Creating something within the Star Wars universe must be an awfully tricky tightrope walk. With contentious fans all clamouring for different (and often opposing) things, a fanbase stuck, almost obsessed with the original trilogy and a corporate overlord tightly clutching its IP, creating something at all must be nigh on impossible.
With those competing forces, creating something good, or even great, well… I’m honestly not convinced it isn’t luck. Respawn’s first time around the block with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was met with varying degrees of success and the developer is back with a bigger, bolder sequel. Hoping to carve out a niche in the Star Wars universe, Respawn returns with Jedi Cal Kestis in tow. Five years after the events of Jedi: Fallen Order, Jedi: Survivor deals with Cal’s continued attempts to fight the Galactic Empire and forge a life in a galaxy without the Jedi Order.
Like Jedi: Fallen Order, the sequel pulls inspiration from myriad games and franchises in an attempt to craft something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s unfortunate that it never quite succeeds despite its valiant attempts. And while Jedi: Survivor is by no means a bad game it is a confused game. I don’t think I know exactly what kind of game Jedi: Survivor is and I don’t think it or Respawn does either. Each and every gameplay mechanic and design element is pulled in a thousand different directions by a multitude of others and the best ones are mired by the mediocre ones, the bad ones and the baffling ones.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review
Like the first game, Jedi: Survivor is an action-adventure game that borrows liberally from the likes of Dark Souls, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Uncharted. This time around, the world’s Cal explores are, in general, larger and more open than in Fallen Order. On one hand, I enjoy this approach and applaud Respawn for opening the world and creating a larger playground. On the other, this larger, open structure obliterates pacing and momentum. These larger spaces aren’t filled with enough points of interest or things to engage with which causes Jedi: Survivor to feel big, but empty. In a move, seemingly designed to remedy this problem, Cal is able to tame and ride mounts. This mechanic is a gimmick at best and frustration at worst. Controls when on a mount feel floaty and unresponsive and the speed boost you receive is so minimal it’s negligible. There is something to say about the feeling you get from being able to ride a mount within the Star Wars universe, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of gameplay enjoyment that comes from the mechanic.
There are other ripples within the game that come from this bigger, more open setting. For example, the Metroidvania approach Jedi: Survivor takes. There are dozens of locked sections of the map that you can come back to after you’ve acquired whatever it is you need. But, by virtue of the map’s size and the big, open spaces you need to cross, it’s really easy to forget about “locked door 57” way back at the beginning of Koboh. In addition to being forgotten about and secreted away in some long-forgotten corner of the map, many of these areas are only accessible so late into the game that it’s barely even worth it. Considering you’re most likely going to find some lore or a minor upgrade it’s almost not worth the hassle. And I know how silly that sounds but getting around Jedi: Survivor just isn’t as exciting as it should be. It’s a slog to cross the empty, open spaces. Fast travelling is an option but never one I opted for since I never felt as though I needed to collect whatever was locked away from me.
Eschewing the standard system employed by the Soulsborne games, enemies in these open areas don’t seem to respawn identically when you die or rest at the Jedi bonfire and are instead randomised, disincentivising exploration in search of combat. Thankfully, in the linear sections that branch off of the hubs, enemy spawns are set, allowing you to learn, reset and repeat.
That being said, I never found any need to farm enemies, repeat sections or learn enemy spawns. Not once. Since Jedi: Fallen Order adopted the “Soulsborne” system it has been hamstrung by its half-hearted implementation. These Meditation Points never made any sense in the first game and they make even less sense now. The reason that Bonfires are so integral to the experience in a game like Dark Souls is that the entire gameplay loop is based on learning the combat, defeating enemies to grow stronger and grinding. This is not something that is at all necessary in Jedi: Survivor. There are very few enemies that will give you more than the briefest bit of trouble and those that do are few and far between. Similarly, there’s no need to grind because you’ll earn plenty of experience and ability points by simply making your way through the game.
Finally, where Soulsborne games feature a serpentine-like level design that folds in on itself, inviting exploration and retreading old ground, Jedi: Survivor does not. You are constantly creating shortcuts that allow you to breeze through the level in a heartbeat, should you want to return and mop up anything you previously missed. Huge swathes of the levels are carved off and you’re incentivised to avoid them since it’s so much quicker and easier to simply take the shortcut and, as mentioned, you’re never in need of grinding or returning to a location. You’re able to Fast Travel between Meditation Points on the same planet which does give them some utility but for the most part, their inclusion, along with the Soulsborne-lite elements have hobbled this franchise from the beginning. Even more so in the sequel.
This is never better demonstrated than in combat.
Facing a few enemies at once is fun and challenging and requires you to call on Cal’s many skills and abilities. Combining lightsaber attacks with Cal’s use of the Force is genuinely thrilling but only under the right circumstances. Far too often, Cal will be thrown into a room with half a dozen or more enemies and the wheels absolutely fall off. Trying to keep track of multiple melee ranged enemies while ranged attacks are gradually chipping away at your block meter becomes a hassle and the excitement quickly dries up. The combat mechanics simply due not seem fit for numerous enemies at once, which makes sense, given the Soulsborne influence.
What Respawn hasn’t grasped when implementing this kind of combat system is that it’s always been designed for limited numbers of enemies. Throwing a horde of bad guys at Cal just doesn’t work. It’s clumsy and frustrating and worst of all, it completely destroys the Jedi power fantasy. Obviously, Jedi: Survivor is a video game and as such, it needs to provide a balance between challenge and power but it doesn’t truly succeed. When Cal is facing off against a couple of enemies, sure, the combat goes down a treat but, like the game is wont to do, when Cal walks into a room with multiple ranged bad guys and multiple Elite and grunt melee units, it devolves into a clumsy, dissatisfying mess.
Boss fights, which were a saving grace in Jedi: Fallen Order in regards to combat, are truly underwhelming here. I can almost count on one hand, the number of boss fights that occur throughout the campaign and of those, only a tiny percentage required any careful strategy or skilful dispatching. Where the first game relished in offering up a steady stream of challenging bosses and combat scenarios, Jedi: Survivor is seemingly too preoccupied with bizarre side content to offer up anything even nearing what came before. Thankfully, there are a number of Bounty Hunters you can track down who do offer more of a challenge though it’s shocking that the campaign doesn’t feature more blockbuster boss moments.
Unlike the game’s combat mechanics, exploration and traversal are (mostly) terrific. Borrowing liberally from all manner of other games — Titanfall, Apex Legends, Uncharted and the Batman: Arkham series — Cal has a number of tricks up his sleeve. Double jump, air dash, grappling hook, wall run/climb and more all come together to create a beautiful obstacle course-like quality to the getting around of Jedi: Survivor’s linear levels. The greater the number of traversal abilities Cal learns, the more enjoyable it becomes to move through each linear section. Sadly, where the open areas feel empty the linear sections feel like curated obstacle courses and not natural parts of the world. Once you open the previously mentioned shortcuts any sense of these sections belonging to a ‘real place’ flies out the window.
Strangely, perhaps in an attempt to create a more organic, grounded feel to the world, the pathfinding and visual clues are either missing or so vague they’re entirely unhelpful. On numerous occasions I found myself yelling at my screen and asking where I was supposed to go. The in-game map isn’t at all helpful in these situations and the parts of the world that you can interact with are often nearly identical to those that you can’t. I am colourblind and this may have contributed to me missing visual cues, but it’s not something I’ve experienced before, especially not in a big-budget AAA title.
With ALL that being said, I can honestly say that I did enjoy playing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and found it to be an entertaining if flawed romp. The gameplay, while ultimately underwhelming in many areas and can sometimes be actively bad, is solid enough to keep you engaged and has fleeting moments of pure brilliance that’ll ensure you stick it out to the bitter end.
Where Star Wars Jedi: Survivor fumbles further is in its story. Writing an original story within the Star Wars universe is an unenviable position, especially when the story is stuck between two existing periods of a canon. Knowing that everything Cal does occurs before Luke Skywalker ultimately defeats the Empire makes it all feel so hollow. We know that Cal’s actions have little to no impact on the Galaxy at large and so it’s difficult to care about what he’s doing and why. This apathy also applies to established characters, locations and the like. We know their ultimate future and fate because we’ve seen Return of the Jedi so Jedi: Survivor is a gap filler if anything. That’s not to say that interesting stories can’t be told in a situation like this one, however, this story isn’t one of them.
Without going into any potential spoilers, Cal and his crew discover a long-lost and highly sought-after planet that may offer them a chance to escape the Empire forever. There are High Republic revelations and some genuinely interesting characterisations that feed into this planet but in the end, it’s all squandered. The pacing of the plot is way off and it almost feels as though big changes were made to the story late into the piece. A couple of late-breaking swerves and surprises have almost no impact as they’re telegraphed from almost the very beginning and, again, don’t carry any weight since the future is already written.
A good deal of the story focuses on Cal letting go of the past and moving on to the future which is kind of ironic given how beholden Jedi: Survivor is to the in-universe past and future. It also never really rings true since Cal’s entire motivation is driven by his past and the events that led to Order 66 and beyond. He doesn’t move past it and can’t. Kylo Ren’s line “Let the past die, kill it if you have to…” seems like the inspiration for the themes in Jedi: Survivor, but it exists at a fixed point in time and even if Cal figuratively, emotionally and spiritually “let the past die” he would still be beholden to existing lore and canon. Something else that bothered me throughout Jedi: Survivor was just how much of a blank canvas Cal is. He has neither the charm or boyish innocence and hope that Luke had nor does he have any of the rage, swagger or power that Kylo Ren had. He’s very much an adventure game protagonist; vanilla and inoffensive.
Reviewing on PC, I played Jedi: Survivor on the Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 Gaming Desktop. This rig is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 with 32GB ram and Jedi: Survivor chugged like a fratboy during rush week. Performance on PC, pre-Day 0 patch, was woeful. Not all the time mind you, but far too often to not mention it. For long stretches of time, the game would run well, smoothly and without issue and then, out of nowhere it would become a giant, unplayable mess. Frames would drop to nearly zero, textures would disappear and pop back in the visuals would lose all fidelity. It would happen at odd times too. Times when I was in a small corridor with limited geometry and no enemies the game would suddenly seem to stop working.
I tried fiddling with the visual settings to make a difference and nothing really fixed the issues. I ran Jedi: Survivor at Low, Medium, High and Epic settings. At 1080p and at 4K. With Raytracing on and with it off and it didn’t make a difference, once the started to struggle visually it would only seem to come good on its own and after some time had passed. While it was basically unplayable during these moments, they were short enough and infrequent enough for me to continue to play and enjoy the game but if they existed in the finished retail version, I don’t see how I could recommend anybody purchases it.
The day 0 patch, does seem to have made a major difference, though I have still noticed stuttering and infrequent drops in the frame rate while playing. Without fail, when I entered the Mantis and travelled to another planet when entering Hyperspace the game would slow down so much it would almost become a flip book. I’m not sure why, perhaps something to do with the way the game renders the light but even after the day 0 patch, the problem persists. Not as bad, but it’s still there. I’m sure that EA and Respawn will be hard at work after launch to continue to update and improve Jedi: Survivor but it sure feels as though the launch is coming in very, very hot.
Jedi: Survivor, in spite of everything I’ve written here, isn’t a bad game. It’s just ok and it’s suffering an identity crisis but it’s still quite playable and entertaining. Hampered by some baffling design decisions, Jedi: Survivor doesn’t know what kind of game it wants to be nor what kind of game it is. Part action-adventure, part Soulsborne-lite, part Metroidvania, it simply doesn’t commit to any one thing and as such doesn’t excel at any. With combat that is masterful when it works and woeful when it doesn’t, level design that’s both too open and too linear and a hardcore action RPG system that’s both unnecessary and underutilized, Jedi: Survivor is a mishmash of the best and brightest of other games; none of which gets a chance to shine here.
At its core, there is a stripped-back, focused version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor that fully lives up to the potential of a hardcore Star Wars action RPG. If the combat was tighter and didn’t suffer from too many encounters and too many enemies at once every other criticism I have of the game would melt away. If the combat was spot-on, I could forgive the lacklustre open world and overly linear level design. I could even forgive the somewhat empty story but unfortunately, the combat is only masterful occasionally, ok most of the time and dreadful sometimes.
It goes to show you the power of the Star Wars IP and the value of a game that’s just good enough to keep you hooked. In the face of every negative critique and every negative experience I had with Jedi: Survivor, I still enjoyed it enough to recommend it to Star Wars fans. Getting to be a Jedi and hang out with BD-1, no matter what else is going on is just enough to save Jedi: Survivor and ensure that it’s worth having a crack at.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was reviewed on PC using digital code provided by EA.
