Star Wars Jedi Colon Survivor falls into the trap that many sequels do in thinking that bigger automatically equates to better. It's not enough to sour me on the game entirely - in fact, it's rather solid (see asterisk) - but it is enough to make me wonder if they strayed a bit too far away from what made its predecessor such a pleasant surprise. It improves upon almost every aspect except the one that matters the most to me: level design.
*Technical issues aside, but believe me, I'll get into that later.
Star Wars Jedi Colon Fallen Order, the 2019 game from which Survivor picks up from, blew me out of the water by being a game where the developers went "What if we made a big AAA Metroid title but set it in the Star Wars universe?" It's not something anyone expected, especially after its lackluster first showing at that year's E3, but Fallen Order wears its Metroid Prime inspirations on its sleeve, and the developers even confirmed as much in interviews. It wasn't without flaws, but it was a tight and streamlined experience that genuinely captured what I enjoy about that style of game.
Survivor takes that approach and blows it outward, introducing more of an open flavor to it, with mixed results. Each of the (two) major planets in the game has a hub area of sorts, that branch out into a larger, more explorable region, which connects to spokes that lead into smaller, more setpiece-driven locations. These typically serve as the game's major story areas. What you're left with is a lot of empty space, that doesn't serve much purpose other than being extra ground to cover on your way to the next thing. On the periphery of this are various nooks and crannies to poke around in and find cosmetics and upgrades and while I do think Jedi Survivor does a way better job in rewarding your exploration, I feel like this could have been condensed into a much more tighter package. So much of this game feels big for bigger's sake.
This segues into another issue I had: lack of variety in the game's locales. While in theory, Jedi Survivor has a planet count on a similar footing to Fallen Order, it never really feels like it as you spend 75% of your playtime on one world: Koboh. Fallen Order had a more even time distribution between its locations, and more visual variety to them as well, whereas Survivor has the dustball Koboh, the desert world Jedha, and a lot of time spent in similar-looking laboratories and research stations. Survivor does start you off on Coruscant, which was a real treat to experience as your opening setpiece, but you see almost all there is to see your first time through with little else to explore when you're given the option to return later on. Star Wars is such a big universe and I really wanted to see Cal go on more of a galactic-hopping adventure than simply being grounded to one bigger planet.
That all said, the game still takes major strides in other areas when compared to Fallen Order, and combat is one of them. Using dual lightsabers is given a unique stance this time around, alongside two newcomers: Blaster and Crossguard. Crossguard is the heavy stance, and Respawn does a tremendous job of making those saber slashes feel weighty and powerful. However, I'm not big on slow attacks so I spent most of my time with the Blaster stance, and my god was it incredibly fun. A Jedi using both a lightsaber and blaster in tandem is one of those things many Star Wars fans clamor for and they do deliver that fantasy here. The majority of encounters are seemingly balanced best around it too, as it's super useful in dispatching the annoying ranged troopers and droids Jedi Survivor loves to throw at you. Highly recommend investing in this stance as soon as you get it.
Story and characters also take huge steps forward, and Respawn seems proud of this, as they've given you a cantina to fill out with all the people you meet over your adventure. Once recruiting these NPCs, you can then talk to them and hear their stories (most of which are pretty interesting!) and in turn they let you in on rumors that serve as sidequests out in the field. The main cast shines brightly too, and anyone who complained about Cal's character in the first game will probably be silenced by the work they've done with him here. In my mind, I think they wanted to give Cal his "Empire Strikes Back" moment in this game and they thoroughly nail it. And while there are some predictable moments in the story, I still believe Respawn is continuing to create one of the more compelling narratives in modern Star Wars here, and the ending in particular opens up a lot of potential avenues to continue exploring these characters as time goes on.
The dark, star destroyer-sized cloud hanging over all of this, however, is the game's rocky launch and numerous technical shortcomings. I played this on PS5 so I can't speak for PC users who are clearly bearing the brunt of this, but even the performance on console leaves a lot to be desired. Screen-tearing, inconsistent framerate, and texture pop-in, all decidedly point to a game that should have gotten another delay to optimize this shit. It's not entirely unplayable - hell I platinumed the thing - but it never should have launched in this state. The frustrating thing is we're simply repeating what happened with the first game. People may have forgotten but Fallen Order was an even worse technical disaster upon release, and in both cases, you've got two wonderful, feature-complete games buried underneath all these problems that could have easily been solved by giving Respawn more time to optimize their game. Fallen Order did eventually get there, and I have no reason to believe Survivor will be any different, but it should never get to this point in the first place. And, as always, it's easy to look to the one common denominator in both cases: EA.
So, as much as the overall design of Jedi Survivor may have left me yearning for something closer to Fallen Order again, it's still a compelling experience in its own right and a game I'd 100% recommend...maybe six months down the line when it's in a more reasonable and stable state of playability. I can only hope when this series comes back around for its inevitable third game, lessons will finally be learned, though I'm not holding my breath on that one.
*Technical issues aside, but believe me, I'll get into that later.
Star Wars Jedi Colon Fallen Order, the 2019 game from which Survivor picks up from, blew me out of the water by being a game where the developers went "What if we made a big AAA Metroid title but set it in the Star Wars universe?" It's not something anyone expected, especially after its lackluster first showing at that year's E3, but Fallen Order wears its Metroid Prime inspirations on its sleeve, and the developers even confirmed as much in interviews. It wasn't without flaws, but it was a tight and streamlined experience that genuinely captured what I enjoy about that style of game.
Survivor takes that approach and blows it outward, introducing more of an open flavor to it, with mixed results. Each of the (two) major planets in the game has a hub area of sorts, that branch out into a larger, more explorable region, which connects to spokes that lead into smaller, more setpiece-driven locations. These typically serve as the game's major story areas. What you're left with is a lot of empty space, that doesn't serve much purpose other than being extra ground to cover on your way to the next thing. On the periphery of this are various nooks and crannies to poke around in and find cosmetics and upgrades and while I do think Jedi Survivor does a way better job in rewarding your exploration, I feel like this could have been condensed into a much more tighter package. So much of this game feels big for bigger's sake.
This segues into another issue I had: lack of variety in the game's locales. While in theory, Jedi Survivor has a planet count on a similar footing to Fallen Order, it never really feels like it as you spend 75% of your playtime on one world: Koboh. Fallen Order had a more even time distribution between its locations, and more visual variety to them as well, whereas Survivor has the dustball Koboh, the desert world Jedha, and a lot of time spent in similar-looking laboratories and research stations. Survivor does start you off on Coruscant, which was a real treat to experience as your opening setpiece, but you see almost all there is to see your first time through with little else to explore when you're given the option to return later on. Star Wars is such a big universe and I really wanted to see Cal go on more of a galactic-hopping adventure than simply being grounded to one bigger planet.
That all said, the game still takes major strides in other areas when compared to Fallen Order, and combat is one of them. Using dual lightsabers is given a unique stance this time around, alongside two newcomers: Blaster and Crossguard. Crossguard is the heavy stance, and Respawn does a tremendous job of making those saber slashes feel weighty and powerful. However, I'm not big on slow attacks so I spent most of my time with the Blaster stance, and my god was it incredibly fun. A Jedi using both a lightsaber and blaster in tandem is one of those things many Star Wars fans clamor for and they do deliver that fantasy here. The majority of encounters are seemingly balanced best around it too, as it's super useful in dispatching the annoying ranged troopers and droids Jedi Survivor loves to throw at you. Highly recommend investing in this stance as soon as you get it.
Story and characters also take huge steps forward, and Respawn seems proud of this, as they've given you a cantina to fill out with all the people you meet over your adventure. Once recruiting these NPCs, you can then talk to them and hear their stories (most of which are pretty interesting!) and in turn they let you in on rumors that serve as sidequests out in the field. The main cast shines brightly too, and anyone who complained about Cal's character in the first game will probably be silenced by the work they've done with him here. In my mind, I think they wanted to give Cal his "Empire Strikes Back" moment in this game and they thoroughly nail it. And while there are some predictable moments in the story, I still believe Respawn is continuing to create one of the more compelling narratives in modern Star Wars here, and the ending in particular opens up a lot of potential avenues to continue exploring these characters as time goes on.
The dark, star destroyer-sized cloud hanging over all of this, however, is the game's rocky launch and numerous technical shortcomings. I played this on PS5 so I can't speak for PC users who are clearly bearing the brunt of this, but even the performance on console leaves a lot to be desired. Screen-tearing, inconsistent framerate, and texture pop-in, all decidedly point to a game that should have gotten another delay to optimize this shit. It's not entirely unplayable - hell I platinumed the thing - but it never should have launched in this state. The frustrating thing is we're simply repeating what happened with the first game. People may have forgotten but Fallen Order was an even worse technical disaster upon release, and in both cases, you've got two wonderful, feature-complete games buried underneath all these problems that could have easily been solved by giving Respawn more time to optimize their game. Fallen Order did eventually get there, and I have no reason to believe Survivor will be any different, but it should never get to this point in the first place. And, as always, it's easy to look to the one common denominator in both cases: EA.
So, as much as the overall design of Jedi Survivor may have left me yearning for something closer to Fallen Order again, it's still a compelling experience in its own right and a game I'd 100% recommend...maybe six months down the line when it's in a more reasonable and stable state of playability. I can only hope when this series comes back around for its inevitable third game, lessons will finally be learned, though I'm not holding my breath on that one.