There’s no denying that Star Wars has been a quality lottery over the past few years. Recent films have been heavily criticized by fans, Disney+ series have vacillated between excellent and mediocre at best, and despite the fact that the film and television space is plagued with quality content polarizing lovers of the saga, there has been a stable region in this one far, far away galaxy. I’m talking about the Star Wars Jedi series from Respawn Entertainment. And I say “series” because even though Star Wars Jedi: Survivor doesn’t launch until Friday, April 28th, my experience with this title shows that the studio best known for Apex Legends is still one of the best when it comes to telling modern Star Wars stories.
Five years after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Survivor offers us a more mature and slightly gray version of Cal Kestis. This character hasn’t exactly been hidden from the Empire for five years, but he’s been a key player on his side, leading all manner of resistance missions as part of his work with the rebel Saw Gerrera. However, after a mission goes awry, Cal begins to question his endless battle against the all-powerful Empire and begins searching for a way to protect those he cares about, leading him back to the same crew he was on the original game, but which broke up years earlier and went its own way.
A direct continuation of that story, albeit five years later, Survivor doesn’t offer the same progression experience as Fallen Order. Cal starts this game with the gear, skills, lightsaber, and force abilities he mastered in the first game, just like Kratos in God of War: Ragnarök doesn’t follow the same progression as in the 2018 title. It means you ‘ You’re thrown right into the action in moments, and you do it in a way that makes you feel like a true Jedi warrior, not a Padawan fighting tooth and nail for survival.
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If you’ve played Fallen Order, many of the mechanics from that game that made it so fresh and fun are also in Survivor. The platforming sections are still long and require a bit of thought, but at the same time they’re fluid and show the level of stamina and physical strength that Jedi and other Force users can attain. If you like platforming sections like Uncharted, Survivor is very similar, except Cal shows no fatigue when hanging from vines or scaling vertical surfaces. It is great. The same goes for the environmental puzzles, which require a bit of thought but are never overwhelmingly challenging.
Combat has also been improved and expanded with new lightsaber stances and Force uses that allow you to attack enemies in different ways. Whether it’s using the environment to your advantage, driving stormtroopers to their demise, or catching projectiles in the air to offset their own damage. Add to that the ability to switch between the Blaster stance, which lets you use a pistol in one hand to deal ranged damage while dodging and striking with a lightsaber, or my favorite Crossguard stance, with the other which you can slow down. more powerful attacks when using the lightsaber blade recently made famous by Kylo Ren. There are five lightsaber stances and countless ways to improve them, your Force moves and Cal’s health and survivability thanks to countless skill trees for you to explore and improve in the way that best suits your form.
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But more entertaining platforming sections and improved combat aren’t the only area where Respawn has redoubled its efforts. There’s a massive collection of new enemy types, not just from the Imperial faction, but in the case of beasts from across the galaxy and a whole new faction type, the Bedlam Raiders. This faction faces challenging new humanoid enemies as well as a variety of droid variants from the clone wars era, each requiring you to deal with them differently, or the challenging battle set that will chew and spit you. Between Super Battle Droids relentlessly attacking with ranged blaster fire and Bedlam Warriors relentlessly striking with charged blades, Cal will need to be both faster and smarter if he’s to survive and defeat this sequel’s threats.
And that even extends to the open world and the kinds of activities you can do around the many locations that make up this story. Whether it’s simply returning to Coruscant to collect collectibles, taking on bounty hunters scattered throughout the system, or venturing into the far reaches of the Koboh Lairs to battle a rancor, Survivor has many ways to to continue and improve the experience off the beaten path. Main narrative path, to the point where you can easily squeeze in over 30 hours of gameplay before the credits roll and new secrets become available.
That being said, most people come to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the main story and to see how this story expands on Cal’s story. While I’ll stay away from direct spoilers, I will say that I don’t think this story is anything offers a narrative as extraordinary as Fallen Order. Of course, there are still incredibly great Star Wars moments that eclipse almost every other Star Wars product of the past decade, and in fact the overall story is better than most Star Wars productions we’ve had in recent years . I just don’t think it lives up to Fallen Order in a purely narrative sense as the plot is clearly up and down and often draws on characters that are meant to be important to us but with which we can’t connect due to character development. If you like Star Wars, even if it’s just fleeting, there’s plenty to discover and marvel here, including story details to be picked up along the way, but don’t expect a narrative as emotional as Fallen Order’s.
Fortunately, there are more things to do than in Fallen Order. A current-gen exclusive, the environments are larger, deeper, and more detailed, and there’s always something new to discover thanks to the game’s Metroidvania-like progression system, which lets you retrace your steps to explore previously inaccessible areas. Some of the extra activities aren’t as exciting as others, for example fighting bounty hunters is a lot more exciting than collecting seeds and growing plants, but at least there’s an opportunity to do both. Also, the customization suite is the same as Fallen Order’s, meaning that all of the accessories (be it Cal’s clothes, hairstyles, lightsaber parts and colors, BD-1 parts, etc.) are found in the world and cannot actually be bought Money at all, and this is one aspect where Survivor, like Fallen Order, deserves a lot of credit as it is a full game without any monetization beyond the initial purchase.
While I’ve already talked about the minor flaws in the main narrative, I think Survivor is a better title overall than Fallen Order, but this game has some very clear performance issues that are currently holding it back. When playing in PS5 performance mode, the game is struggling to get 60 FPS promised and still have issues with jumping textures, crashing animations, ugly textures, other weird bugs, crashes and more. The list of issues is so long and immediately apparent that it will likely take Respawn some time to fix them, and this is the aspect that hurts the game the most overall. If a patch fixes these issues on release day, great! But in my pre-release experience, they’re a real drag on the title.
Still, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a great sequel to this series for Star Wars fans and fans of action-adventure games. It’s packed with references and other small details that paint a wonderfully comprehensive picture of a galaxy far, far away, and the gameplay is simply an improvement on the already excellent Fallen Order formula. It has its flaws and isn’t perfect, both in terms of performance and main narrative, but considering 2023 has been marked by great AAA remakes so far, Survivor is one of the best truly new titles we’ve seen have this year.
