4.5/5 ★ – MichaelROLeary's review of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor takes a tale of galactic tragedy made personal and adds more on both fronts while adding new friendships, romance betrayal, bigger set pieces, and more. It’s not without its faults, but it takes one of the best Star Wars games of all time and builds on it successfully. It wants to be grander than its predecessor, and it is in terms of scope of story and length, but in some ways it feels a bit smaller. The amount of planets/moons/etc to explore drops by two in Survivor versus Fallen Order’s eight, but on the flip side the hub planet of Koboh is a sprawling area that contains the equivalent of maybe three or four from the first game. It’s where the universe starts to feel lived-in as you recruit people to reside in your little ghost town, you talk with them and investigate rumors they have — a little bit of the old BioWare Star Wars shines through here. We’ve all heard about Turgle by now, and he’s great, but don’t sleep on Skoova Stev. Something the previous game did well was to borrow from other series. Traversal mechanics inspired by Uncharted with combat that feels like it’s a Souls-lite and exploration akin to other Metroidvanias. This time around Respawn has built upon that trifecta of inspiration and brought in Jedi Meditation Temples, which feel like they were born out of Breath of the Wild’s Shrines, and Rift Passages that hearken to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s Anomalies. I think it’s easy to look at all that and think, “It’s just a reskinned version of those other things,” and, sure, if you boil it down that’s what it is. But they’re all working in a congruent fashion so it’s more than a coat of paint on another game. The Jedi series knows it stands on the shoulders of giants and wears the influences on its sleeve, so it’s in honor of those legacies rather than acting as a knock-off. It’s particularly true when you think of the fact that Star Wars is a series that exists purely because of inspiration with George Lucas taking what he loved as a kid and striking a flint. The new dual wield, blaster, and crossguard lightsaber stances were exciting prospects when previews first hit and I was extremely interested in trying the blaster stance in particular, but when force push came to shove I ended up sticking with dual wielding and double-bladed. The Blaster stance felt cumbersome and a bit too complicated, and the cross-guard is powerful but incredibly slow. They’re not bad, they just didn’t fit with my play style for my main playthrough. I’ll experience them a bit more when it’s time to go for the platinum outside of the story. Customization also got an overhaul and we’re well beyond the days of being limited to ponchos and paint jobs. A full array of hair styles, facial hair, shirts, jackets, and pants are available to Cal, along with many pieces to rebuild your lightsaber and blaster however you like. BD-1 gets a similar treatment with a plethora of new options to make him “your” BD. I’m a canon-style player so that’s not really something that changes my play style at all, but it’s nice that it’s been improved for folks who do want to have their own look to Cal. Boss fights also seem to have received a bit more focus this time around. There were a few from the first game that held some personality but Survivor’s all feel impactful. The one-on-ones carry personal importance, the wave fights are full of variety so they aren’t just numbers to up difficulty, and there’s one that’s about halfway through that feels like a huge God of War encounter. Unfortunately, there are issues with some design and mechanics, as well as performance under the hood even after patches were released. I’ll start with the latter. Survivor is in a far better state than Fallen Order was at launch. It took a few months for the first game to reach where this game is now, which is an improvement, but it’s still not where it should be upon hitting the public. Flickering environments, characters floating around instead of walking, and shadows cast by geometry having significant frame dips are a few of the top level issues I encountered. Motion blur and camera shake were also fairly nauseating so I had to just turn those off entirely. Thankfully nothing much worse, no crashes or anything like that, but considering this review is being written post-patch 4 that’s still some pretty rough-edged stuff. The issues I encountered on the mechanics side are more annoying. The camera feels muddy out of the box and, when combined with how erratic Cal still controls, it made for some real getting used to. Fallen Order also had pretty chaotic movement for Cal but it’s the combination of the two that really drilled the frustration home at first, it took some real getting used to. A problem I had in the first game was caused by that erratic movement: I fell off ledges more times than I’d like to admit. Sometimes to my death but more often it was just a high fall so I’d take damage. A feature that helped with that in Survivor is that you can just turn off fall damage entirely. As soon as I learned about this I knew I’d be doing so, shout out to Andrea Rene for that tip. Design is probably the least worrisome of the bunch, that’s more traversal design choices that felt unnecessary. A little over halfway through the story you unlock a dash which also allows you to phase through security gates, opening new areas to explore. I love this addition to the ability set and when combined with wall running, double jumps, and the new grapple ability it all flows extremely well. That’s why I found the implementation of grapple balloons as yet another form of aerial traversal a bit much. It’s a bit unwieldy to aim once you’ve latched onto one and it causes a pause in the free-flow that feels disruptive. Honestly, it feels like they’re in there because the campaign has this habit of prolonging the ending, which I’ll get to in a moment, so in development it perhaps felt like “Well, we need to make sure something else is unlocking deep in the game.” That’s unfounded speculation though, ultimately I just don’t love how they feel and that’s that. I mentioned the way the game prolongs the ending and it definitely pulls a Return of the King with multiple points where you could say, “That was it, the final level here we go.” It’s not a downside, though. For one, it’s not a tremendously long game, and two, this is where the most interesting plot points are uncovered. I love the sweeping tale that connects hundreds of years from The High Republic through the pre-Original Trilogy era. Hey, there’s even references to events that will happen in Rogue One, and not just with a planet you visit, a direct timetable of upcoming events is referenced. So, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is still a bit messy. It’s got some performance issues that are countered by endearing characters and the way they interact with one another. There are some design choices that didn’t vibe with me but the story is affecting and even more sincerely Star Wars than Fallen Order. The combat and exploration are still a boon to the series and the additional puzzle and combat challenges just add to that success. The highs outweigh the lows in a pretty severe way, allowing this game to outshine the impressive entry that came before it.