What made these two games so great?

the custom map and modding community is the only correct answer

Because the actual first Jedi Knight was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight.

freeform gameplay. you can really explore the geometry of levels and you feel in control of your lightsaber swings. also this

The lightsaber combat was extremely freeform and nuanced with a pretty high skill ceiling. It was an unconventional way of doing combat when contrasted with a more conventional action game that would just entail button mashing. It makes a lot of sense when you're considering a laser sword that will fuck anything it touches up to give precise control over sequencing of swings and angles you can direct with mouse movement.

I think you could come close to doing good lightsaber combat if you went with a level of depth that the big action games like DMC and Platinum's fare do, which nobody has come close to obviously, but even then it probably still wouldn't land quite as well as Outcast and Academy.

oh man young me spent so much time organizing NPC wars in certain single player maps, it was so fun

Jedi outcast 2 had such a good fucking campaign, while Jedi academy had supreme multiplayer coupled with a Very fun but inferior campaign to its predecessor. Most soulful Star Wars games ever made.

Not a lot really. Like any Star Wars game it is incredibly overrated by the people who played the game as kids.
>mediocre fps mechanics and combat, the wannabe Unreal weapons rarely feel interesting too use since most enemies are just random humanoids with guns or jedi who deflect your shit. This made the first couple of levels in Jedi Outcast a total chore to play
>lots of powers but with very little depth to them, most multi player servers would just outright ban them due to how broken they were in mp
>light saber combat system is unique, best aspect of the game but even this shows a lot of flaws in both single player and multi player due to how little purpose there is to so many of the moves while playing in SP and how most of the styles are poorly balanced in MP (who the fuck uses quick, weak strikes? )
Oh yeah and the plot was also pretty ass.
Not one of the worst star wars game but still nothing worth writing home about aside from the unique (yet sloppy) take on melee combat

Also forgot to mention, story-wise Kyle Katarn is an extremely likeable protagonist. I'm a huge OT purist, and Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors are the only things I actually care about from the combination of old EU stuff and new Disney bullshit.

Kyle is the only acceptable extraneous Star Wars thing.

Oh yeah, that was also one of it's strong points.

Guns were also omitted from most servers. Kinda hated that

Yeah, the blaster bolts were too slow, they did not *blast* anything and when you hit an enemy the just went oof, maybe stopped for a second and then kept running. They really screwed up on that part.

This

Don't worry, Disney will find a way to ruin Katarn too.

have very fond memories of coruscant level in academy i think. detective mission in the gloomy night maybe?

g_saberrealisticcombat 1

>who the fuck uses quick, weak strikes?
they were great for finishing people off

these games are amazing and hold up gameplaywise. better lightsaber combat than any game after them

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kata noob detected

this post is kinda true in retrospect. in both games poking with the red saber style while just doing the same right-swing over and over was super dominant. If you just played to have fun you'd have a great time, i really hate the scene that developed of tryhards pretending they're amazing because they can spin their mouse around and abuse game mechanics like that.

most star wars games are like
>lets make a [genre] game with a star wars coat of paint
while this was built up as it's own thing to simulate lightsaber combat and playing as a jedi

fun, memorable story campaign and awesome multiplayer

Jedi Academy is only worth playing for Movie Duels and Movie Battles II. The story and levels of basegame were pretty boring. Outcast was fantastic though.

based mb2 chad
new update soon

Yeah pretty much everything about Academy was dumbed-down and worse. Staff saber was cool, I guess. Any time I play it I just immediately want to be playing Outcast instead though.