Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call review: A galactic-level upgrade on Part One

When Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge launched late last year, it was a promising but fundamentally limited, unfinished experience. You spend the majority of your time as an anonymous droid repair tech who silently blasts their way through dozens of Death Gang members, droids, and alien monsters. There's only one short "Tale" left on a bit of a cliffhanger, and even the main storyline ended abruptly with no catharsis.

Knowing all that, I skipped it entirely, deciding to wait until Part 2 arrived to experience the game as a complete package. And I'm so glad I did. The Last Call DLC doesn't just add two new Tales and several main story missions; you also get tons of new purchasable upgrades, weapons, enemy types, quests, and mini-games.

Last Call integrates seamlessly into the original game's narrative, and I was shocked to learn later on how much content the DLC adds. It not only morphs this Star Wars VR experience into something more complete and worth playing, but also gives it more synergy with the SW Extended Universe (EU) if that appeals to you. Truly, the only disappointment is knowing that ILMxLab won't make any more DLC for the game.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call: What you'll love

Many of the positives from our initial review persist across Last Call as well. The voice acting remains excellent; Star Wars pros like Frank Oz and Anthony Daniels stick out, of course, but several of the original characters make a strong impression too. The graphics, lighting, and textures look gorgeous and life-like (for a Quest 2 game). The map design encourages strategic movement to defeat foes, and environmental design immerses you fully in a Star Wars-esque ambiance.

Having been to the Galaxy's Edge theme park in Disneyland, I felt transported back to Batuu. Of course, you can be cynical about this game as one big ad for the park; but Last Call turns the experience into something far more substantial, making it worth playing for any Star Wars fan.

Where SW: TftGE failed initially was in its length and monotony. Its runtime was padded by long interactive cutscenes where you, a silent protagonist, can't participate, followed by missions where you fight wave upon wave of near-identical foes. Weapons looked different but mostly split into two categories: pistol or automatic. You only had one Jedi Tale to switch things up from the main storyline and had to earn it with an item fetch quest first. And most importantly, the game was fairly short unless you bothered with repeating missions to unlock achievements.

I bring all these up to help explain how much of a course correction Last Call is. Playing from the start, you'll notice some of the same issues above. But you're rewarded for your patience when you get to the second half of the game.

Weapons get a major upgrade in later levels. You'll find new explosive, charge-up, or shielded weapons that all change how you'll approach combat situations. They have much more limited ammo, but ILMxLab added shoulder holsters so you can carry four at once — making it more likely you'll get to try a broader range of attacks per mission.

You'll use these weapons to blast through a wider range of enemy types. You'll see upgraded droids equipped with these dangerous guns, First Order goons with jetpacks and unassailable turrets, and new mercs with shielding and grenades. ILMxLab upgraded the enemy difficulty — and the intensity of the story — along with the weapons.

Credits were kind of useless in the initial release, only good for buying attack drones and cosmetics. Now, you can choose different tools based on whichever part of combat you're struggling with. Medic globes auto-inject you with bacta healing gel, armor gloves reduce damage, or venting gloves let you shoot longer before overheating. You can only pick one, so choose wisely. There's also a combat visor for spotting hidden enemies more quickly, charging holsters for recharging weapons between fights, and the aforementioned shoulder holsters.

Best of all, the hoverpack got a revamp. Before, you could only hover straight in the air as a stationary target for foes; now, you can move in all directions like a geriatric Boba Fett. It's slow enough that you won't get motion sick, but mobile enough to make using it feel more tactical. Plus, on that note, ILMxLab apparently improved certain settings to make moving around less jarring, like teleporting or manual turning without the screen going dark every time.

All of these enhancements made me feel justified in waiting to start the game and will make the experience more polished for new players. For those who already played the first half, you won't have quite as long to enjoy them. But to be fair, there are several intense main missions added with Last Call, where you'll need these tools to succeed.

Frankly, the amount of fully-voiced content and new features Last Call adds for $10 is astounding: two main questlines and two new Tales, along with the new gear and some cute little side missions in Seezelslak's dive bar. The main storyline gets two new villainous foes to defeat, several new allies (including a big fan favorite from Clone Wars and Rebels), and a proper denouncement that the original game lacked.

While the original side mission, "Temple of Darkness," showed the horror of the dark side, the new "Sacred Garden" Tale is a more thoughtful (but rewarding) look at the light side of the force. Ady Sun'Zee returns as a Jedi Knight with her own padawan, still struggling with the loss of her master and the darkness within her. Contrasted to the main character's blank slate, Ady has a compelling arc completed in this Tale. I'll leave the story details vague, but I enjoyed the Force minigames very much as a switch from typical combat minigames. They're all about patience and careful movement of the Touch controllers — which feels more on-brand for a Jedi — and completing them feels rewarding.

In total contrast to that, "The Bounty of Boggs Triff" has you play as famous bounty hunter IG-88 in a mission that clearly invokes The Mandalorian's own deadly assassin droid. You're a near-unstoppable machine with epic firepower and cold programming that prioritizes profits above all else. While relatively short, this epic mission gives you a proper "Tale" of the Star Wars galaxy with a funny jerk of a character at the center. I only wish we'd gotten more of these anthology-type missions.

Disney's Star Wars strategy is all about synergy, and it shows here. Characters and journal entries make small references to all the recent SW projects: shows and films like The Last Jedi and Clone Wars, the Batuu theme park, and even Extended Universe novels like The High Republic and Phasma. If you're an unabashed Star Wars nerd like me, you'll enjoy this pandering; otherwise, some of the references will likely go over your head. But that's okay, as the game's narrative is straightforward enough that you'll always get what's happening.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call: What you won't like

To get to the Last Call missions, you have to play through the original game first. That makes sense for the main missions, sure — even if it means new players have to slog through the older content. But most of the Tales content is totally standalone, with different mechanics from the primary missions! So it's hard to keep pushing through generic enemy encounters with the limited weapon selection of the earlier missions when you'd rather jump ahead to the part where you're a killer assassin droid or infiltrating an enemy base.

I also have to criticize the auto-save tool for Galaxy's Edge. You lose a lot of progress every time you die to an enemy encounter, which incentives being careful. But it's unforgivable that it doesn't auto-save when you open a chest or pick up a collectible. Multiple times, I would die in a tough section, revive at the start of the region, and realize I have to repeat another five minutes of puzzles and collecting while listening to the same radio dialogue over and over.

Finally, some of the finicky mechanics that Nick noted in his original review persist in Last Call. Picking up objects is often trickier than it should be, and you'll find yourself fumbling to pick up a weapon or pull a healing item out of your pack while enemies blast away at you. But I'm used to control issues with Quest 2 games in general, and I wouldn't classify these as game-breaking in any way. All in all, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call is a very polished experience.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call: Should you play it?

Whether you own Tales from the Galaxy's Edge already or are considering buying it, Last Call is a no-brainer, must-buy purchase. Last Call will at least double your playing time in the game, make moving around the world more immersive, and add tons of unlockables that incentivize completing small quests for credits.

4.5 out of 5

Finding a "good" Star Wars video game can be a challenge at times. We had a golden age of games like Jedi Outcast, Rogue Squadron, and the original Battlefront games in the 00s that blew gamers away, but pickings were far slimmer the following decade. Thankfully, Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars: Squadrons have reversed that trend the last couple of years.

Compared to those, Tales from the Galaxy's Edge definitely has a much less in-depth or focused storyline. But thanks to the major upgrades that Last Call provides, I'm prepared to throw Tales from the Galaxy's Edge in as another proper Star Wars™ game worth playing for any fan with an Oculus headset. And even for casual Star Wars fans — especially younger gamers — this falls on our list of the best Oculus Quest 2 games available today.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Last Call

Bottom line: Last Call converts Tales from the Galaxy's Edge from a beautiful yet unfinished experience into a properly excellent one. The gameplay is varied and challenging, several popular characters make appearances, and the IG-88 sequence will be a stand-out moment for players.

• $35 at Oculus Store (Base game + DLC)