Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a direct sequel to the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which was released back in 2019. It follows the story of a Jedi Knight named Cal Kestis with the story set in the Star Wars universe, five years after Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
With the Galactic Empire taking over the galaxy and hunting the remaining Jedi, you’ll be playing as Cal, a veteran Jedi Knight who has mastered a variety of lightsaber types: single-bladed, double-bladed, and more.
I honestly haven’t really played the Fallen Order much. I do have the game and being a Star Wars fan, I’ve tried my best not to miss playing great Star Wars games (I truly enjoyed playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG) but I just couldn’t get hooked enough with the clunky way of having to find all your way back into your ship after you complete a mission (which took time and the navigational system wasn’t the best either).
So if you haven’t played the first game yet, you should be fine playing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor story-wise. There’s a short summary of what happened when you start a new game and there are also YouTube videos for you to refresh your memory, or to let you know what happened in the story previously.
As Cal Kestis, you are not a new Padawan trying to learn the Force or even construct your first lightsaber. Cal is a veteran Jedi Knight who is quite masterful with the Force and art of combat. Therefore, you’ll pretty much get all the Force power you can think of as a Jedi the moment you start the game: Force Push, Force Pull, Slow Time, and Confuse (there will be an extra Force power you’ll unlock later in the game too). On the PC, you can execute these Force powers using key 2 to 4 – though I’m not sure why the Force Confuse is defaulted to Ctrl-Z.
You’ll also get most of the lightsaber types the moment you start the game: Single Blade (a flexible, balanced stance), Dual Blades (dual-wielding lightsabers with fastest, not-as-strong attacks), and Double-Bladed Staff (great for crowd control or when you are surrounded by many enemies). There will be a couple more lightsaber types that you will unlock later in the game too.
While you have all these options in the game, you can only pick two at a time and this is set on the Meditation point. It’s fine, actually. While the idea of being able to switch from one stance to another is great, you’ll get overwhelmed eventually with having 4-5 different stances at your disposal. God of War: Ragnarok offers you to be able to switch instantly between 3 different weapons but I can’t imagine having 5 to juggle with.
As you level up, you will get skill points that you can spend to further improve your survivability and your lightsaber techniques. The skill points are obviously limited so unfortunately you have to decide on what lightsaber types you are planning to use most of the time. This also means the game doesn’t really reward you with deep investment to a particular tree because there are just too many to focus on.
Combat is fun and playing as a masterful Jedi Knight is really great as you deflect blaster shots from Stormtroopers and Battle Droids, combined with using the Force to soften things up. You’ll be able to parry in close-range battles and with perfect timing, you can stagger enemies too. Some enemies’ attacks are unblockable so you’ll have to dodge it away. There are definitely tough battles fighting some legendary creatures that took me quite a while to win. Thankfully, you can always alter the gameplay difficulty any time in case you get stuck or you just want to continue on with the story.
Cal is also very proficient in acrobatics. Like Tomb Raider and Uncharted games, you’ll be jumping from one cliff to the next, doing wall-running, and many other things while exploring the rich environment between galaxies. The control is very fluid and responsive which makes things more fun and satisfying as you go from one place to the next, with a bit of puzzle solving here and there. I do feel that there are too many of these in the game that it feels distracting at times, where I just want to fight the Empire and continue on with the story. But if you like exploring and hopping from one wall to the next, you’ll love it.
There are tons of things to do as well such as collecting bounties and other collectibles that you can trade for cosmetic items, even doing rooftop gardening. Most of these are optional thankfully, but I do feel like they are more of a distraction than adding values into the core game. There are tons of customisations you can collect and purchase, changing your Cal Kestis appearance completely from his hair to this lightsabers. And of course, BD-1 too.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review Conclusion
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a great game that’s set in the Star Wars universe with plenty of lightsaber and Force actions, plus exploring and puzzle solving. While the story or scripting is probably not the best that you’d expect from a Star Wars game, it captures the essence of the Star Wars universe and what it feels like to be a Jedi Knight. The graphics and audio design are top notch, plus the gameplay is well executed. Fighting bosses feels great and satisfying to both watch and triumph on.
I played on the PC after a series of big patches to fix performance and issues, and so far I’ve never encountered any problems like crashes or stuttering. It’s pretty smooth on my AMD Ryzen PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080.
Disclosure: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review licence was supplied for reviewing
