with the game. The animation feeds into the style and with the more “cartoony” look, it provides for some more spectacular moves since you can suspend your disbelief a little more than normal.
The game breaks the Jedi swordplay levels up with some clone trooper missions where you use the Wii-mote to point and aim on screen. The game handles breaking up the missions deftly and keeps the string of action alive without getting stale. The clone trooper missions are surprising since they change up the gameplay quite a bit and accomplish a lot with the Wii motion controls without feeling gimmicky. There are actually some peripherals made in the molds of lightsabers and laser blasters that you can use to make you feel more like a Jedi in your living room.
Unlockables play their part in Republic Hero once you collect enough points to use them. Some of them are purely cosmetic and allow you to change your characters to some of the other familiar faces in the Star Wars universe and others give you real benefits like expanded life bars and improved cool-down times for the combo attack chains. When you play co-op, you’re going to get the most mileage out of the game as opposed to playing solo (holding back Han Solo puns…).
What’s Not
Republic Heroes breaks down and sputters when the gameplay is explored in depth. The core things you are tasked to do in the game don’t work out well. For instance, the jumping and platforming you are constantly doing is sadly flawed. The game will attempt to magnetize you to the next platform, but if you are off by a tiny bit, you’ll fall into a bottomless pit. The camera is also your enemy and it won’t cooperate when you need it the most. There are enough checkpoints for it not to be a giant headache but the vast amount of respawn points make it seem like a problem was recognized and this was the fastest, easiest method to solve the problem.
One strange situation is when your computer ally gets stuck and becomes a liability, preventing you from getting any further in the game. At that point, you hope to find a cliff to jump off of because they might follow you, which will hopefully reset whatever went wrong to begin with. When they aren’t bugging out, they are largely ineffective in battle. The clone trooper missions are, in effect, the same as the Jedi missions where you’ll be wanting to play with a human rather than dealing with the partner AI.
Final Word
The intended audience for Republic Heroes is going to be much more forgiving of the flaws than older Star Wars veterans. The only way to play this game is co-op and even then some of the flaws will be overpowering. Remember this game doesn’t have the older gamer in mind and be sure leave this one to the smaller Star Wars super fans.
