Well that’s a little whoopsie on my part. There I was, thinking that I’d be writing a somewhat rushed review of Diablo IV when one of my friends sends me a picture comparing Rick Astley to Cal Cestis. Hilarious as that was the ensuing conversation about the game had me reaching for my review which I was sure I had written given I’d finished the game over a month ago. You and I both know now that’s certainly not the case and here I am writing a review that I should’ve done ages ago when the game was still fresh in my mind. From what I remember though the game built well upon the foundations of its predecessor, even if it was marred by some significant launch day challenges and some rather questionable choices when it came to the overall narrative.
5 years after the events of Fallen Order Cal Cestis finds himself deeply involved in the resistance’s fight against the empire, working under the guidance of Saw Gerrera. He is without his previous companions however, having parted ways with each of them for unknown reasons. He’s built a new crew and has come to Coruscant to steal military data that could prove valuable to the resistance. The job quickly goes sideways and the only survivor is Bode Akuna who, after being persuaded with the promise of credits, joins Cal’s quest. With the Stinger Mantis damaged from the escape from Coruscant Cal seeks out Greez once again and begins on a journey that will see him uncover some long lost secrets of the Jedi order.
There’s no doubt about it, Jedi Survivor looks absolutely amazing. The combination of photogrammetric assets, modern lighting techniques and a dedication to filling the environments with lots of detail has certainly paid off. There’s also a lot of subtle camera work at play that ensures the environments are given the treatment they need; bigger environments are zoomed out so you can take everything in whilst the smaller environments are tighter in, allow the environment detail to shine through. This though has come at a performance cost for many, something I’ll touch on more later when I discuss the technical challenges. Despite that though I was able to get a mostly stable experience with it, stretching my somewhat new rig to its limits.
Jedi Survivor is a soulslike at its heart, although it feels an awful lot more forgiving than its predecessor was. The core game loop of exploring an area, defeating enemies, unlocking shortcuts and then (if you want) going to explore further is still the same as it was. A few new mechanics have been introduced to increase the verticality and explorability of environments, as well as the introduction of a bunch of new combat mechanics to make that part of the experience feel fresh. A rather odd focus of the game is customisation of Cal, with all sorts of unlocks available to play digital Barbie with him if that’s of interest to you. Finally there’s a sprinkling of other smaller mini-games and collectibles to keep the 100%-ers coming back for a very long time, something that I’m sure the Ubisoft faithful among us will enjoy.
Combat retains the same soulslike, beat ’em up styles that the original had being a lot more forgiving than the former but also not being as mechanically stiff as the latter. Interestingly, looking back at my previous review, parrying seemed to be the aim of the game whereas dodging wasn’t worth the time. This time around it feels flipped and was one of the reasons I switched to playing on the gamepad after a couple hours. Dodging on the keyboard just didn’t feel natural, even after trying and failing to remap the keys to more useful things. The game certainly wasn’t designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind as all my muscle memory built up from other, similar games just didn’t seem to gel with that control scheme. The controller however felt a lot better, making the dodging mechanic much more useable as a result.
The challenge felt a lot more approachable this time around, even though the game did use the same tactic for making things harder as its predecessor did (read: throwing more and more enemies at you in each section). There were only a handful of bosses that I didn’t one shot, with most of them coming towards the end of the game. Even those more challenging bosses were usually just me falling prey to a one shot mechanic that they hadn’t shown off before. This was also using the default sabre style as well which I’ve actually heard is sub-par when compared to the blaster one.I don’t count this as a bad thing though as it shows that the game can be approachable for those who might otherwise not give it a go and, should you really want to ratchet up the challenge, you can choose the higher tier difficulties.
Progression comes in much the same way: killing enemies gets you XP which levels you up, giving you talent points to spend in a number of different trees. There are also a number of collectibles that will bolster you in a number of ways, giving skill points directly, increasing your health/force meters and increasing the number of stims you have available between each time you rest at a checkpoint. Just like last time around most of the talent tree is improving on skills you’ll get by default, with a handful of them unlocking new abilities that might make certain encounters a bit easier overall. For the most part though I just maxed out the saber, force and resilience trees and that seemed to give me ample tools to deal with what the game threw at me.
Now it’s pretty well known that the PC version of Jedi Survivor had some pretty massive technical issues on launch and I definitely experienced that. Tweaking a lot of the settings make it playable, although it was still hit and miss depending on the environment you were in. Subsequent patches did go a long way to improving the performance overall, but even with modest settings there were still numerous environments where I’d drop into slideshow territory. For most areas this wasn’t an issue, but in high combat areas it was clear that the reduced FPS had significant impacts on the combat. I’m sure additional patches since then have helped immensely but it still was a bit detraction from the overall experience.
PLOT SPOILERS BELOW
My feelings about the story are certainly mixed as parts of it are really enjoyable, like the slow (and believable) development of Cal and Merrin’s relationship, whereas others feel extremely lazy from a writing perspective. The fact that Bode is actually a Jedi, which is revealed without any real build up or inclination that he might be one, felt pretty cheap and the subsequent betrayal arc felt rather hollow as a result. Of course I understand that these kinds of stories need to be somewhat self contained given their place in the canon, and certainly the events in the story provide fertile ground for future instalments, but I do hold Star Wars stories to a higher standard due to the world they have to work with.
PLOT SPOILERS OVER
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor uses the foundation built by its predecessor well, streamlining and uplifting the experience significantly. The game’s construction is definitely one of its standout features, with the improvements and diversity added to the combat system a welcome change. The technical and narrative issues do drag the experience down somewhat, although at least one of these problems should be addressed with time. It’s certainly worth playing and it’s definitely given me hope for more instalments in the series.
Rating: 8.25/10
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $99.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 18 hours playtime and 38% of the achievements unlocked.
