Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023)

Another Star Wars game played. This is the sequel to Jedi Fallen Order that I played a year back. Gave that a 4/5 so I had big hopes for this.

You continue to play as Cal Kestis, five years after the last game. Cal and his crew is still on the run from the Empire, who is stronger than ever before. They are struggling to keep the hope up and searching for a safe place for the Jedi’s to rebuild.

Respawn Entertainment who developed this, takes all that was good in Faller Order and made it even better. I think the world is a lot better and it’s looks great! The combat is improved with more new stances and abilities. The story is great and to see the relationship grow between the characters is nice. Some moments was really strong and emotional.

In the first game I thought it was kind of bad to never evolve and play with the same kind of weapons but not here. With a couple more stances and unlocking new moves and abilities I had a blast with combat! Many satisfying combos and finishing moves.

If there is something to complain about, the game had som performance issues sometimes. There were some big frame drops from time to time, especially in the final hours of the game. This don’t use to bother me but here it was so noticeable. For the most time it was good, but still a bit annoying.

This is easily the best Star Wars game yet, that I have played. The game had good pacing through it all. Loved it from start to end, had me entertained all the way.

Rating: 🌲🌲🌲🌲 +

Just started Jedi Survivor. I really loved Fallen Order, and so far this hits the ground running, with the biggest improvement being the map! I've enjoyed the story beats so far and found that despite my lack of souls experience my playthrough of Fallen Order a few years ago allowed me to handle the early bosses at normal difficulty fairly easily. I figure I'll stick to normal unless it becomes a walk in the park, but save frustrating souls-like experiences for when I actually decide to play through the FromSoft games.

I heard lots of rumblings about bugs when this released, but I'm hopeful that I am playing it after those were resolved.

I posted very negatively last time because I was venting about my dislike of open world games. Just wanted to say now that I'm almost 30 hours in this game is pretty great. It's currently blowing the first game completely out of the water in almost every way.

I am also enjoying the open world a lot more when I use it as something to do briefly when I want to take a break from the story. Also, it is far more enjoyable once you've gotten far enough to unlock a lot of mobility options and barrier clearing abilities so you dont stumble across things you cant actually engage with.

It felt really good to get back into this story and see how things have progressed since the first game. It feels like all the little aspects of the game I found irritating or half baked have been tweaked so that it feels much better to play. I liked the intro level and I really liked the look of the main hub planet after that.

Then I got to the open world section, and my enjoyment dropped by like 33%. Man it kind of sucks being an open world hater. Cause I think open world level design is well on it's way to being almost ubiquitous, in the same way RPG elements became part of damn near every genre in the past decade or so.

Still planning on playing more of this, but ugh, just needed to vent lol.

I recently played through Jedi Survivor, in general it was a pretty good time. It took me about 40 hours to complete the story with a moderate amount of completionism.

If you enjoyed the Jedi Fallen Order you'll find something to like about this game, they've done nothing revolutionary with the gameplay but at least at the standard difficulty its a moderately fun experience. The character and story moments don't hit as hard as the first game but there is some stuff to like. A few things are bit shallow and predictable but the emotional undertones are there.

The main drawback is the game's performance, its poorly optimized and not a good port from PS5. I have a GTX 3070, I5 12400F, and 32 gigs of RAM, not the highest end system in the world but enough that a game like this should be able to run comfortably at 1080p 60fps. Unfortunately in the main world and the hub world at moderate settings the game ran what felt like a stuttering 20-40 fps. The game ran reasonably well in other areas, with a few other minor graphical errors. From reading other reviews some people with higher-end systems than mine also ran into performance issues. Had the game ran better I might have spent more time with it. As such I tended to avoid the hub area altogether.

If you have a weaker system or are uncomfortable playing on a low fps some of the time I'd steer clear of this game. If in the future if the performance issues are fixed I would recommend this game if you were a fan of the first one, otherwise look for a sale. If you didn't like the first game, you won't like this one either.

I normally play games right at launch as I'm terrible at being patient and hate not being "in the know" when it comes to big game releases. However, this time my Jedi-like patience paid off as I encountered barely any stability or performance issues that I read about in early reviews for the PS5.

Overall, an amazing game although what really impressed me the most were the vast improvements compared to Fallen Order. The biggest change is the level design - Fallen Order seemed to have the DNA of a Metroidvania and seemingly encouraged you to backtrack to areas you couldn't access before. The problem with it was the rewards were almost always cosmetic, therefore never worth the effort. Secondly, fast travel points and the arduous traversal made it painful to even make an attempt at re-visiting old levels. Both of those issues have been fixed in Survivor - there are plentiful fast travel points and worlds are far more forgiving in terms of just wandering out hunting for things. I was rarely frustrated and, more importantly, things like health, force and stim upgrades made the journey worth it. Skills points were credited for tough encounters, so it made me want to explore every inch of every map.

It's a terrific match of combat and acrobatics. I loved the Crossguard style, swinging my lightsaber around like a deadly baseball bat of white light never failed to elicit a smile on my face. Wall running and using the force in various ways is just awesome, Respawn has such an advantage with this license - even if Star Wars doesn't quite have the zeitgeist power it once did, it still has a huge hold over me. How many games call roll out Darth Vader for a cameo and make me yell like a little kid? Very few.

The voice actors are outstanding. Debra Wilson is terrific, and I'd love to see a live action rendition of everybody here. The characters that inhabit the Saloon are just as interesting and funny as the villains are conniving.

It's not perfect, the story isn't as strong as Fallen Order. Sometimes combat can get a little cheap and stuttery against tougher foes but THANK GOD for a multitude of difficulty levels because I set it to the 2nd easiest and that was right up my alley. Had way more fun than Fallen Order I think largely because of that, along with navigation assist. What a terrific map system too. And BD-1! BD is the best!!!

Will easily make my top 10. What an incredible year for games.

Played on Xbox Series X.

Overall a great continuation from Fallen Order and well worth the time spent playing (around 20 hours or so). A sequel and improvement in all the usual ways - combat, abilities, graphics, customization.

Falls flat compared to Fallen Order in 2 major ways though:

• story felt less engaging and flat, especially near the end
• so many graphical bugs and progression bugs that it was very distracting and troublesome. Multiple crashes and game breaking issues at time (door would not open when needed etc...). Pretty unacceptable around 9 months after release on a console version of a game.

I stumbled upon this article after I had already passed this moment in the game. Big spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t played.

How Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Pulled Off The Greatest Betrayal Of 2023

This part of the article really stuck out to me:

“Knowing that we had that double betrayal, you’re very paranoid. I was the primary writer on the Lucrehulk level where you spend the whole time with Bode, and the goal is to make people love him. Don’t make people feel suspicious of Bode. And it’s hard. He is incredibly earnest, not out-and-out lying to Cal, but he is also trying to convince Cal of his point of view while also being genuine in his affections. So that’s hard, but knowing at least that when we get to the actual betrayal - they’ll never see the Jedi thing coming. There’s no hints, there’s no notice of that. It made me feel a little safer.”

The reason is because, as much as I enjoy this game, nothing about this felt subtle and it was clear from a feel minutes in that Bode was the villain, and would betray Cal. Additionally it’s interesting that they claim there were no hints about the second twist, but not only did I suspect it fairly early on, there is a moment where that suspicion is effectively confirmed and I think is surprising that Respawn really thought people weren’t going to figure out the twist. As fun as this game is, it’s a fairly predictable story. And in many ways that’s why people enjoy genre stories like this, because they know what to expect.

Jedi Survivor is the follow up to 2019 Fallen Order and after the events in the previous game we find a more mature Cal, more skilled in the Jedi arts, and quite a bit more experienced in general. This is directly reflected in the gameplay as we don't start the game fresh but in a similar state skills and ability wise to the end point of Fallen Order.

Survivor is an improvement on its predecessor in almost every respect, with maybe the exception of the story and pacing. Unfortunately, the performance still sucks and while I waited until the performance mode on PS5 got patched and mostly fixed, the PC port seems to still be plagued by issues.

The combat has been expanded with new stances, weapons and skill trees. It's fluid and every bit as fun as before, if not more so. The harder difficulties are quite unforgiving and demanding, with the standard still providing a satisfying challenge, especially when it comes to some of the side content and optional bosses. The story bosses are, I'd say, a little easier than before.

The exploration is also probably stronger in this one but it's a shame that it's mostly limited to one massive planet instead of several ones with more varied environments and enemies/NPCs. Nonetheless, it's a lot of fun to hunt down collectibles and make note of blocked paths metroidvania style that you can return to fully explore later in the game after acquiring the necessary traversal skills. The side quests are very rewarding and a lot of fun, with some really nice easter eggs to be found. Also noteworthy is the inclusion of fast travel at meditation points that the first game completely lacked, and could make backtracking and 100%ing the maps a chore sometimes.

When it comes to character and world building, it feels like there's more companionship now in the main quests because often you're teaming up with someone and while the exploration is still mostly a solitary endeavor, the central hub in this game provides a more lively base than the ship ever was in the previous entry. There's still great voice acting and the writing is generally pretty good, making for interesting backgrounds and quirky side characters.

The customization is a lot better here, although the ponchos are sorely missed, with more clothing and more option for Cal's looks, including a much needed man bun.

In summary, while this sequel doesn't innovate and in many ways it's a continuation of what the first game established, if you enjoyed Fallen Order at all, this is a no brainer recommendation, with the caveat of the technical issues and your personal tolerance level for them. If you haven't played the first game, I'd say this is an even more accesible jumping point but I'd watch a Youtube video or something about the plot of Fallen Order first so you're not totally clueless going in..

Can't wait for the 3rd game... though Cal is going to become even more of a beast in that one if they don't reset the skills/power level.

This game is first and foremost and excellent follow up to Fallen Order with beautifully done graphics, sound design and acting. The story itself had me squeeing in joy and hugging in sadness with my Twitch community.

That said, I had the dubious pleasure of playing on PC at the release date, and as mentioned here and elsewhere there were several issues with lag, disconnections, freezing of both game and OBS (meaning several stream resets) and some weird button lockout issues that did definitely affect my overall enjoyment. I would hope that these would be mostly resolved or resolving by now. This was the main thing keeping me from giving a full five star review.

The gameplay itself was the right level of challenging and even bosses/monsters having a sometimes steeps but achievable learning curve (I take a few runs at most things, that's just who I am!). EXCEPT towards the end there is a boss with several phases/cutscenes that totally took me out of the ability to remember/learn so much so that the game difficult had to be turned down - normally I would chalk this up to my own dubious skills but on discussing with community I was certainly not alone in having to do this.

Overall I still strongly recommend, and I will be going back again at some point to do a bit more exploration of the world and side quests I didn't complete/pick up!

Jedi Survivor is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Jedi: Fallen Order, and it continues the story of Cal Kestis and his companions as they explore the mysteries of the Force and uncover mysteries that laid dormant since the High Republic era. The game is a stunning showcase of graphical fidelity, with detailed environments and realistic animations that immerse you in the Star Wars universe. The gameplay is also improved from the first game, with more customization options, force powers, and combat stances that let you tailor your play style.

One of the things I liked most about Jedi Survivor was the characters. I really liked Merrin in Fallen Order, but thought she was criminally underused. Not so in Jedi Survivor. Merrin does so much in the story and has some of the best set-pieces dedicated to her. I really love my new goth Star Wars girlfriend Merrin, I hope that Rey my non-goth Star Wars girlfriend doesn’t mind. :-P But every character was great, especially all the new ones like Turgle, Toa, and Skoova, just to name a few.

Another thing that I enjoyed was seeing High Republic “stuff” in this game. I guess I’m actually a High Republic fan, even after reading only the first book, because it added a lot of depth and lore to the Star Wars universe. One thing that I would really like to give Disney credit for in their handling of Star Wars is that “Expanded Universe” stuff is actually “real” in a way that it just wasn’t under George Lucas. This makes me care a lot more about the side adventures of Star Wars, which is where the real fun is, anyway.

I also had a lot of fun unlocking and customizing all of the various bits and bobs that you get in this game. Another thing that I have really enjoyed about Disney’s stewardship of Star Wars is how they really want people to be able to “have their own” Star Wars story, via the Theme Parks and the Galactic Starcruiser overnight LARP experience. Jedi Survivor’s customization plays into that. In the first game, you could unlock pieces inspired by the theme park lightsabers, which thrilled me, and here I loved being able to make a really awesome and highly detailed lightsaber for Cal.

The additional stances in this game really worked for me, because it let me find a combination that worked well for my personal play style and let me develop that in the skill tree in a very deliberate way. I thought all of the force powers were fun, especially the confusion one that causes enemies to fight each other. I do think that the difficulty in this game was toned down compared to the first one, which I still maintain is the hardest game that I have ever beaten (I’m not very good at video games; I know that on the scale of Souls-likes, Fallen Order was baby-mode).

Like Hogwarts Legacy from this year, the level of detail in this game is off the charts. I spent so much of my time instinctively walking around instead of running, because the level of detail was so high I felt like when I was moving too quickly that I was missing too much, even if that detail didn’t have any gameplay relevance. I think that this level of graphical fidelity is what makes this generation’s games stand apart. In some regards that’s sad, because it means that there’s not been a huge amount of innovation in the gameplay and interaction space (though after Kinect and Move, can they be blamed?), but I also find it amazing that this level of fidelity is possible. I maintain that all of the “superfluous” environmental modeling in these games are done at a high enough level that they could be used in a real-life theme park, if they needed. That’s how good these modern games look.

However, Jedi Survivor is not without its flaws. The game suffers from some unclear puzzles that can be frustrating to solve, as it is hard to tell what you can interact with or what you need to do. I think that this might be because the level of graphical fidelity just… confused me in its detail. It was hard sometimes to know what I could or could not interact with. I think probably the answer to this kind of thing moving forward is probably, “Be able to interact with more”, as the level of fidelity increases higher and higher.

But that fidelity also came at a great technical cost. As of writing this review, the game does not run well, even on the Xbox Series X, with an uneven frame-rate and some annoying crashes that made me lose some progress, especially as I neared the final quarter of the game. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in a patch, but the technical issues did impair my enjoyment of the game on several occasions so it simply must be mentioned here.

The plot also feels somewhat rushed and predictable, as it follows a typical “middle chapter” structure that sets up for a final conflict and resolution, but does not itself resolve much. The game also leaves you wanting more variety in terms of planets and locations, as it mostly focuses on one large planet (Koboh) and a few smaller ones. Compared to the first game, which had more diverse and iconic planets to visit, Jedi Survivor feels a bit limited in scope and artistic diversity.

The story also alluded to what seemed like more excitement that happened on the peripheries of the game's plot which just kinda made me feel like the game was hiding some of the cooler adventures that the characters could have had. I also felt like the overarching conflict was pretty predictable and I would have liked it to have bucked the stereotype and done something different. I do think that the character development that occurs was good; I just wish the plot itself in which that development occurs had been better.

I wish also that there had been more planets. Koboh is big with a lot of areas to explore, and you get to go to a few places, but it didn’t have same excitement as going to many different planets as in the first one. Given the graphical fidelity, I understand why it seems limited in this regard, but it still was a feeling I had. I almost want there to be a “same-generation” sequel to this, a la GTA V or Vice City/San Andreas or Majora’s Mask or Tears of the Kingdom, where they are able to deliver a lot more variety using the same engine.

In the end, Jedi Survivor is a solid sequel that delivers on its promise of a thrilling and immersive Star Wars adventure, despite some technical issues holding it back. It has some issues with its puzzle design and plot structure, but it also has many strengths in its graphics, gameplay, customization, and characters. It is a must-play for fans of the first game, and Star Wars in general.

(For context I played on PS5 in graphics/quality mode)

For my money, this is one of the best stories the Star Wars universe has to offer. If Fallen Order started a little slow and got exponentially great, this game started great and got exponentially great-er. The parkour movement was extremely fun and fluid, as you unlock more abilities you really feel like a Jedi moving through the world. Combat struck a really nice balance of having a good chunk of what you would have finished the last game with, as well as adding tons of new abilities and modes that made fighting really flexible. Everything scaled super well, and this game was WAY more generous with checkpoints and shortcuts- it felt way less souls-y in the hard-as-nails-for-the-sake-of-it way. The soundtrack RULED, a fun few references to John Williams when it was obviously appropriate but Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab did a really fantastic job of capturing Star Wars 'feel' with their own themes and orchestrations. Just saw a tweet from Stephen revealing the imperial themed are made up of a 12 tone scale (every possible note) to convey the empires all-encompassing hold on the galaxy. That is so sick. This is the most fun I've had with a game since Hi-Fi Rush in January, and the most fun I've had with a big AAA title in a WHILE. Genuinely hope PC performance gets patched up (and I'm fairly confident it will) because I think everyone should give this one a shot. If Tears of the Kingdom wasn't two weeks away I'd have this as my GOTY no questions asked.