Like Jedi Outcast, the game combines shooter elements with hack and slash combat, allowing players to wield blasters, lightsabers and a variety of Force powers.

In addition to customizing their lightsaber and Force powers, players can also modify Jaden's appearance, choosing their species, gender and clothing.

A member of the cult, the Twi'lek Alora (Grey DeLisle), infiltrated the Academy during the attack and stole Luke's journal, containing the locations of numerous places strong with the Force.

Jaden travels to Hoth, where they find Imperial presence at the Rebel Alliance's abandoned Echo Base and encounter Alora, who flees after a brief duel.

After Jaden completes more missions and has several run-ins with the Disciples, they and Kyle travel to Darth Vader's abandoned fortress on Vjun—one of the few places strong with the Force supposedly unvisited by the Disciples—and find it crawling with stormtroopers and Dark Jedi.

[d] Tavion uses the Scepter of Ragnos, which can absorb and release Force energy, to trap Jaden and Kyle under debris, but the pair manage to escape, though the former's lightsaber is destroyed in the process.

At the Academy, Jaden and Kyle inform Luke of their findings, and the former is honored for their actions by being promoted to the rank of Jedi Knight.

After building a new lightsaber, Jaden begins dismantling the Disciples' operations as they complete more missions, while Luke discovers that Tavion plans to use the stolen Force energy to resurrect the ancient Sith Lord Marka Ragnos (Peter Lurie), who is buried on Korriban.

While the Jedi prepare to go there, Kyle convinces Jaden to accompany him to a mining facility on Taspir III, from where Rosh has sent a distress signal.

If the player chooses the dark side, Jaden kills Rosh, but refuses to join the Disciples, instead seeking the Scepter's power for themselves.

[22] Raven extended the customization further as the game progresses by allowing the player to choose specific Force powers to train upon completion of missions.

[22] To develop the map for Hoth, the designers obtained as much source material from The Empire Strikes Back as possible so to create an authentic reproduction.

[26] The mission based format of Jedi Academy was used by Raven to reduce the linearity of the game, allowing the players to progress through levels mostly in the order they desire.

Brett Tosti, a producer for LucasArts, stated that the customization of the player that is provided by the game out of the box will mean that people are less likely to need to create their own "skins".

[24] Additional textures and skins nevertheless became popular leading Mike Gummelt, who designed the lightsaber combat system in Outcast and Academy, to declare "the community really owns the game now".

The community's continued interest has led some more recent reviews to conclude that Jedi Academy has a lightsaber engine superior to those developed before or since.

[28] The game was released for Windows and Mac OS X (published by Aspyr) on September 16, 2003, and for Xbox (developed by Vicarious Visions) in November 2003, and received positive reviews.

[8] On March 26, 2020, Jedi Academy was released on PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch with updated controls for modern hardware and a fully functional multiplayer component directly mirroring the original's.

[34] Following Disney's decision to close LucasArts on April 3, 2013, the developers at Raven Software released the source code for the game on SourceForge under GNU GPL-2.0-only.

Kotaku speculated this was due to the presence of licensed code, such as for the Bink Video format from Rad Game Tools, that was not intended to be made public.

[40] Positive reviews praised the fact that, unlike in Dark Forces II and Jedi Outcast, players could use a lightsaber from the beginning.

[50] PC Gamer UK, which scored the game 70 out of 100, wrote "the engine, which although hardly groundbreaking any more, perfectly evokes the glow of the lightsaber and the grimy, metallic backgrounds of the films.

[48][52] The music,[54] sound effects[52] and voice acting[50] also received acclaim, although some critics found it odd that all aliens spoke English.

[56] IGN's Steve Butts, however, disliked the plot, feeling that "Jedi Outcast was more satisfying in terms of involvement with the story.

"[52] The AI was criticized by PC Gamer UK as "laughable"; "Every encounter you have is filled with people too stupid to realise that running away or taking some sort of cover would be the best option.

"[54] This opinion was echoed by GameSpot: "Stormtroopers usually just stand there shooting away at you [...] Dark Jedi rush at you, even after watching four of their brethren plummet to a horrible death.

"[52] Eurogamer's Kristan Reed was less impressed, scoring the game 7 out of 10, writing "The harsh reality is, for all the plentiful additions, there's much work to be done before LucasArts can boast it has created the ultimate Star Wars FPS.

He lauded the addition of Xbox Live support and the ability to use a lightsaber from the opening, two of biggest criticisms of Jedi Outcast.

"[43] Eurogamer's Kristan Reed was also somewhat unimpressed, scoring the game 6 out of 10 and criticizing the controls; "In common with the PC version, you still find yourself going into battle and fumbling furiously through cyclical menus while numerous baddies are busy blasting seven shades out of you."

She was also critical of the AI and the graphics, concluding that "It's good to see Live make the package this time around, but we're disappointed that after all these years LucasArts is still scratching around abusing the Star Wars brand in this way.