Trying to name the best Star Wars video games is messier than the bottom of a trash compactor. There are too many variables before you even get to whether one game is actually better than another. We have canon and Legends, the pre-Disney era and everything that has come after, games built around the films and games telling entirely original stories. There are titles separated by decades of technological change, completely different design philosophies, and very different ideas of what playing inside the Star Wars galaxy should even feel like.
And any conversation about the best Star Wars video games has to remember where all of this started. Long before Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, or Jedi: Survivor, games like 1982’s The Empire Strikes Back on Atari 2600 were already trying to translate what audiences loved about the films into something they could actually control.
That history also makes the current moment particularly exciting. Lucasfilm Games has reopened Star Wars to various developers and publishing partners, and the results are already showing how much room remains in this galaxy. Jedi: Survivor, Star Wars Outlaws, and now Star Wars Zero Company are pursuing completely different genres and fantasies rather than trying to force every game into the same mold.
Star Wars gaming has always been bigger than lightsabers and Force powers. Sometimes the fantasy is becoming a Jedi. Sometimes it is commanding soldiers through the Clone Wars, piloting a starfighter, surviving as a scoundrel, leading a squad of clone commandos, building a life inside an MMO, or somehow surviving a podrace that should absolutely kill you.
That is what makes ranking these games from one to anything feel almost impossible. How do you meaningfully decide whether KOTOR II is “better” than Episode I: Racer when they are trying to accomplish completely different things? So instead, I want to look at the best Star Wars video games by genre. The games that understood their particular corner of the galaxy, committed to the fantasy, and showed just how many different ways there are to play Star Wars.
Best RPG: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (2004)
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords picks up in the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War, with the Republic weakened, the Jedi nearly wiped out, and the Sith hunting what remains of the Order. Players take on the role of the Jedi Exile, a former general who was cast out after the Mandalorian Wars and has lost their connection to the Force. Their return to the galaxy becomes a journey through the damage left behind by years of war, both across the Republic and within the people who survived it.
A huge part of that comes from the influence system. Your conversations and decisions can fundamentally change how your companions understand themselves and the Force, with several capable of being trained as Jedi or pulled toward the dark side depending on the relationship you build with them.
It presents the Force as something shaped by relationships, trauma, belief, discipline, and personal choice, an idea that has increasingly found its way into modern Star Wars. More than twenty years later, modern Star Wars has increasingly explored similar territory through projects like Ahsoka Season One and Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, loosening the boundaries around who can connect with the Force and what ultimately makes someone a Jedi.
Kreia, one of the game’s central figures and eventual antagonists, pushes those questions even further. She questions the Jedi, the Sith, the morality of intervention, and even the Force itself, constantly forcing the Exile to examine the reasoning behind every decision.
Her belief that light and dark exist within everyone gives those choices weight beyond simply moving a morality meter, while the Exile’s identity takes shape through the decisions made and the relationships built along the way. More than twenty years later, KOTOR II remains one of the most thoughtful explorations of the Force that Star Wars gaming has produced.
Despite its age, KOTOR II still plays remarkably well today, especially on handhelds like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck. Its combat and menus certainly show their age, but the underlying RPG systems remain easy to pick back up. For players looking for a smoother experience, the modding community has spent years fixing bugs and restoring content that was cut during the game’s rushed development. While we continue waiting for the KOTOR III that will probably never come, KOTOR II remains one of the easiest classic Star Wars video games to revisit.
Best Adventure Game: Star Wars Outlaws (2024)
Star Wars Outlaws puts players in the middle of the Galactic Civil War without handing them a lightsaber or asking them to decide the fate of the galaxy. Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, players follow Kay Vess, a young thief trying to escape a death mark by putting together a crew for one enormous heist.
That setup gives Outlaws the freedom to move through the criminal side of Star Wars, dealing with the Pykes, Hutts, Crimson Dawn, and Ashiga Clan while building a reputation that changes how those syndicates respond to you. It captures the feeling I loved in Star Wars Galaxies: being one person trying to make their way through a galaxy that continues moving whether you are there or not.
That sense of adventure carries into practically everything Kay can do. You can jump on the speeder and disappear across Toshara, wander through Mos Eisley, play Sabacc, take contracts, search for experts who teach new abilities, explore Imperial installations, follow rumors for treasure, or head back to the Trailblazer and take the adventure into space.
The worlds have their own cultures, wildlife, cantinas, criminal territories, and histories. Even stopping to interact with the local fauna gives these planets a life outside of whatever mission happens to be active. Outlaws understands how much of the appeal of Star Wars comes from wanting to turn left when the story tells you to go right and see what is over there.
Kay also carries the experience through a strong performance from Humberly González, who provided both her voice and motion capture. González gives Kay Vess the confidence of someone who thinks she can talk her way through almost anything and the vulnerability of someone who frequently realizes she may have gotten herself way over her head. Her relationships with Nix, ND-5, and the people she meets across the underworld give the larger adventure a consistent center.
Kay’s place outside of the Jedi and Sith also gives Outlaws room to explore how ordinary people understand the events happening around them, something the game repeatedly plays with through conflicting perspectives and incomplete versions of the truth.
There will probably be plenty of people angry to see Outlaws on a list of the best Star Wars video games, especially because its launch problems became such a large part of the conversation surrounding it. The game available in 2026 is considerably better. Massive Entertainment spent months changing enemy detection, removing forced-stealth fail states from most missions, improving combat and enemy AI, adjusting Kay’s blaster and weapon handling, fixing checkpoints and movement, and eventually allowing Kay to freely fire her blaster from the speeder.
Combined with Wild Card and A Pirate’s Fortune, which continued Kay’s story after launch, the same has grown into a stronger and more complete adventure across the Star Wars underworld. In its current form, Outlaws delivers the kind of sprawling, character-driven Star Wars adventure I have wanted from the franchise for years.
Best MMO: Star Wars Galaxies (2003)
Long before Final Fantasy XIV became known for its housing system, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) was already letting players build homes, form cities, run businesses, decorate cantinas, and create communities inside the galaxy. The pre-Combat Upgrade (pre-CU) version of SWG specifically remains one of the most ambitious attempts to make Star Wars feel like an actual place.
You could become a bounty hunter, doctor, entertainer, merchant, creature handler, politician, or mix professions together through its skill system. Becoming a Jedi was incredibly rare, and most players spent their time building lives that would never be important enough to appear in an opening crawl. The 2004 Jump to Lightspeed expansion pushed that fantasy even further, adding pilot professions, customizable ships, and space combat that opened an entirely new part of the galaxy to explore.
The distinction between pre-CU SWG and the game that launched in 2003 is important because the game was fundamentally changed during its lifetime. The Combat Upgrade in 2005, followed by the New Game Enhancements, simplified professions and pushed Galaxies toward a more conventional MMO structure.
In the process, much of the sandbox elements and the freedom that defined the original experience were lost. Pre-CU SWG could be messy and difficult to learn, but its systems encouraged players to rely on one another and helped entire communities form around that dependence.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is still a great MMO and has kept its corner of the Old Republic alive for years. Its fully voiced class stories, companions, morality choices, and cinematic conversations make it easy to understand why so many players have stuck with it.
I have always seen it closer to “KOTOR+” than the kind of virtual world World of Warcraft became. You enter SWTOR with a story waiting for you. Whether you choose Jedi Knight, Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent, or Smuggler, the game has a narrative built around making your character someone important.
Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies trusted players to find their own reason to stay. You could spend an evening hunting creatures, selling crafted gear, dancing in a cantina, decorating your house, running a shop, or simply hanging around a player-built town with people you knew. Living in Star Wars was enough. That experience was brief, but powerful enough that private servers still exist today, trying to preserve and recreate the pre-CU version of the game. Few MMOs have ever captured that same sense of freedom or given players as much control over what their place in the sandbox could be.
Best FPS: Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005)
Republic Commando drops players into the Clone Wars as RC-1138, better known as Boss, leader of Delta Squad. Alongside Fixer, Scorch, and Sev, you fight through Geonosis, a derelict Republic assault ship, and Kashyyyk as an elite clone unit carrying out some of the war’s most dangerous missions. Republic Commando keeps the Clone Wars at ground level, where every room has to be cleared, and every mistake can get someone in Delta Squad killed. The scale feels smaller and more personal, with the war experienced through the soldiers deemed expendable.
The squad system is still the biggest reason Republic Commando works so well. Simple commands let you direct Delta Squad to take sniper positions, plant explosives, provide cover, heal, or focus on specific enemies without turning the game into a full tactical simulator. Each commando also develops a personality through the constant chatter between missions and firefights. Scorch is the loud one, Fixer is disciplined, Sev is slightly unhinged, and Boss holds them together. By the end, they feel like a unit because you have spent the entire game relying on them.
Republic Commando spends its time with clones as soldiers and brothers, building Delta Squad through the way Boss, Fixer, Scorch, and Sev fight, argue, and depend on one another. That bond carries most of the story, which is part of why Scorch’s later treatment in The Bad Batch Season 3 has always frustrated me. He returns in canon with very little of the personality or loyalty that made him memorable in the first place. Republic Commando showed how much personality could exist behind a clone helmet, while Legends continued building on the bonds and identities that defined Clone Commandos.
That focus on the squad carries directly into the gameplay. The gunplay still holds up, with distinct weapons and enemy types that constantly push you to use Delta Squad rather than treat them like background fodder. The visor, tactical HUD, and the way blood and debris get wiped from your helmet give every firefight a physical weight that still feels great. Its cliffhanger ending remains frustrating, especially with no proper sequel, but Republic Commando still delivers one of the most complete Star Wars FPS experiences from the first breach to the final mission.
Best Third-Person Shooter: Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)
2005’s Star Wars Battlefront II remains one of the easiest games to point to when talking about the sheer breadth of the franchise. The 2005 sequel expanded almost everything from the original Battlefront (2004), adding playable heroes, space combat, new classes, more planets, and a campaign following the 501st Legion. It gave players access to both the Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War, letting you fight as the Republic, Separatists, Rebellion, and Empire while moving between infantry combat, vehicles, starfighters, and heroes.
The Rise of the Empire campaign brings Battlefront II (2005) especially close to Republic Commando in spirit. Following the 501st through the final battles of the Clone Wars and into the early days of the Empire gives the story a soldier’s-eye view of a galaxy changing around them. Order 66 becomes a defining moment, putting players directly alongside the clones carrying it out. Temuera Morrison‘s narration gives the campaign much of its emotional weight, turning the 501st’s mission reports into something reflective, weary, and increasingly tragic as the Republic gives way to the Empire.
The multiplayer and third-person combat remain just as important to its legacy. Every class has a clear role, Galactic Conquest gives individual matches a larger purpose, and Instant Action makes it easy to jump directly into the battles you want. The 2017 Battlefront II eventually grew into a much better game after years of updates, but its launch will always be tied to the controversy surrounding loot boxes and progression. The original game never asks you to think about any of that. Pick a faction, choose a class, capture command posts, and try to survive whatever hero just entered the battlefield.
With Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection making the original two games readily available again, revisiting Battlefront II (2005) is easier than it has been in years. Its campaign, Galactic Conquest, space battles, split-screen multiplayer, and massive roster still create one of the most complete Star Wars combat sandboxes ever made. Few games capture the feeling of dumping every Star Wars toy you own onto the floor and deciding what battle happens next quite as well.
Best Action Game: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith takes the final days of the Clone Wars and turns them into a focused action game built around Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The campaign follows many of the film’s major battles, including the Invisible Hand, Utapau, the Jedi Temple, and Mustafar, while expanding those sequences into full combat encounters.
Playing as both Anakin and Obi-Wan gives the game two distinct approaches to lightsaber combat, with combos, Force abilities, counters, and upgrades that make each character feel increasingly dangerous as the story moves toward its inevitable ending.
The dueling is the biggest reason Revenge of the Sith remains my pick here. Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor offer larger worlds, deeper exploration, and some of the best modern lightsaber combat in gaming, while The Force Unleashed delivers a ridiculous level of Force-powered spectacle through Starkiller. Revenge of the Sith is built around the rhythm of Prequel-era lightsaber fights. The speed, combos, counters, and character-specific moves make every major duel feel like an extension of what Anakin and Obi-Wan were doing on screen.
Then there is the versus mode and bonus content, where the game really gets to have fun with Star Wars. Characters who would never fight in the movie can suddenly be thrown into matches together, opening the door for the kind of ridiculous “who would win?” scenarios fans have debated forever.
The campaign even plays with alternate outcomes, including Anakin defeating Obi-Wan on Mustafar and taking his victory considerably further than Palpatine probably anticipated. These are the kinds of what-if scenarios canon-focused games rarely get to explore anymore.
There are bigger Star Wars action games and certainly more technically advanced ones, but Revenge of the Sith still understands exactly what made this era exciting to play. It gives Anakin and Obi-Wan room to feel different, turns lightsaber combat into the centerpiece of the experience, and then uses its extra modes to hand the galaxy over to the player and see what happens.
Best Strategy Game: Star Wars Zero Company (2026)
Star Wars Zero Company takes the Clone Wars and brings the strategy down to the level of the normal people actually fighting it. Players lead Hawks and a small mercenary squad through turn-based tactical missions where positioning, abilities, squad composition, and who you choose to deploy all shape how an encounter plays out. The larger war is always there, but Zero Company keeps its attention on the team you build and the decisions you make with them.
That smaller scale gives the game its personality. Operators develop relationships, gain new abilities, and can permanently die depending on how a mission goes. Even procedurally generated recruits can become memorable because of the battles they survive and the role they start to play within your squad. Over time, your version of Zero Company begins to feel specific to you and your playstyle.
Empire at War has been the standard for Star Wars strategy games for years, and Galactic Battlegrounds still deserves plenty of credit for bringing traditional RTS gameplay into the galaxy in 2001. Zero Company approaches strategy through individual soldiers instead of fleets and armies. The Clone Wars fits that perspective especially well because so many of its strongest stories have always come from the people caught inside a conflict much larger than themselves.
By the end of a campaign, the squad feels like one you built through your own choices, mistakes, losses, and relationships. I still find it remarkable that the Clone Wars can produce new characters worth following after all this time, but Zero Company gets there through a stacked voice cast and character creation deep enough to make each campaign feel personal.
There is something here that takes me back to playing Galactic Conquest in the early 2000s and imagining the stories happening between each battle. Zero Company finally gives those smaller stories a squad of their own, with enough variation built in between campaigns to keep that same sense of possibility alive.
Best Family Game: LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (2007)
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga takes the first six films and turns them into one giant playground. Combining the original LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Star Wars II, it lets players move from the Trade Federation invasion of Naboo through the fall of the Republic and all the way to the destruction of the second Death Star. The basic loop remains incredibly approachable: smash everything, collect studs, solve simple puzzles, unlock characters, and return to levels in Free Play to reach areas you could not access the first time.
The humor is a huge part of why LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga still works. Before LEGO games began relying heavily on voiced dialogue, they communicated through exaggerated animation, physical comedy, and characters making increasingly ridiculous facial expressions. That style fits Star Wars surprisingly well. George Lucas has always left room for creatures, droids, slapstick, and general weirdness alongside the larger mythology. LEGO Star Wars takes that goofy side of the galaxy and cranks it to ten.
Its co-op also makes it one of the easiest Star Wars video games to share. A younger player does not need to understand complicated RPG systems or master difficult combat to participate. Someone can jump in, grab a controller, pick a character they recognize, and start playing alongside you. Death barely slows anything down, puzzles encourage players to work together, and the massive character roster makes replaying levels part of the fun. It works equally well as someone’s first Star Wars video game or as a parody-filled trip through movies they already know by heart.
LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga is bigger, more modern, and covers all nine episodic films, while LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars introduced some genuinely ambitious ideas of its own. Still, The Complete Saga remains the version I would hand someone first. It captures six movies in one package while keeping the silliness, accessibility, and Lucas-inspired goofiness that made the original games so memorable. For an entire generation, this was one of the easiest ways to fall in love with Star Wars video games, and it still feels like the perfect place to start.
Best Flight Game: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2001)
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader takes some of the most iconic space battles in the Original Trilogy and puts players directly into the cockpit. The Death Star trench run, the Battle of Hoth, the asteroid field around Bespin, and the assault on the second Death Star all become playable missions built around speed, precision, and spectacle. It is one of the clearest examples of a Star Wars video game understanding the fantasy it wants to deliver and getting you there as quickly as possible.
There are deeper flight games in the franchise. X-Wing and TIE Fighter helped define space-combat sims in the 1990s, while Star Wars: Squadrons brought that style back with more modern controls and a heavier emphasis on cockpit management. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II lands somewhere more approachable. You still need to learn how different ships handle, manage targets, and react to objectives changing around you, but the game keeps the focus on recreating the speed and chaos of the films.
The visuals have naturally aged since Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader launched on the GameCube, but the sense of scale still carries the experience. Dogfights, bombing runs, escort missions, and attacks on capital ships constantly shift the pace, while each vehicle has its own feel. I have never been the biggest flight-sim player, which is part of why Star Wars Rogue Squadron II still works so well for me.
It gives you the thrill of flying an X-wing, snowspeeder, or the Millennium Falcon without demanding a flight stick or a crash course in cockpit management. Moving from an X-wing to a Y-wing, snowspeeder, or the Millennium Falcon keeps missions varied, and the game still sells the fantasy of flying through the Original Trilogy even when the graphics show their age.
Best VR Game: Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series (2019)
Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series is basically the closest Star Wars has come to handing you a lightsaber and saying, “Go.” Set on Mustafar, the three-part story puts you directly in Darth Vader’s path and gives VR plenty to work with along the way. There are ruins to explore, Force abilities to learn, enemies to fight, and plenty of opportunities to just stand there for a second and realize Darth Vader is right in front of you.
The lightsaber combat is where the experience really clicks. Deflecting blaster fire, throwing enemies with the Force, and physically turning to deal with someone coming from another direction gives every encounter a different kind of energy.
Vader Immortal also understands exactly what people want from this kind of game. You get the hallway-scene fantasy of cutting through enemies, then quieter moments where simply holding the lightsaber or moving through Mustafar feels like enough.
Best Racing Game: Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999)
There has never been a huge field of dedicated Star Wars racing games. Racer Revenge gave podracing a direct sequel, Super Bombad Racing took the galaxy into goofy kart-racing territory, and swoop racing became a memorable side activity in the KOTOR games. More recently, Outlaws has given speeders another place in the spotlight, but racing has rarely been treated as a major pillar of Star Wars gaming.
Racer is still the game most people think of first. It took the podrace from The Phantom Menace and expanded it into a full racing game with different pilots, tracks, upgrades, and vehicles that all helped sell the danger of the sport. The sense of speed remains the biggest draw. Tracks feel built to punish hesitation, and keeping a podracer under control at full speed still gives the game its own identity.
A big part of Episode I: Racer’s nostalgia comes from its sound. The roar and whine of the engines, the announcers, John Williams’ score, and the chaos of podracers flying past each other became inseparable from the experience for a generation of players. The game captured the sound of podracing so well in 1999 that hearing those engines today can immediately take you back to both the game and The Phantom Menace.
Star Wars Galactic Racer may finally give Episode I: Racer a real challenger before the year is over. The gap between the two says plenty about the original’s staying power. A single sequence from The Phantom Menace became a racing game people are still talking about decades later, and that is a hard legacy for any successor to match.
Going through these games makes it pretty clear why a straight ranking never felt right. KOTOR II, Republic Commando, Star Wars Galaxies, Outlaws, and Episode I: Racer are all chasing completely different experiences, and each one works because it understands the part of Star Wars it wants players to inhabit. Sometimes that means deciding what kind of Jedi you become. Sometimes it means running a shop, commanding a squad, flying an X-wing, or trying to keep a podracer from exploding.
That variety has also kept Star Wars gaming interesting across generations. Some of these games are more than twenty years old, while Zero Company just arrived, and they can still sit comfortably in the same conversation. With Lucasfilm Games continuing to hand the galaxy to different developers, there is plenty of room for this list to change. Hopefully, it does.
Star Wars Zero Company is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.