3.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Jedi: Survivor is basically what I wanted Jedi: Fallen Order to be. It's a fun soulslike metroidvania contained within an excellent Star Wars adventure with great characters, cool planets and some sick saber fights. No joke, this is one of the best Star Wars stories since the Disney merger. Cal Kestus is no longer a little whiney know-it-all with the personality of a sponge, with the time jump transforming him into an engaging lead with actual depth, while his friends all also benefit from the time off-camera. But it's the actual plot which hits different. As a Star Wars fan, man am I tired of this repetitive post-order-66 timeline. Literally every story revolves around some grizzled dude living in a small hut on a beige planet called Beejeebob that's covered in an inordinate amount of scrap metal. They spend their days as a junk seller until those pesky inquisitor dudes who look like they're dressed in NERF gear show up and kill all their little alien friends, forcing the dude to flee and the lead inquisitor (who is somehow always a different person despite seemingly being the big daddy cheese of the Inquisitors) to chase them. It's so goddamn boring and I hate every scene where the Inquisitors crack out their ridiculous Fisher Price circle-hilt lightsabers, which make absolute ZERO sense from a tactical perspective. Considering how tedious that storyline mould has become, to have Survivor, which delves much deeper into the High Republic era, bandits and treasure hunts feels like a breath of fresh air. For so long, Star Wars has relied on covering the same topics, and it's so nice to move away from the empire (mostly) and explore new parts of this universe. There are still issues, for sure. The big third-act twist is spottable a mile off and largely makes no sense when you break it apart, while the game falls short of exploring the darker side of Cal despite making a big point of how his anger is ultimately changing his relationship with the force. But these are the kinds of stories I've desperately wanted from Disney's Star Wars, and I'm glad we're getting them. As for the gameplay, it's slightly more of a mixed bag. The Metroidvania stuff is great. Movement is super fluid and platforming is easy to control, especially when Cal's arsenal of momentum-based abilities expands and you can just defy the laws of physics for 20 minutes straight. But the combat is flat-out broken at times. The actual fights when they work? Not that bad. The boss battles are great even, standing among some of the best video game lightsaber fights ever. For the most part, it's easier than Fallen Order, especially with the game giving you shortcuts back to meditation spots frequently and adding plenty of powers to trivialize fights. But my god, certain enemies, mechanics and encounters have major issues. The dodge mechanic is the hail-mary move of the game. There's no real science to it, you just have to hope to dear god you move in the direction you wanted and, as there are no i-frames, you don't get caught by the frankly bullshit unblockable attacks enemies can spam on repeat. Parrying? Yeah, that works with some enemies, meanwhile, you can parry some bastards till the cows come home but they'll just regenerate their posture meter to the point where it becomes useless. Most moves have arduously slow wind-up animations, meaning deflecting missiles with the force or ending an attack to return to blocking results in you getting hit seconds after pressing the button. And to top it all off, Survivor and Elden Ring have clearly been sharing a wee doobie behind the bike shed after class, because it also somehow correlated challenge with sticking a lot of ridiculously strong dudes with completely different fighting paces into one room and going, this is harder, have fun. What makes this even more annoying than Elden Ring is Survivor never staggers when enemies attack, meaning every single dude in the arena will get main character syndrome and pile on you, turning late-game encounters into ridiculous clusterfucks. The last enemy encounter before the final boss is genuinely harder than the final boss itself, only because it puts three of the fastest enemy type in a tiny area and just lets them stun-lock you into oblivion. But it's water under the bridge considering this is arguably some of the best Star Wars I've had in a really, really long time. Like most games trying to imitate FromSoft's combat style, the battles are just not quite like momma Miyazaki makes 'em, but everything around it works so much better than the fighting. The platforming is slick, the Metroidvania mechanics are rewarding and the story is really fun. If Respawn can do this again for a third outing, they'll have the best Star Wars trilogy since the prequels. Let's just hope they don't let the magical ewok-shaped spirit of George Lucas take over their bodies and make Cal Obi-Wan Kenobi's illegitimate son or some shit... in a world post the papa-Palpatine twist, you really can't assume that wouldn't happen.