Released alongside Lightsaber Duels for the Wii, this game also attempts to replicate the feel of a clash of sabers… but with touchscreen tapping instead of Wii remote waggling. I like the original plot, but the gameplay leaves something to be desired.

The Jedi Alliance of the title refers to the fact that every level is played as a pair of Jedi, chosen by the player. You pick your primary and accompanying character from Ahsoka Tano (yo), Anakin, Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, Plo Koon, and Kit Fisto, as depicted in the CG The Clone Wars show. Your choice doesn’t matter so much apart from flavour; combinations will level up when used, giving you better combo attacks, but the game also encourages switching up by promising unlockables.

Several levels borrow from the visual design of locations from the show, such as Rodia and Ziro’s digs, but there’s also new stuff like a temple on Dathomir. The prominent enemy faction apart from the CIS is the Nightsisters, who wouldn’t be introduced into the show proper for another few years. The plot is wholly original and feels like it would fit perfectly as an arc of the show; the game is fully voiced by the show’s actors as well, including Tom Kane’s narration to open each level. It also looks the part; yes there’s some extreme DS blockiness, but check out when an NPC gets a closeup to monologue: there’s some seriously impressive face animation on display when it swaps from chunkface to the high detail models.

I just wish it was more fun to play! It’s all touchscreen controlled, which is fine, but fighting enemies involves clunkily jumping into a duel mode, then frantically tapping. There’s supposed to be combos for high, medium, and low taps but it’s largely irrelevant; each fight plays exactly the same. Then you run (so slowly) to the next thing, be it another fight, a touchscreen minigame to open a door, or a swipe-based quicktime event, rinse and repeat. They do an acceptable job of varying the situations you’re in to make it feel fresh, but it’s still so sluggish, especially when you play as R2 and 3PO.

Levels have collectibles such as Sith holocrons or “Ilum crystals” (kyber crystals hadn’t been canonised in the show yet, I think), but finding them all to get concept art, costumes, etc. requires replaying levels, sometimes with different Jedi combinations. This feels arbitrary and when the novelty of seeing new content is lost, it becomes utterly tedious—especially because cutscenes cannot be skipped. The characters’ actions and even dialogue don’t change either so these rewards are only ends in themselves, the game part has become meaningless after the first playthrough. But, er… I did enjoy the first playthrough well enough!