Jedi Power Battles is loosely based on the events of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. You get the choice to play as one of three Jedi: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jin, or Mace Windu.
There are ten levels, one of which is a side-scrolling shooter, but the rest are isometric levels with platforming parts. The levels mainly consist of you running around and slashing everything that moves.
In terms of hack-and-slash game-play, there's two different ways to swing your light-sabre, not that it makes much difference, and you can also block. Holding block deflects blaster shots diagonally, but timing it correctly sends it back to where it came from; so there's some skill involved here. The droid enemies are quite strange. Even though they are armed with guns, half of them love running at you and trying to kick you. Strangely, they are just as fast as you, and annoyingly, when they are right in your face, your Jedi has trouble hitting them. The droids are also stupid and love to shoot at each other, which makes your job easier. Some of the levels you can just run through and avoid the enemies entirely, but some sections don't allow you to progress without clearing the area first.
The platforming is even worse. The isometric viewpoint makes it hard to judge where platforms are, and quite often, you will need to run/jump diagonally which is rather awkward. The Jedi's move fast, and must have momentum to jump forwards, so this is problematic when you are stood on a tiny platform, where any sideways movement can send you to your death. There's plenty of occasions where you just miss a platform, which makes you wish your Jedi could grab hold of ledges and pull himself up, rather than just accepting his demise.
The whole game design seems to revolve around cheap deaths. It's unfair that the majority of your deaths are caused falling off the sides when you just want to follow a simple path, or just go plummeting to your death when you want to jump to the next platform. It's even more infuriating when you should make a jump, but a droid shoots you mid-air, and so down you go yet again. The final battle with Darth Maul is truly awful. After slashing away at him for some time, you then have to navigate circular and diagonal pathways, then battle away on them. Darth Maul loves his force powers that knock you back, and tumble off the edge. After this part of the battle, you then have to jump over several perilous and hard to judge gaps. In the final stage of the battle, you have to hit him a few times, then run around a hole so that he falls down it, and you don't even get a cut-scene to illustrate his death.
As much as you want to love Jedi Power Battles, you can only hate it because the whole game design aims to frustrate with cheap deaths, rather than relying on skill.