Focused on the original trilogy of the Star Wars universe (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of Jedi), the sequel of Lego Star Wars brings some innovations to the first title. First, during the story mode, the player is joined by other two characters on-screen, and to change between them, the characters must be closed to each other (however, in free mode the swap works in exactly the same way as the first title), and they share a life bar of four hearts, with the rate of depletion changing according to each character (a stormtrooper will lose three hearts when hit by a blaster, Vader will take two or three hits before losing one). If a support character is "dismantled", there's no problem, but letting that happen to the controlled character means a loss of stud points (the game currency), as well as a drop on the "Super Kit" gauge, which replaces the Jedi rank evaluation of the previous titles. Gameplay was also changed to accommodate the lack of lightsaber battles in the later episodes, and so blasters are a lot more effective and fire faster, but lost their "charge" mode, and new flight missions were included. Those are similar to previous Star Wars games like Return of the Jedi, and allow the player to attack both Death Stars, skim the surface of the Forest Moon of Endor in a Speeder, escape from an asteroid field with the Millennium Falcon or draw wires around the legs of Imperial walkers in Hoth.To acquire characters for freeplay the player now needs two things: earn enough credits (the value of each stud was increased 10 fold) and both complete a level (to unlock playable characters such as the level variation of Luke or Leia) and get all "mini kits" (which replace the "Death Star Plans" of the prequel) to unlock enemies (such as the Tusken Raider or Stormtroopers) or other characters (Like Yoda). There are also additional items to be bought, including music, pallette swaps, new modes, light saber colours and hints.As for the game, it remains being a light jump-and-slash isometric game, with the goal being usually to go from point A to B, with some levers to be pulled somewhere in the level. Like in the first game, the game can't possibly be completed without playing in Free mode (a near perfect run in Story mode will only complete around 50% of the game), as many doors can only be opened and doors reached by one of the 36 characters for hire. There are three major character classes: droids (unable to fight, but the only ones capable of opening most regular doors during story mode), Jedi (melee fighters capable of interacting with larger objects to uncover hidden studs and with different Jedi powers - Yoda can make a wide Force Push, Obi-Wan can distract all enemies and Vader can use his terrifying Force Grip) and Blaster users, which can fire at an enemy from distance, as well as assemble smaller objects like short bridges or door switches).