REVIEW: STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR.
Release date: 28 April 2023.
Platforms available on: PS5, PC/Windows, Xbox Series X/S.
Reviewed on: PS5.
Released three and a half years after the first game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the adventure of lightsaber wielder Cal Kestis continues with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
HERO WITHOUT MEMORY LOSS.
The plot of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor takes place around five years after the events of its predecessor. You are with the main character Cal Kestis, who, from a Padawan has long since become a Jedi. You are roughly in the time between Star Wars movies, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope. I could now give you a comprehensive story excursus. From my point of view, this is superfluous due to the long stretches of the plot, although there is still a narrative atmosphere, especially due to the encounters with old acquaintances and new allies.
Much more important than the story, which only gets going later on, is the fact that hero Cal is not completely reset. Unlike many other video game sequels with a returning protagonist, developer Respawn doesn’t use any cheap tricks to weaken him and make him forget large parts of what he learnt the hard way in the predecessor. That doesn’t mean that you can really use all skills and weapons right from the start. As part of the tutorial in the opening mission, practically all options with the single lightsaber or the staff-like double variant as well as pulling or pushing away with the Force etc. are automatically released again.
NEW SKILLS, PROVEN PRINCIPLE.
Over the course of the campaign, a whole range of new skills or fighting styles are of course added, some of which were not present in the predecessor. This will later give you access to a crossguard, which is basically something like a rather sluggish but strong two-handed lightsaber. There is also a blaster variant in addition to the five styles. This allows you to use a normal lightsaber and a blaster at the same time, but you only charge the energy with sword strikes. The new skills that you learn automatically over the course of the story, but can be expanded and improved in the extensive skill trees, include, among other things, confusion. This allows you to temporarily have one of them fight at your side when fighting against several enemies at once. This also works with human or human-like opponents or with various monsters.
Your options in combat are diverse, and you have to use at least some of them because almost every opponent requires different tactics or different behaviour when it comes to evasive movements, blocks, etc. But that’s not all, it’s also because all enemies (with the exception of the bosses) respawn as soon as you rest at one of the meditation points. You can also unlock shortcuts on the sometimes very winding paths so that you don’t have to fight all the enemies again on the way to the current destination.
OFTEN LAME BOSSES.
In addition to a variety of different normal enemies, which often attack in large numbers, you will of course always come across tougher intermediate enemies and bosses. Although they are all more or less unique and often relatively easy to crack using a certain tactic, they are not particularly spectacular; they are usually stronger variants of normal enemy types. Here a particularly nimble bounty hunter, there a particularly resilient droid. Apart from the fact that the duels with them last significantly longer and are therefore much more difficult, very few of them are really anything special.
But that sounds worse than it’s meant to be. The highlight here is simply the combat system itself and less the enemy types. And if you really want to be challenged, you can. Without exception, I tested the middle of the five difficulty levels. If the game is too easy or too difficult for you, you can switch up or down up to two levels.
PARKOUR, JUMPS, GRABBING THINGS, WALL RUNS, WIRE ROPES AND GRAPPLING HOOKS.
So, among other things, Cal masters wall runs in order to be able to grab a higher edge. Given the right environment, he could even continue the wall runs indefinitely, because Cal loses no more energy in this art than in the normal climbing passages in which he clings to wire mesh, plant roots and the like. Often the two merge directly into one another or are combined with other skills. At one point, for example, on the research station of a moon that was partially destroyed by the Death Star, you first use your robot companion BD-1 to literally shoot you along a wire rope with its motor drive (You can also go uphill on these ropes). You have to change the wire rope several times because of damaged points in order not to fall. At the very end, after a skilful jump and a subsequent double jump, you continue to a wall-like area where several wall runs are carried out in a row. Finally, Cal’s new grappling hook is used to pull you to an anchor point that is further away. Such long parkour sequences are rare in the game. So if they aren’t your thing, you don’t have to worry. However, I think they are really strong and I would have liked to see a few more of them.
EXPLORATION AND PUZZLES.
In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor you visit several small planets such as the aforementioned moon as well as several larger ones such as Koboh and Jedah. If the other locations are rather tubular, you can expect much more extensive areas, especially on Jedah. However, you cannot initially enter parts of the world because you still lack certain skills. Without the aforementioned grappling hook, parts of Jedah remain inaccessible for the time being. You can only get to others if you can tame certain mounts, which you can use to jump up and push off your back to reach a higher platform. All of this is also used within the main missions. For example, certain mounts make it possible to run up a slippery slope, which Cal cannot do on foot. If Cal needs do fly, you let a creature that can fly carry you through the air. However these creatures slowly sink under Cal’s weight, so you have to use rising hot air for additional buoyancy.
Of course, in some passages these air sources are not immediately available, but must first be generated. The task is linked to various puzzles, whereby you first have to supply certain devices with energy. You will also encounter these energy giving balls in various optional dungeons, which are also puzzle heavy. For example, you can use this to create artificial bridges, use the power to move devices, or clear obstacles out of the way. I haven’t found anything that requires a lot of brainpower. But I found the tasks there or within the main missions creative and appropriately challenging. In any case, they provide additional variety.
How much you take with you is up to you. Within the side missions you can unlock a number of additional rewards, such as the so-called bonuses, which you can actively equip in a limited number and provide perk-like advantages. You can also sometimes find additional stim expansions, with which you can increase the number of healing injections from BD-1, or items to customize Cal, BD-1 or each of your weapons individually (but really purely cosmetically). However, you won’t have a serious disadvantage even if you strictly follow the main quest. In any case, there’s a lot of optional things to do, whether dungeons with puzzles, additional boss fights or various NPCs that you can then send to Greez’s cantina, on the roof of which you can even create a garden with the plant seeds you have collected. Whether that appeals to you or not: If you want to get everything done, you’ll probably be busy for 40 hours or more. But even with that, it might not be possible to learn all the skills in one go (you can reset the points distributed at any time). However, if you wish, you can still do this in New Game+ after completing the main story, which most people should achieve after 15 to 20 hours.
TECHNICALLY EXTREMELY UNCLEAN.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a good game overall. It never became unplayable and I didn’t experience a single crash. But you still can’t be satisfied with the technical implementation. The frame rate fluctuates constantly, and there are sometimes severe stutters, especially before cutscenes. Textures are regularly visibly reloaded, or entire objects pop up clearly in the background. This applies to both basic graphics options, which favour either resolution (quality mode) or frame rate. The quality mode is supposed to enable Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to run in 4K throughout, which is unlikely to be the case due to the sharply fluctuating image sharpness. The bottom line is that the game doesn’t really look any better. It’s also annoying that the memory management apart from texture reloaders etc. is not optimal. It often happens that entrance doors that should open immediately only open after 20 or 30 seconds.
However, you should still prefer the quality mode. Although it may only aim for 30 fps, this frame rate is at least somewhat constant there. The fluctuations in the frame rate are larger in the other variant and are correspondingly more annoying. In addition, there’s significantly more screen tearing in performance mode. As I said: These weaknesses never affect the playability, but they definitely affect the atmosphere to some extent. That’s also the main reason why I ultimately rate Star Wars Jedi: Survivor a little lower than its predecessor. Although I cannot make any statements about the versions on PC and XBox Series X/S, as I only had the PS5 version.
CONCLUSION.
With Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Respawn Entertainment delivers an overall solid successor. The new skills and weapons and fighting styles fit in well and enrich the already great systems for fights or parkour options. There is also a little more gaming comfort, for example in the form of fast travel between the meditation points, although some basic functions are strangely deactivated by default and therefore have to be activated explicitly. In the end, however, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor isn’t stronger than its predecessor. This is also due to the story, which drags on for a long time, or the rarely spectacular boss fights. Above all, however, the technical condition is responsible for the ultimately slightly lower rating than Fallen Order. Although the problems practically never reduce playability, they do regularly depress the atmosphere slightly. Anyone who already liked the predecessor can buy it without hesitation and at least hope that the developers will be able to get the performance under control in the long term.
