10 great Star Wars games to check out after Zero Company

Back in early 2019, while I was covering the Star Wars Celebration convention in Chicago, Variety asked me to rank the 10 best Star Wars video games ever made. And, in the years since, I’ve occasionally found myself thinking about how different that list would look if I wrote it today. Especially when you factor in things like availability or compatibility with modern controllers, Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox and PlayStation, Windows 11, and so on.

With new Star Wars games like Zero Company, Galactic Racer, and Fate of the Old Republic coming down the pipeline, there’s never a perfect time to write a list like this, but a lot has certainly changed since I wrote that original Variety feature years ago. Where that earlier article was about naming the all-time great Star Wars games throughout history, this is more me recommending awesome games you can download and enjoy on current hardware, with minimal headache. So, of my personal favorites, these are the top 10 that are easy to recommend right now.

10. Star Wars: Battlefront (2004)

This one is available in two really great packages: the 2024 Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, which you can get on pretty much any major platform, or as part of GOG’s Good Old Game Preservation Program. (GOG curates a lot of classic titles and ensures they run well on modern PCs, sometimes with a third-party configuration tool or fan-favorite quality-of-life mod.) I wrote an op-ed about the older Battlefronts for IGN a couple years back, when the Classic Collection launched, and I praised the first one in particular for spotlighting the unsung heroes of the rebellion—the soldiers in the trenches, whom we see in the films but learn little about. If you want to play something that looks and feels a bit old-school, but offers plenty of authentic Star Wars thrills with locations like Endor, Hoth, and Tatooine, the original Battlefront is a must-play.

9. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022)

Look, there are lots of great Lego games; I grew up playing Lego Island over at a buddy’s house in the nineties. But the most recent Lego Star Wars title is absolutely jam-packed with planets, vehicles, characters from every movie and show, and epic sequences. While Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga was a fantastic game that let you play through the first six episodes in Lego form, I’m a big fan of the sequel trilogy, too, so I love that The Skywalker Saga gives you full adaptations of The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. Some players aren’t thrilled that the newer games feature voice-over, among other complaints, but the devs knocked this one outta the park. It’s sure to rekindle anyone’s love of the galaxy far, far away.

8. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008)

The Force Unleashed comes in a few different forms, depending on whether you’re buying the Nintendo Switch port, the Xbox back-compat version, or the Ultimate Sith Edition on PC. But it’s an outstanding action game from the 360 era, starring Sam Witwer—Maul the Shadow Lord himself—and filled with great original characters from the Legends era, unforgettable set pieces, colorful worlds from both the prequels and the classic trilogy, and stellar storytelling. Like the animated series Star Wars Rebels, this game takes place in the years before the Battle of Yavin, with the player taking on the role of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, codenamed Starkiller (a name that’s been handed around from George Lucas’s mid-’70s rough draft and on down to the First Order’s short-lived superweapon). It’s a shame this trilogy never got finished, but I still love the first game a lot, and the sequel’s definitely got some memorable moments as well.

7. Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999)

There are a few great Star Wars arcade games still kicking around, but this one is my personal favorite. Whether you manage to track down the arcade version in person somewhere or simply play it on your platform of choice—it’s on every console these days, plus GOG and Steam—this is the most enduring game from the Phantom Menace era for good reason. Its focused gameplay loop still feels like a Nintendo 64 racing game, but it’s got a lot of charm, and having such a singular focus on the film’s podrace sequence allowed the developers to polish this thing to a serious shine. Pick your favorite racer from the film, take on courses from a variety of diverse alien worlds, and become a legend of the sport.

6. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Let’s cross our fingers that this one gets a modern port from Aspyr or Nightdive sooner rather than later, because it definitely deserves one. Movie tie-ins used to be the norm back in the day, though these days they’re pretty rare. They tended to be made on a tight turnaround, with formulaic design and mediocre production value, and they seldom stood the test of time. Every once in a while, though, you’d get a gem like Treyarch’s Spider-Man 2 or the Collective’s Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. If you own an Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S console, the great news is that you can buy and play this one right now on the Xbox Backward Compatibility catalog. Otherwise, tracking it down might be a little bit tougher, but it’s truly special, with some of the best lightsaber combat in any game, a memorable alternate “dark side” ending, and solid voice acting—including James Arnold Taylor from The Clone Wars as Obi-Wan Kenobi. It may not be as widely available as most of the other options on this list, but it’s near and dear to my heart, and any Star Wars fan with an Xbox should give it a shot.

5. Star Wars: Squadrons (2020)

This one comes from the team at EA Motive, who worked on the story campaign for the 2017 Battlefront II, and there’s nothing else quite like it. It’s got the kind of big-picture storytelling you expect from a really consequential Star Wars narrative, but it’s also a natural evolution of the classic Star Wars flight sims, like TIE Fighter and the rest of the X-Wing series. After the opening prologue, you play as two main pilots: one for the Empire and one from the New Republic. And a lot of the fun here comes from all the different ways you get to make the experience your own, from decorating your cockpit with various little knicknacks to honing your preferred loadout and trying different starfighters. Like Episode I: Racer, this is a game that offers one very polished experience, rather than aiming for mass-market appeal. You can play it in VR, if that’s your thing, but it doesn’t feel like a VR game, and I’ve never played it that way. It’s a masterpiece.

4. Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)

If you’re looking for a multiplayer Jedi game you can easily pour hundreds of hours into, this classic MMO is a great option for PC players who don’t mind mouse-and-keyboard controls. Its various expansions are organized neatly into a chronological timeline, so you can start all the way back at the beginning of the larger story or skip ahead to the new stuff—whichever you prefer. And every character class has its own unique story campaign, each of which is about the length of a blockbuster video game. So if you’re looking for something you can really sink your teeth into, perhaps with a friend, The Old Republic is a truly massive journey through the Star Wars universe.

3. Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)

This game’s loot-box controversy gave the entire industry a new cautionary tale, but the devs were quick to patch that stuff out, and its multi-era story campaign remains one of my personal favorites. Members of the Empire’s special Inferno Squad have run-ins with familiar faces like Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian. You get to experience the fall of the Empire, first at Endor and then Jakku, and eventually witness the rise of the First Order after a significant time jump. The Luke scenes are some of the character’s best moments, frankly, and there’s also an eye-opening Kylo Ren set piece that shows the full depths of his mind-reading powers. But that’s all before you get to the multiplayer offerings. You can team up with a buddy to blast bots in a casual arcade “Co-op” mode—or take the fight to the entire galaxy in online matchmaking. There’s Starfighter Assault, where you can fly your favorite fighters and even some of your favorite hero starships (like the Millennium Falcon); there’s the full-scale Supremacy mode, where you fight on the ground and then board enemy warships. And then there are novelty playlists like Heroes vs. Villains and Ewok Hunt, which let you play out smaller scenarios with all your favorite “action figures,” so to speak.

2. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023)

When I wrote that top-10 list for Variety in 2019, Jedi: Fallen Order had just been unveiled with an early story trailer. Seven years later, I can’t say Fallen Order is a favorite of mine—the heavy Soulslike feel and the lack of fast travel made it hard for me to revisit the way I usually do with good Star Wars games. But its 2023 sequel, Jedi: Survivor, may well be the best Star Wars game ever made. It’s a testament to the capabilities of all the brilliant artists, designers, and developers at Respawn Entertainment; it features outstanding writing and performances; and it tells one of the great Star Wars stories of the Disney era, on par with Rebels, The Last Jedi, Andor, and the best of the recent books and comics. It’s still my 2023 game of the year.

1. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II—The Sith Lords (2004)

I spent years of my life researching and writing a book all about BioWare’s 2003 original, but that also means there’s very little left for me to discover in that game: I’ve been there and done that. Its PC version is pretty rough, too, lacking support for modern display resolutions and just generally not running as well as you’d expect for such an important game. Obsidian’s 2004 sequel, meanwhile, runs beautifully on modern PCs, with Steam Workshop integration to make modding a breeze, plenty of support for widescreen and ultrawide monitors, and all the various quality-of-life upgrades that Obsidian baked into the original design, building on BioWare’s foundation while also improving on it. Not all of the writing here has aged well, despite the hyperbole you run into on websites like this one. But, where the first KotOR felt like a movie, with the three films of the original Star Wars trilogy as a blueprint for its own three-act structure, KotOR II plays more like a novel or TV miniseries. It’s a quieter story, and it takes war seriously as a dark, troubling subject. If you only play one older Star Wars game, make it this one.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading, and let me know what you think I may have left out. There are so many worthwhile Star Wars games out there, and ecosystems like GOG and Xbox have kept many of them alive and playable to this day. These are simply my personal top 10 that don’t require a ton of extra wizardry to run—no emulation or modding necessary. There’s a Star Wars game out there for everyone, spanning decades of innovation and creativity, and I’d love to hear about your favorites. Till next time.