Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review – The Force is with him again

It just so happens that sequels are unsuccessful most of the time and disappoint. There are few examples of great games that in number “2” or its second chapter have triumphed famously. could be its sequel Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order be on this list? The answer is “yes” only accompanied by a significant “but”.

HE comeback entertainment paved the way for a new generation of Star Wars games, with a modern narrative, game style, demanding on the player and at the same time highly entertaining. He Star Wars Jedi: Survivor It obviously builds on the proven and fairly successful Fallen Order formula and tries to build on it on all levels. Except that in some places he succeeds and in others his objective is contrary to that of the Stormtroopers.

To start, I’ll take you to the story where we meet Cal Kestis (again played by cameron monaghan) five years after the end of the previous game, while he alone carries out missions for Saw Gerrera, dedicated to fighting the Empire tooth and nail. Can you do it alone? Soon enough, events lead him to realize that he cannot do without his allies, and so old and dear faces join new in this epic – no exaggeration – Star Wars adventure.

I really appreciate, as a Star Wars fan, that the plot deals with The High Republic part of the universe, where in the first one it was a pleasant surprise in terms of storytelling. The choice of Respawn vindicates it and bets even more on this unknown era of the universe, which once again takes Cal to completely unknown corners of the galaxy. The villain of the story, Dagan Gera, marks “mystery villain”, but not layered in terms of his motivations. Speaking of which, Cal’s character could have been worked on a little more, despite the fact that we see him more mature, mustachioed and stocky, at the zenith of his powers and in a rather grim story especially for him.

Prepare for a… “Hitchcockian, Granniolian” finale, with an ultimately effective crescendo building steadily and methodically to its climax. The overall writing of the story went to a pretty high level as it was a thrilling roller coaster of emotions that had everything a Star Wars story stands for. His story arc and what left me as a Star Wars player and fan, was what we call “checked all the boxes». Of course, the performances of all the main leads helped and earned points, especially Cal -obviously-, Cere, Greeze, Merrin and Bode, who is the “hidden punch”.

If there’s one thing Respawn does really well, and I now consider it their trademark, it’s building and developing the pacing and story in perfect sync with the virtues of the game. He did it in the Titanfall 2 campaign, he made it more focused in “Fallen Order” and here, in “Jedi Survivor”, he accurately repeats a drummer hitting the beats at the right times.

Gameplay while nice, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and in terms of “pulse” variety I expected much more. Yes, it’s quite picky, but this time around, due to the much-hyped stances, I was expecting more variation and a touch more of their “Souls-like” recipe. As impressive as they are and as much as they help depending on the situation, you can still take everyone down with two stances. I ended up going with the dual-wield (ala Ahsoka) for the main and for the second, either Dual-blade ala Darth Maul or the heavy Crossguard reminiscent of Kylo Ren.

I won’t hide from you that aside from a few bosses that were hard to beat, if you raised some force abilities a bit and built a certain tree (called force push, for example) you beat them without constantly changing your stance. I consider it a missed opportunity to give much more depth to the gameplay that prefers a more relaxed and digestible recipe. That’s not to say that slashing isn’t fun, and especially the slicing of lightsaber enemies is captured better than any other Star Wars game to date.

Otherwise, jumping around with parkour moves like a Jedi-skilled assassin is still enjoyable, even if simple to execute. In the shallows he moved his riddles, which are there in the environment as an extra seasoning.

Another yellow card I give him is that he tried to set up his “open” world in the style of God of War: Ragnarok and it doesn’t work. It checks the “Metroidvania” box very well, but its worlds left me with a strong dry taste. Most of them are beautiful, but tasteless, lifeless, and too static, especially when cutscenes and QTEs don’t dance in front of the player. Even though I traveled to multiple planets, the environments were recycled many times to my dismay, and the fact that they don’t have the necessary open-world vibrancy doesn’t help. Especially Khobo, which is actually the main map of the game.

The way you were given the side quests wasn’t great either, keeping the rest of the world dry, like the deserts of Tatooine. I wish it would give me more reasons and motivation to explore its worlds, but once its admittedly fascinating and mature story ended, I felt “full” and had no desire to revisit its locations again. An average game will take you around 20 hours to complete, and a few more hours if you’re looking for secrets, side quests, and a bit of exploration.

The second and most important “yellow card” goes directly to Respawn since they didn’t make sure the title was “polished” from day one, nor the subsequent ones that followed. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor actually has a lot of glitches that in my experience at least got to the point of breaking the game twice. From bugs, it had everything you could imagine, from walls that Cal couldn’t catch, to bad and weird animations. Perhaps the worst and immersion-breaking was the intense, to an irritating degree, emergent in the textures.

He suffered the same fate and his technical section that was far from fluid at 60fps with a moderate and quite “murky” for the PS5 data, the Performance Mode. When I turned it off and the graphics quality improved and the frames dropped, it had an immediate and severe impact on the game that requires you to have time and time. While it appears to be a beautiful game, honestly somewhere there is a technical area that claims Respawn and it might blow your mind, however due to these issues it doesn’t make it to the fountain to drink water. And the situation I’m relaying to you is after your first major fix. I hope it plays out as the story and the epic Star Wars adventure it holds for anyone it’s a shame to be left out like that.