4.5/5 ★ – nickmazz15's review of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR REVIEW - This game is a step up from Fallen Order in virtually every respect. Better level design with no irritating back tracking. In fact I think Respawn massively over-compensated to avoid backtracking. After almost every extended platforming section you can launch zip line all the way back to the start of the area, open a door or take an elevator as a short cut. They went above and beyond to correct this issue its almost comical the lengths they went. Speaking of platforming, this game has some all-time great platforming. Traversing was honestly my favorite part of this game. Jedi: Survivor takes every platforming mechanic you have ever seen in a game and combines them all to amazing effect. You can go from wall climbing to grappling into a wall run. This game manages to keep the platforming fresh and fun throughout your entire play time. Abilities you learn like dashing and grappling off these floating antenna things launching you higher only add depth to the platforming. My one major issue is that the distance for dying by falling is way too small. I was actually baffled how many times I died just by jumping down a relatively short distance. Like its okay to have fall damage Respawn goddamn. Exploration is massively rewarded. If you’re a gamer who likes to go off the beaten path you will find something. Force Echoes for lore/character development, objects that act as currency and cosmetics. This game strikes a good balance of making all this not feel check listy. None of those collectibles are marked on the map, although late in the game you can make that the case, but there are unexplored areas marked on the map so you know where you haven’t been. You still don’t know what’s in these areas though which gives you that sense of discovery. There are only a handful of planets/locations you can visit. Some more expansive than others but they manage to differentiate themselves from each other. The largest planet being Koboh which is kind of a main hub for the game. The story has you spend the bulk of your time here. Beyond the stellar graphics and smart open world level design that makes the environment feel natural and not gamey, the world building and residents give such a sense of character to Koboh. Through the story and side quests you meet characters and have them go to Greez’s saloon in town. There you can talk to these side characters. They give you side quests but are just plain fun to talk to. Most of the characters on Koboh are charismatic and interesting. Turgle is the fucking man. Green light a whole movie trilogy for that frog man. It makes you care about this planet and adds a layer of stakes to the story. Unlike Fallen Order there are side quests in this game which is nice. I just wish the presentation was better for them. There’s no cutscenes for any of them which I feel would’ve made some of them feel more important. There’s this ongoing bounty hunter quest where Cal goes after a bunch of bounty hunters hired to kill him. Its a shame bounty hunters only have three enemy types which makes this quest a bit tiring. Respawn tries to counter this by having the encounters against the bounty hunters be different but the real fix would’ve been to just decrease the amount you fight. Its like sixteen when it could’ve been half that allowing them to make more unique enemies. The base combat is largely the same as in Fallen Order. I would say Survivor is a bit easier than Fallen Order. The bosses certainly aren’t as difficult. Nothing is nearly as hard as the Second Sister final boss from Fallen Order. May have to do with this game allowing you to find so many more health stims than the first. I had BD-1 ready with nine fucking health stims by the end of the story. Where this game spices things up is the lightsaber stances. There’s a handful of stances but you’re only allowed to use two of them. So its largely a preference thing. Stances have different damage, defense and stamina statistics. Each stance has its own skill tree so the combat is built around how you wanna play. I went for the double bladed and cross guard stances myself. I will say I wish the game took a page out of Ghost of Tsushima’s playbook and allowed you to use all the stances without equipping and certain stances counter specific enemies but I suppose that would’ve been too much of a ripoff. Customization is off the charts. I didn’t change Cal’s look much but you can give him different haircuts and facial hair styles. Lots different outfit combinations. But where the customization really shines is with your lightsaber and BD-1. You can practically make your lightsaber look however you want. You can change each part of the lightsaber, alter color, material and how aged it is. Same applies to BD-1 but I only gave him a new paint job. That little guy’s design is perfect. The best thing I can say about the narrative is that its challenging. It puts Cal and the rest of the characters in a position where they’re constantly at risk. Other than Andor I think this game does the best job at making the Empire feel like this unbeatable force than any other piece of Star Wars media. Its that sense of belittlement that drives Cal through the story. Doing whatever it takes to take down the Empire but the question then becomes how far is too far? When a seemingly perfect situation presents itself what are you willing to sacrifice to get it? The more Cal fights the more he questions his identity as a Jedi and just as a person. Cal start to have attachments that are undeniable. His relationship with Merrin develops more and its great that she is given such a bigger role in this game after being a standout in Fallen Order. Merrin is the best. There’s also this growing darkness within Cal as the certain things happen in the story. What does it mean to be a Jedi during this time? When being on the offensive is necessary? Guilt and obsession are also themes that permeate the story. As a second act this game pulls no punches. It is rough and shocking. By the end though the story’s thesis of, just keep going. Continue to fight and choose to be better tomorrow still shines through all you just went through with the characters. Im fascinated to see where they go next in the third game. If I could nitpick a few things, the Mantis crew is split up at the start of the game and I understand why that choice was made for the sake of the story but they all rejoin together pretty early on so you don’t get that sense of separation I think the game wants you to feel from the jump. The chemistry between the characters makes up for this. You just love the Mantis crew together. They feel like a family. There’s this Jedi from the High Republic era you meet early in the game called Dagan Gera and I wish the writing gave him a little more dimension. He acts as a dark mirror to Cal and for as great the character writing is everywhere else I felt it was lacking for him. Also even though Cal is a little nicer to animals in this game. You can ride a few and pet some little fellas, you still kill so many animals in this game. There’s even a side quest to kill large creatures for shits and gigs. With the gameplay actually reflecting Cal’s growing inner darkness towards the end of the game I wish it touched on it sooner. At least make it a part of the story of these side quests. I know Cal not being a traditional Jedi is the point but there’s some ludonarrative dissonance. God I hate using that term. Makes me wanna throw up but it applies here a bit. Also while I played on PS5 I still had some graphical issues. Character model resolution wasn’t always there and early on the cutscenes took a slight second to fully load in. Overall though Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a tremendous game. Fixes so many issue with Fallen Order and manages to be a perfect second chapter for what I assume will be a trilogy. One of if not the best Star Wars game period.