Sculpt--4.5/5
It's one great Luke figure after another! Without a doubt, this is the best Jedi Knight Luke figure we've gotten so far. Granted, we haven't had much to choose from in the past, but this figure blows them all away nonetheless. The proportions on this figure are just right; past Jedi Knight Lukes have been too lanky or buff. Though Luke's outfit is simple, the sculptor has managed to put a lot of detail into it. There are just enough wrinkles and folds to make it look realistic. The separately sculpted tunic-bottom adds to the realism and hides the hip joints. Unfortunately, the tunic-bottom is molded in a much stiffer plastic than it should be, and thus it restricts the hip articulation more than it should. This headsculpt of Luke is the best ROTJ Luke headsculpt yet, and features a pretty good likeness to Mark Hamill.

Articulation--4/5
Luke features 14 points of articulation: neck, shoulders, angled elbow-cuts, wrists, waist, hips, hinged knees, and swiveling boot-tops. That is an excellent number of points, and the figure is capable of a number of poses. The angled elbow joints allow you to pose Luke's arms straight or have them bent. You can easily recreate the pose he has while talking to Jabba, where he is holding his hands together. The only reason I can't give this category a perfect score is because his hip articulation is restricted by his stiff tunic-bottom. This severely limits the number of action poses you can create and makes the hip articulation almost worthless.

Features--NA/5
There are no features associated with this set.

Accessories--3/5
You get Luke's cloak, lightsaber, a skiff guard blaster, and a base. Luke's cloak is, of course, soft-goods and not molded plastic. I like cloth robes and capes, but Hasbro tends to get them wrong more than right. In this case, it's not right. It took A LOT of time to get the cloak to look good for the photos you see here. The biggest problem to me is the fact that the edges of the cloak look frayed and tend to flare outward. On mine, the left side of the cape flares outward and the right side flares inward. I folded the left side inward in order to make it look decent. The hood is not too bad but I think it could be a little bigger. It also can be hard to get the hood to sit in a decently natural position on Luke's head. For that reason, I tend to like the hood-down look a whole lot better. The cloak is permanently sewn at the neck and I feel that they've sewn it too much--one or two knots would have done it. Oh and don't pay too much attention to the purple-ish color in these photos; I assure you that it's black when you look at with your own eyes. In the end, the cloak is a pain in the butt to get to look good and requires a lot of patience in that regard. We really shouldn't have to work this much to get it to look halfway decent.

Strangely, the lightsaber is not the one shown in the prototype photos; this one is exactly the same as the one that came with POTJ Ben Kenobi except repainted and in green of course. The sculpt still looks good but the details aren't as sharp as they could be. The blaster looks excellent with some nice little design work on it. My only complaint is that you can't put Luke's finger through the trigger guard--the hole just isn't big enough. The base is just like the ones we've seen with the recent Hoth figures except this one is almost black in color.

Paint--2.5/5
Why such a low score on the paint? It's Luke's hair--it isn't painted very well at the edges and a lot of the flesh colored plastic shows through it. It looks messy to say the least. Also, Luke's tunic-bottom is more gray in color than the tunic-top, but it's not too noticeable. Oh yeah, one last complaint: the bottom part of the knees are glossy black just like the glossy black boots when they should be matte black like the rest of his pants. This little snafu makes the knee articulation that much more noticeable. And where's Luke's black glove?? Hehe just kidding folks! Luke didn't wear the black glove until after he left Tatooine!

Overall--4/5
This is the best Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker figure, hands down. It's got some good articulation and a good likeness. The paint job and the restricted hip joints are the only things that really bug me. In the end though, this is a must buy figure which can replace many of the past JK Luke figures in your collection. Now if only Hasbro can make a good Endor or Final Duel Luke figure...
Oh yeah, Hasbro is also making a holographic Luke figure which apparently uses this sculpt. Looks like 2004 will be a good year for Luke fans!

--Photos and review by Garett Yoshimura
garett@carrotnetwork.com

Special Thanks to Cloud City Collectibles and AllTroops.com for helping me get this figure!