My personal favorite mega man classic game, and in general because of how close this game is to my heart. It was announced a couple years after I became a mega man fan, and the amount of hype and excitement for it carried this game into a special place in my heart. I live everything about this game, fro the music ti the 2.5D graphics, to the bosses and everything. It will forever remain as one of my personal favorites because of how good it is combined my my personal bias. Man, even if it isn’t the best game ever made, I just love it. :)

Huge improvement on the already surprisingly good predecessor in pretty much every possible way, but carrying over some of the original‘s fundamental problems. I still think making a Star Wars game an action platformer is an extremely clever idea and gameplay wise this game is at its best once you have your full ability set and run‘n‘jump like fucking Mario, it‘s silly but so much fun. In terms of its world, as much as I like the metroid approach this game takes to its structure and level design I think these levels (especially Koboh) are just way too big, I rejoiced every time the game sent me to a smaller, tighter space, because I knew it meant I didn‘t have to run around or backtrack samey environments for several hours.

I believe this game‘s biggest issue is its length, pacing and story structure. It has a phenomenal start and a strong final act but there‘s a (at least) 10 hour long section that I think could be almost entirely scrapped without really losing anything of value. It builds its entire middle part around two antagonists, one of them is a boring, cardboard cutout biggie baddie, while the other is a weirdo with story potential but barely any screentime who finally just gets axed with very little fanfare. I never not enjoyed my time with this game but I was ready for this section of it to end more than half a dozen hours before it did, and it does seem like ultimately the game itself wasn‘t very interested in it either because there‘s very little in terms of synthesis of themes or messaging by the end. Maybe I had overblown expectations because of some reviews calling this a multilayered story with interesting moral questions or whatever but that‘s not really what this is, there are glimpses of it here and there but it ultimately doesn‘t tread terribly new ground. Which is fine, it‘s a very servicable space opera with way above average storytelling and character writing for action games.

Its biggest strength is definitely its take on the aesthetics and vibe of Star Wars, Respawn really understands what makes this universe so appealing and is extremely good at communicating its magic while not being afraid to get a little loose and weird with its lore. The cast of characters is great (they especially sold me on Cal in this story), all the customization and cantina stuff made me feel warm and fuzzy and the overall presentation is phenomenal all the way through. I do think this is probably the best Star Wars game, I just hope they find a more genuinely interesting and thematically rich story to tell in the next one.

Some background info, I thought Fallen Order kinda mid. Couldn't tell you much of the story and the combat was jank. Sekiro outclassed it in every way for me in 2019.

In Survivor, I felt they vastly improved a lot of systems. The combat is really fun and might be some of the best combat this year. The parrying is smooth and satisfying and doesn't feel like jank anymore. It feels a lot closer to a Star Wars version of my beloved Sekiro. The movement has also been improved with new tools to traverse the map. On top of it, the boss fights are actually KINO especially a certain boss around the middle of the game. Difficulty wise, I played on Jedi Master (Hard mode) and thought the game was pretty damn easy. If you want a challenge, I suggest trying Master or Grandmaster mode.

Now the bad part. The navigation sucks in this game. This is one of those rare games I would actually want some kind of mini-map on the top right or objective marker on the screen because holy hell the game is confusing sometimes and where to go. It's not all the time but it happened a couple times that it really annoyed me.

This might not annoy everyone but I also hated the amount of puzzles and platforming sections in the first 1/3rd of the game. This was actually one of the reasons I really didn't like Fallen Order. It had too many puzzles and platforming and very little combat. I don't mind puzzles and platforming to break up the level but when it feels like 10 minutes of straight platforming and puzzles, you start to lose me.

In Survivor, there was a small stretch the game just felt like a platformer and not an action game. Thankfully, it stopped and the last 2/3rds of the game was insanely raw with a tons of combat sections. The "semi-open world" stuff is mainly all puzzle shrines with some bosses here and there so i kinda skipped it after dabbling in it for a bit and just mainlined the main story. It's not "bad" but its not for me. I would appreciate if the third game functioned like Elden Ring and all the hidden dungeons around the open world had challenging bosses that gave cool loot. Since its just puzzles, platforming, and more puzzles, I decided to skip out on it especially since the rewards weren't game changing.

Story Wise, I actually really liked the story and characters in this one a lot. Cal Kestis is a much better character and a lot more interesting than the first game. The supporting characters are top notch and have good chemistry with each other and Cal. The antagonists are also really really good and a big upgrade from the bland forgettable ones we had in Fallen Order. Don't wanna say too much on it because there's actually some really cool moments in this game.

The game overall took me about 24 hours to beat while doing some side content but skipping most of it. Highly recommend if you liked the ideas in Fallen Order but thought it had lots of jank. I am excited to see what they do for a third game and where they take Cal's character.

Also side note on performance: I played on PlayStation 5. The performance was good for 90% of the game on performance mode. I had 1 crash the whole game and the only times the frame rate dropped were in the semi-open world sections (which I ended up ignoring) and when transitioning into a cutscene. This personally did not annoy me but its worth pointing out for those who can't stand technical issues.