Overall, Jedi Survivor is a worthly sequel to 2019's Fallen Order, though I must admit it took a bit to grow on me. The story picks up just about some years after the previous entry with our protagonists - Cal Kestis and BD-1 now on their own having gone seperate ways with their former companions. Sounds like the start of a great new adventure, but my first thought about it is... that it honestly doesn't look that good.

Yeah, I don't know. Compared to the Resident Evil games and Horizon Forbidden West I played lately this new Star Wars just can't keep up graphically. The character designs feel a bit dated in terms of polish and the worst part is the hair. Sure, they added more customization, but to the detriment that the hairstyles and facial hair feel kinda blocky and just don't come across as natural. I guess the environments still look great and there are some legitimately beautiful places to explore, but unfortunately the game struggles with frame rate drops occasionally. Wide open areas look beautiful as stills, but the closer you come to water the more likely the game will struggle to naturally slide past the scenery. It's unfortunate, it's happening. But on the bright side it's overall not that grating and frequent and will not ruin the game.

I guess, I should fully disclose that this is in fact a review of the PS5 version, no idea what went wrong on PC and frankly I didn't research the version's problems either.

Anyway, with the bad and clunky out of the way, I have to remind you that my initial statement still stands: Jedi Survivor is a worthy sequel to Fallen Order and ultimately surpasses it in many ways: For starters, Cal's arsenal of 3 lightsaber stances is upgraded with a blaster and the heavy Kylo Ren saber style. There is more of an open world approach to the level design with more subquests and exploration to be made in places that don't just look like the next section in a level, but that actually feel habitable by those weird alien creatures you meet - in particular the planet of Koboh is wide and exploration heavy. With the size of everything expanding the acrobatics Cal is required to do to traverse the world only become more insane and acrophobia inducing. There are even some massive scale boss battles, where the game's next gen console capabilities shine through. In this game you are not alone (with BD-1, that is) as you also get some companions in select levels. And one more thing: at times you even get to glide... ehm, you know what? Forget about the gliding. It feels like gliding is that thing Breath of the Wild made cool, that game devs started thinking would be cool to have in their games as well, but while the latest Pokemon entries copied it pretty well and Horizon Forbidden West did fine having it's excitement be a abit limited by the game just not being open world enough, Jedi Survivor's gliding boils down to being a semi-tedious trial-and error mini game where you watch Cal fall to his death numerous time before figuring out where you need to land or potentially what the accurate trajectory is, so you'll stick the landing by the end.

Moving to the story: It's fine. My main issue with the first game was that even though Cal had the acting chops to back it up by being portrayed by Cameron Monaghan, the writers just went with a bland Luke Skywalker-esque personality for him and the more interesting part of him was peeling back the layers of his trauma that made him forget his jedi skills. His arc in the second game is fine and perhaps better than his first game's one as he is weighing his ambitions to take down the empire with his human needs and whether he won't lose sight of his humanity on his way towards toppling the empire. There is a new villain in town, who has a good backstory, but his limited involvement in the events at hand undermines him as a big bad, because we barely see him do things. There's just boss battles, which are fine, but aren't selling me the idea that he could crush the empire or even take down Vader himself. The new companion Bode Akuna is pretty good - perhaps the best character of the game. He is introduced as a Han Solo-esque gunslinger to compliment Cal, but there is a bit more to him. His story is pretty good, but it struck home with it's similarity to some other non-Star Wars game I learned to love last year.

So yeah, in my eyes the game is pretty good. It expands on the concepts it introduced in the previous games and improves the series in many ways. But it struggles with a few performance issues and graphical blemishes I've seen covered better in other games on the PS5. I am however definitely looking forward to a third game, should it be in the pipeline.

Overall, Jedi Survivor is a worthly sequel to 2019's Fallen Order, though I must admit it took a bit to grow on me. The story picks up just about some years after the previous entry with our protagonists - Cal Kestis and BD-1 now on their own having gone seperate ways with their former companions. Sounds like the start of a great new adventure, but my first thought about it is... that it honestly doesn't look that good.Yeah, I don't know. Compared to the Resident Evil games and Horizon Forbidden West I played lately this new Star Wars just can't keep up graphically. The character designs feel a bit dated in terms of polish and the worst part is the hair. Sure, they added more customization, but to the detriment that the hairstyles and facial hair feel kinda blocky and just don't come across as natural. I guess the environments still look great and there are some legitimately beautiful places to explore, but unfortunately the game struggles with frame rate drops occasionally. Wide open areas look beautiful as stills, but the closer you come to water the more likely the game will struggle to naturally slide past the scenery. It's unfortunate, it's happening. But on the bright side it's overall not that grating and frequent and will not ruin the game. I guess, I should fully disclose that this is in fact a review of the PS5 version, no idea what went wrong on PC and frankly I didn't research the version's problems either.Anyway, with the bad and clunky out of the way, I have to remind you that my initial statement still stands: Jedi Survivor is a worthy sequel to Fallen Order and ultimately surpasses it in many ways: For starters, Cal's arsenal of 3 lightsaber stances is upgraded with a blaster and the heavy Kylo Ren saber style. There is more of an open world approach to the level design with more subquests and exploration to be made in places that don't just look like the next section in a level, but that actually feel habitable by those weird alien creatures you meet - in particular the planet of Koboh is wide and exploration heavy. With the size of everything expanding the acrobatics Cal is required to do to traverse the world only become more insane and acrophobia inducing. There are even some massive scale boss battles, where the game's next gen console capabilities shine through. In this game you are not alone (with BD-1, that is) as you also get some companions in select levels. And one more thing: at times you even get to glide... ehm, you know what? Forget about the gliding. It feels like gliding is that thing Breath of the Wild made cool, that game devs started thinking would be cool to have in their games as well, but while the latest Pokemon entries copied it pretty well and Horizon Forbidden West did fine having it's excitement be a abit limited by the game just not being open world enough, Jedi Survivor's gliding boils down to being a semi-tedious trial-and error mini game where you watch Cal fall to his death numerous time before figuring out where you need to land or potentially what the accurate trajectory is, so you'll stick the landing by the end.Moving to the story: It's fine. My main issue with the first game was that even though Cal had the acting chops to back it up by being portrayed by Cameron Monaghan, the writers just went with a bland Luke Skywalker-esque personality for him and the more interesting part of him was peeling back the layers of his trauma that made him forget his jedi skills. His arc in the second game is fine and perhaps better than his first game's one as he is weighing his ambitions to take down the empire with his human needs and whether he won't lose sight of his humanity on his way towards toppling the empire. There is a new villain in town, who has a good backstory, but his limited involvement in the events at hand undermines him as a big bad, because we barely see him do things. There's just boss battles, which are fine, but aren't selling me the idea that he could crush the empire or even take down Vader himself. The new companion Bode Akuna is pretty good - perhaps the best character of the game. He is introduced as a Han Solo-esque gunslinger to compliment Cal, but there is a bit more to him. His story is pretty good, but it struck home with it's similarity to some other non-Star Wars game I learned to love last year.So yeah, in my eyes the game is pretty good. It expands on the concepts it introduced in the previous games and improves the series in many ways. But it struggles with a few performance issues and graphical blemishes I've seen covered better in other games on the PS5. I am however definitely looking forward to a third game, should it be in the pipeline.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor