The best Star Wars game to start with: Jedi: Fallen Order, and the three to pick instead

If you have never played a Star Wars game, start with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It is a 17-hour lightsaber story about a Padawan who survived Order 66, it is canon, and it is the first chapter of the series most people will tell you to play. On Steam it is $7.99 until noon Central on October 8, down from a $39.99 list price, and it comes with EA Play, Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. On a PS5 or Xbox Series X it runs at 60 frames per second.

If you are on a Switch, shopping for a kid, or already know you want an RPG or a cockpit, one of the three alternates below fits better. Our what Star Wars game should I play guide sorts a dozen tastes; this page is for the person standing at the start.

Why Fallen Order, out of every Star Wars game

It is where the story you will want next begins. Fallen Order's sequel, Jedi: Survivor, is the better game, and it is the one our picker gives anyone who is undecided. But Survivor assumes you know Cal Kestis, Cere, Greez and the droid BD-1, and its opening hour lands harder if you do. Going back the other way is the hard direction: two lightsaber stances instead of five, smaller planets, slower traversal. A newcomer has the luxury of doing it in order, so do.

It is a small commitment. Seventeen hours across five planets. If the combat does not click, you have spent eight dollars and a couple of weekends.

It costs almost nothing to try, on most hardware. List is $39.99 and it has spent most of 2026 under $10, per our Fallen Order guide. If you already pay for Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass or EA Play, it is already yours. It is on PC, PS5, PS4 and both generations of Xbox.

It sits in the main timeline. Fallen Order is set five years after Revenge of the Sith, and it is one of the five canon games that make up the short route in our Star Wars games in order guide. What happens in it counts.

The honest catch. The combat is built on parry timing borrowed from Sekiro, and the lower difficulties shorten fights more than they change them. If you have tried a Souls game and hated it, read the alternates first. On PC it also hitches for half a second now and then while it loads the next part of a level, a problem seven years of patches never fixed; the console versions do not have it.

If you would rather...

...play with your kids, or you are new to games: LEGO Skywalker Saga

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga covers all nine films, two players can share one screen, and it won our LEGO ranking on every measure we use. It is the friendliest way into Star Wars games for anyone who does not already play games. It is $7.49 on Steam until noon Central on October 8 ($49.99 list), and $11.99 on Switch through October 12 ($39.99 regular). It has been on Game Pass since December 2022 and is Steam Deck Verified. The known complaints: no character creator, and fewer, shorter levels per film than the older LEGO games.

...a story RPG: Knights of the Old Republic

Knights of the Old Republic is the best Star Wars game ever made by our own ranking: a 94 on Metacritic, a 40-hour campaign, and a twist that still works. It is $3.99 on Steam until noon Central on October 8 ($9.99 list), and $14.99 on Switch. It is not our main pick because it is a 2003 game and plays like one, with a 4:3 picture and a tiny interface. On PC, the Community Patch and a widescreen fix sort that out; our KOTOR guide has both. It has never been on PlayStation.

...a cockpit or a command chair: Squadrons or Empire at War

If being a Jedi is not the draw, Star Wars: Squadrons is a starfighter game with the best cockpit the franchise has built this century, and it was made for VR headsets and flight sticks. It is $3.99 on Steam until noon Central on October 8 ($39.99 list). Buy it for the four-hour campaign; online matches are slow to fill on Steam.

For strategy, Empire at War: Gold Pack ($6.99 on Steam until noon Central on October 8, $19.99 list, PC only) gives you a galactic map and real-time battles, and twenty years of mods have kept it among the most played Star Wars games on Steam. Buy it on Steam for the Workshop, then pick a mod by era with our mod guide.

The games not to start with

Jedi: Survivor, if you have not played Fallen Order. It is the better game and the wrong first one, for the reasons above. Play it second.

KOTOR II before KOTOR. The sequel is darker than the first game and shipped visibly unfinished in 2004. On PC it needs the free Restored Content Mod to make its ending make sense, and the Switch version has no official way to add it. Play them in order.

Zero Company, if you do not like turn-based tactics. It is the best new Star Wars game in years and our 9 out of 10, and it is a game about angles and cover, not running and shooting. At $49.99, with no discount on Steam since launch, it is a poor gamble for someone who has never played XCOM or anything like it.

Battlefront II (2017), if you want a story. It is the busiest Star Wars shooter on Steam, and its campaign is an afternoon: DICE's own estimate was five to six hours. It also has no crossplay, so it is a fine first game only if your friends already play it on your platform.

What about Galactic Racer?

Fuse Games' racer came out on October 6 at $59.99 on PC, PS5 and Xbox, and critics had it at 87 on OpenCritic on launch day. It asks for no Star Wars homework, which makes it a reasonable first game for anyone who mainly wants to race. Steam reviews are lower, mostly because PC players cannot rebind keys, so play it on a controller. It has not been announced for Switch. Our launch-day report has the early numbers and known issues.

By platform

PC. Fallen Order, $7.99 on Steam until noon Central on October 8, then $39.99. It needs the EA app. PC Game Pass includes it. On a Steam Deck it is rated Playable, with an annoying first ten minutes of launcher setup.

PS5. Fallen Order, $39.99 on the PlayStation Store when we checked in September, or in EA Play. A used disc costs about $10 and gets the free 60 frames per second upgrade. KOTOR is not on PlayStation, so the RPG fan's start here is different; every Star Wars game on PS5 has the list.

Xbox. Fallen Order through Game Pass Ultimate. The Essential and Premium tiers do not include EA Play, so on those, start with LEGO Skywalker Saga. Every Star Wars game on Game Pass breaks down the tiers.

Switch. Fallen Order is not on Switch. Start with LEGO Skywalker Saga, or KOTOR at $14.99 if you want the RPG.

Switch 2. The same two, plus Star Wars Outlaws, which exists on Nintendo hardware only as the Switch 2 Gold Edition ($59.99 list). A Fallen Order port for Switch 2 is a rumor with no word from EA.

What to play second

Jedi: Survivor. It picks up five years later with five stances, a bigger open hub on Koboh, and the best lightsaber combat of any modern Star Wars game. It is $10.49 on Steam until noon Central on October 8, and it is almost never worth its $69.99 list; it drops to $20 to $30 in most sales and is on EA Play.

After that, you know what you like. If it was the story, KOTOR. If it was the setting, the best Star Wars games ever made ranks fifteen across forty years. If it was the lightsaber, the Jedi Knight games are where the idea started.

The details

• Steam sale prices and list prices are from our Autumn Sale check, US store. The Switch and PS5 prices are from our Switch and PS5 guides, read in late September.
• Everything else comes from the linked guide for each game. Game Pass catalogs change monthly. If anything here has changed, tell us and we will correct it in the article, visibly.