Star Wars: Lethal Alliance
A third-person action game featuring a Twi'lek mercenary and her droid.
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance is an action-adventure game that takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Casablanca, and published by Ubisoft in December 2006 for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS. The game received mixed reviews.
The game is a third-person action title focused on platforming and shooting, rather than lightsabers or the Force. Players control a female Twi'lek named Rianna and her companion droid, Zeeo. Rianna can perform acrobatic moves for traversal and defense, while Zeeo enhances her abilities by accessing control panels, acting as a rideable platform, and generating a shield to block enemy fire.
The two versions share the same core design but have distinct differences. The DS version relies heavily on the touch screen, while the PSP version uses standard buttons. The PSP version includes stealth features like stealth attacks, sneaking, and disguises. The DS version has an exclusive Dual Cannon weapon, usable only after reaching "Maximum Alliance" between Rianna and Zeeo; using it drains the alliance bar, which must be refilled. Both versions support Wi-Fi and local multiplayer, with the PSP featuring Twi'lek versus Twi'lek and the DS featuring droid versus droid.
After escaping enslavement by Zarien Kheev, Twi'lek mercenary Rianna Saren opposes the Empire. Rebel Alliance agent Kyle Katarn hires her to destroy an Imperial shipment of mirkanite in a Black Sun warehouse on Coruscant. Rianna is captured during the mission but escapes with the help of a droid named Zeeo. Princess Leia then sends them to Alderaan to destroy an Imperial ship. There, they fight through an Imperial base, discover the Empire is experimenting on scientists, and blow up both the ship and the lab. Realizing a final shipment is heading to Mustafar, Leia sends them after it. On Mustafar, they destroy an Imperial mining facility and a drill. Rianna learns Kheev is going to Tatooine and follows him. Her ship is shot down by Boba Fett in Slave I. On Tatooine, Kheev releases a Rancor on them in an arena; they kill it but are captured and taken to Despayre, where the Death Star is under construction. Escaping, they overhear Kheev discussing the Death Star with Darth Vader. Kheev attacks Rianna in a large robot suit, and she kills him, revealing the Death Star to the Alliance.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Ubisoft Montreal (PlayStation Portable version); Ubisoft Casablanca (Nintendo DS version)
- Publisher
- Ubisoft
- Series
- Star Wars
- Platforms
- PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS
- Genre
- Action-adventure
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance is a third-person action game focusing on platforming and shooting rather than lightsabers and the Force. The player controls a female Twi'lek named Rianna Saren and her companion droid Zeeo. Rianna performs acrobatic moves for traversal and defense, while Zeeo enhances her abilities by accessing control panels, serving as a rideable platform, and creating a shield. The two versions differ: the DS version uses the touch screen extensively, while the PSP version uses buttons. The PSP version includes stealth features such as stealth attacks, sneaking, and disguises; the DS version has an exclusive Dual Cannon weapon that requires a full alliance bar and depletes it upon use. Both versions support Wi-Fi and local multiplayer, with the PSP featuring Twi'lek versus Twi'lek and the DS featuring droid versus droid.
Reader's Guide
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance occupies a modest place in the Star Wars gaming library as a portable action title released during the handheld era. Its mixed reception stemmed from comparisons to other PSP action games, with critics noting it was unremarkable for the platform. The game's cooperative mechanics between Rianna and Zeeo, along with platform-specific features like the DS touch screen and PSP stealth elements, provided some variety. However, reviews such as GamePro's advised passing it by unless one was obsessed with Star Wars, and GameZone's Angelina Sandoval remarked that while levels had variety and teamwork was fun, it was ultimately a portable action game that could have been a lot better. Its legacy is that of a competent but not standout entry, remembered primarily for its unique protagonist and droid partnership within the Star Wars timeline.
A Crowded Pipeline for the Next Decade
The Star Wars gaming landscape heading into the late 2020s is remarkably dense. Five titles are currently in active development, each anchored by a different studio and targeting distinct audiences. Fuse Games is building a new Galactic Racer slated for 2026 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows, reviving a racing sub-franchise that last saw a dedicated entry in the early 2000s. Arcanaut Studios is working on Fate of the Old Republic, announced in 2025, while Respawn Entertainment has Jedi 3 in the works following its 2024 announcement. Saber Interactive took on a full remake of Knights of the Old Republic back in 2021, and Quantic Dream is developing a project called Eclipse, also announced that same year. Together these five projects span racing, action-adventure, role-playing, and narrative-driven design, suggesting the franchise intends to saturate multiple genre niches simultaneously rather than relying on a single flagship release per year.
Three Decades of Film-Tied Games
From the very earliest days of home computing to the mid-2000s, nearly every Star Wars feature film spawned at least one dedicated video game. The 1982 Atari 2600 adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back stands as one of the earliest entries, followed quickly by arcade cabinets and Commodore 64 ports. By the time the prequel trilogy arrived, the scope had expanded dramatically: The Phantom Menace alone generated a Windows/PlayStation title, a pinball machine, a Dreamcast and GBA action game, a Nintendo 64 strategy game, and a Game Boy Color adventure. The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith entries pushed into GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo DS, and even mobile phones. What unites this long stretch is the sheer platform diversity—arcade cabinets, 8-bit home computers, 16-bit consoles, 32-bit and 64-bit systems, and early handhelds all received dedicated adaptations, making the film-tied games a true cross-platform phenomenon spanning over twenty years.
The Proliferation of Dedicated Series
Beyond one-off film adaptations, Star Wars gaming built an impressive catalogue of recurring series that each carved out their own identity. The X-Wing flight-sim line ran from 1993 through 1999, delivering four main entries with expansions and collector compilations. The Jedi Knight arc, beginning with Dark Forces in 1995, stretched to Jedi Academy in 2003 and introduced first-person and third-person combat with lightsabers. Rogue Squadron brought arcade-style dogfights to Nintendo consoles across three installments between 1998 and 2003. Knights of the Old Republic, launched in 2003, proved that a full RPG could anchor the franchise, spawning a sequel, a massively multiplayer online game with eight expansions through 2022, and a remake in progress. Other series like Racer, Galactic Battlegrounds, Starfighter, and Galaxies each occupied distinct genre territory, collectively ensuring that Star Wars gaming never depended on a single formula.
A Culture of Perpetual Re-release
Few franchises match Star Wars for the sheer volume of re-releases spanning multiple generations of hardware. Super Star Wars, originally a 1992 SNES title, found new life on Wii Virtual Console, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Dark Forces, a 1995 DOS and PlayStation game, returned in 2024 across Switch, Windows, PlayStation 4 and 5, and both Xbox generations. The Racer series saw its 1999 entry reissued on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One in 2020, while Racer Revenge got PS4 ports in both 2015 and 2019. Knights of the Old Republic migrated to iOS in 2013, Android in 2014, and Switch in 2021; its sequel followed a similar multi-platform path through 2022. Even the 1999 Phantom Menace game received PlayStation 4 and 5 re-releases in 2024, and Jedi Power Battles is getting a 2025 multi-platform update. This relentless re-release strategy keeps two and three-decade-old titles accessible to entirely new audiences.
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