In the five years since the last Lego Star Wars game, Lego games based on pop culture have become more ubiquitous with a lot of changes and evolutions along the way. The Lego Star Wars games, even with their last-gen rough edges, always held a special place in my heart with their array of memorable set pieces and characters. Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens brings back the endearing world of Star Wars to Lego along with all the bells and whistles the Lego games have gotten over the years. The result is a well-crafted adventure that, while a little limited in scope, contains plenty of callbacks and references for Star Wars diehards while still delivering great action with clever and light puzzles.

Oddly, The Force Awakens starts at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, first putting you in control of Han, Luke, and Leia for the last half of Episode VI. Serving as a prologue, this sequence lays out the tweaks from the old Lego Star Wars games eloquently. Characters are voiced, the gameplay is a lot more straightforward, and Multi Builds are awesome. Multi Builds give you the option of building more than one structure with a pile of Lego bricks. Sometimes they just nakedly hide a secret area where a collectible is located, but sometimes you need to bounce between different builds to solve a puzzle. Nothing ever gets too complicated, but the discovery of each new build brings a more unique feel to the Lego-focused adventuring.

Aside from Multi Builds, traversal through levels feels like a Lego game, with the same light combat, infinite respawning, and stud collection. Every so often, you enter a Blaster Battle, where the game shifts to a third-person shooter, complete with cover to hide behind. These sequences are more target range than anything else, but it’s nice to see additional moment-to-moment variety in Lego games. When you’re not on foot, you can take to the skies, leading to some engrossing Star Fox-lite sequences. These straightforward flights control wonderfully and while it’s no Rogue Squadron, tooling around in a Lego Millennium Falcon and X-Wing is a hell of a thing.

As you progress and uncover hidden items, you unlock bonus missions that tell previously unelaborated sequences from The Force Awakens era. Some of the missions are a little undercooked, but if you’re into the Expanded Universe and lore of the new trilogy, being able to experience unseen sequences - like how Han and Chewie got those Rathtars - complete with new voicework from the cast is really novel.

But outside of those bonus missions - more of which are hidden behind DLC that isn’t available on Wii U - this is a bit of a cut-and-dry retelling of The Force Awakens. It surpasses the half-baked and likely rushed retelling in Disney Infinity, but it suffers from the fact that The Force Awakens is just a single movie with a straightforward plot. Other Lego Star Wars games pulled from entire trilogies or TV shows; this is just a single movie with a limited prologue from a previous movie attached to the front. The new elements certainly make this a fun romp in spite of that, though.

Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens expertly scratches the itch if you’ve been hankering for a solid video game based off of Episode VII. It carries the Lego Star Wars series forward into the modern Lego style, and is easily the most polished Lego game I’ve ever played. While the story is a little linear and straightforward, the bonus missions make up for it with untold tales and new voicework. Like with seemingly every Lego game, if you’re not into the source material, buyer beware. But if you’re into Star Wars and want to relive the thrill of The Force Awakens, this is the best way to do so.