Me and the wife, we’re always playing Lego games. We even did a one-off stream of this one together. With the main Traveler’s Tales studio on Dimensions duty, the development here was handled by TT Fusion, who normally does the handheld ports. So is TFA able to hang with the rest of TT’s output?

Yeah, it’s really good. A side effect of the development shift is that the handheld version, which was also done by Fusion, feels closer in design to the console one than the usual recent handhelds. Although it splits levels up and adds bonus objectives there are the standard cutbacks, with simple graphics and fewer extra levels, but the biggest shame is the reduced hubs. Hub worlds here have missions and characters wandering around, but they felt dinky and restrictive on 3DS.

Another thing the handheld misses out on is DLC. The season pass for the main game adds four quality levels and a boatload of characters from across the Star Wars universe. Having caught up on shows and various media recently, it was awesome to get characters from across both trilogies, Clone Wars, Rebels, even the Freemaker Adventures to flesh out the roster. It just adds spice to play sessions to be able to sample that breadth. The base game by comparison has a few such Saga characters as bonuses but otherwise is loaded with filler background characters. It did make me appreciate some of their designs but the quantity of background extras borders on ridiculous.

This is one of the problems with making a Lego game based on just one movie, that I noticed with the Lego Movie game. The content on offer feels a bit thin; stretched, like butter over too much bread. Luckily there’s an added layer of lovely cream with the new story levels, a loose prologue campaign plus some bonuses that help to expand the world of this era. Highlights were getting to know Sidon Ithano’s crew and storming Ottegan as the bad guys. The DLC levels help with this too, with the surprisingly touching origin of 3PO’s arm and the story of some new Resistance pilot friends escaping Starkiller. Playing these new stories felt fresh and exciting, and they were well integrated with the whole.

The Lego games always want to show off some new gimmick. In this case, the multi-build objects and shooting gallery section both were clunky and broke the flow of gameplay. Bad ideas. Oh well. The rest of the formula works well, especially with plenty to do in hubs and the new story levels. Getting the film actors in for new dialogue over levels also helps it to expand on the film while feeling authentic, although I do recall the days when dialogue wasn’t at all necessary in these games. This is also a particularly slick and polished instalment in the Lego series, so well done Fusion. Looking forward to the next one!