| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 5 | 9.40 |
| Overall | 9.40 |
|
The first Jedi game was a fun game with its souls inspired combat and Metroid like level design which felt a little rough around the edges. That’s ok, first games in series usually set up the groundwork and it’s the sequel where the kinks get ironed out and new ideas take the game to a new level. Jedi Survivor is one of those sequels, it is superior to the first game in every way, the aspects that needed work in the first have mostly been fixed. All new powers and a strong emphasis on exploring with great side quests really sets this game apart. By far what works best is the level design and how expertly created these large worlds are. In the last game traversal would be a pain, one way paths would block any backtracking and no fast travel made exploring a chore. All that is fixed here with almost every path opening a shortcut so that if you did do a platforming section you won’t have to do it again to navigate the world, plus fast travel points are smartly scattered around. Respawn decided to go for larger worlds but not in the big open world sense, there is more space but it’s so DENSE with activities everywhere. You don’t wander these worlds riding a space chicken desperately looking for content, the content is everywhere. Most of the time just getting to a new location is its own level of platforming and puzzles. This is Metroid quality design, it’s brilliant, I could not believe how much fun it was to explore every inch of these worlds. What you do in these levels is also fantastic. Cal starts the game with all of his powers from the first game, no depowering nonsense, so right off the bat there are plenty of force puzzles and traversal to do. That is just the very tip of a massive amount of new gameplay mechanics that expertly get fed out hour by hour. There is that perfect ebb and flow of going off the beaten path and doing story missions. While exploring one might discover an enemy base where a small mini story and quest kicks off. Something this well designed would be a story level in most games here it’s completely optional. When the story missions kick in, oh man do they go all out. There are some setpieces that would make God of War jealous. Moments where I was yelling out loud “is this really happening?!”. There are themed gameplay sections that sometimes actually last a little too long but hey I am always a fan of strong linear sections if the scenario keeps the encounters and levels interesting and this game does that. From a ancient Jedi temple filled with some deadly black energy that has to be manipulated to get around, to a sky canyon in the sky where you have to manipulate wind fans to get around; there is always something new to these story missions. As strong as those story missions are, to me the best stuff in this game was simply living in this world, interacting with the many NPCs and doing some fantastic side quests. It’s not like I went to town and specifically got told “go here and do this for quest”, for sure there is plenty of that but even as you simply open up sections of the map, quests just happen. One of my favorite moments was discovering a cave and falling into a trap, this cave is run by rogue lightsaber wielding bounty hunters. All of a sudden I’m trapped in a pen with a rancor and being taunted and shepherded through a various kill rooms by these guys until I finally overcome their traps and end in a three way battle. No one told me to go there, completely optional but it was so memorable, so well designed. The world is filled with moments like these. One of the big complaints of the first game was the rewards were not good enough for all the exploration. The cosmetic chests are still in and they are everywhere but properly labeled, they usually are simple to find, more of the “you reached this hard to reach ledge, here is a prize”. All the side quests and major discoveries in the world gives a reward that builds your character, mainly now by giving a full skill point which is needed for its robust skill tree which I still haven’t filled totally and really you aren’t meant to. Skill points, health and force upgrades, health tanks, droid hacks and map upgrades cover the significant upgrades you can find; it helps to feel Cal grow because of all the exploring and side content. Jedi Survivor has fewer planets than Fallen Order but they are larger worlds, well at least two of them are. There are two “hub” worlds with a central base and a much larger world to explore than the last game. One of my favorite things is the NPC hub that grows as you complete the story. In this game it comes in the form of a cantina, which begins as a dump that Mos eisley would be proud of but as you recruit NPCs from around the galaxy it becomes lively with loads of memorable characters and fun side activities. Far from a hive of scum and villainy, this cantina gets filled with generally good hearted but flawed characters. They not only interact with you, but as the story progresses they interact and learn from each other. This is basically all done with optional dialogue, you can skip all of it but I loved coming back after every story bit and seeing everyone grow. As you speak to them they open up more and more, as a star wars fan I loved hearing story from the regular folk that are usually under represented in this galaxy. From a famous DJ, to a mysterious smuggler, a bounty hunter, some prospectors and fortune tellers; there is a wide range of professions and aliens that populate this cantina. None are better than one of the best side quest characters ever put in a game, the legendary Skoova Steve. He is a small crustacean creature that you find around the world fishing. You slowly fill in a fish tank with these fishes you find around the world, that is a pointless cosmetic thing and is not really interesting, what is interesting though is the story you get every time you find a new fish. Skoova has a great Scottish accent and he tells a grand tale piece by piece. Seriously I need a Skoova Steve side game, I love hearing every part of his tale. Little things like that scattered all over make this game so memorable. I’ve been avoiding talking about the combat because it’s the part really holding back this game from all time great status. Yes there are more powers, more lightsaber stances, and it amounts to not really changing the core combat and its issues. This is an animation heavy, slow paced combat system that tries to be souls like but is missing some pretty basic things like invincibility frames with dodge. There is no canceling out of animations leading to many frustrating counters by enemies when I would have loved to dodge. The stagger meter returns and it’s as annoying as ever, making even the smallest of grunts tanky against a Jedi, you can can wail on an enemy blocking and slowly get that stagger bar down, finally getting an opening for a real damage hit but one second later the bar is back up at max. I get that they want a back and forth with parries and it’s fine for bosses but regular guys, so many regular guys take too long for a Jedi Knight to dispatch. Against the non sword wielding enemies Cal can use his entire arsenal to decimate them rather easily. The new force powers makes most groups pretty fun to fight as long as they aren’t filled with the stagger meter melee guys. Cal can now lift and slam enemies, he has much more powerful pull and push abilities which can be upgraded to even push giant enemies. There is mind tricks which can turn enemies on each other, very useful at times. My favorite is a force pull that lets you float an enemy with a gun and use them to fire on other enemies. When Cal can take down huge groups of enemies with the force and nifty lightsaber moves the combat sings, but almost always it gets bogged down to the melee combat enemies which require skill and is difficult but still not as elegant as any souls game. Lightsaber stances got a massive overhaul with three new ones, including one with a blaster which is pretty cool. The other two new ones is dual lightsaber stance and crossguard saber which is like a heavy stance. All stances have deep skill trees, so much so that the game expects you to pick a few favorites and focus on that rather than be a jack of all trades. Part of the reason for this is the strange limit on stances the player can have at a time, only two can be chosen at any time, switching them out can only be done at spawn points. This is so limiting, I don’t get why we can’t have a weapon wheel. I did nearly max all of them and found they all have used in different situations. Blasters are great to get stuns and damage through a stagger enemy. Double blade mows through junk mobs. Crossguard is very slow but heavy damage, good against slow 1 on one enemies. They have the right idea but I feel they could have really made more enemy types that make better use of each stance if every stance could be used at all times. The boss battles is where I don’t mind the stagger bar, it’s a boss, it’s supposed to be difficult to fight. Most of the bosses are of course against other force lightsaber users and they have a variety of patterns to learn and exploit. Most of them I thought were fun to figure out, mix and match different stances to see what works best. I don’t think they got that much better than the last game, it’s mostly more of the same. There is one boss in particular though that is a huge outlier, a massive spike in difficulty. Now story wise it makes sense… still they expect you to “defeat” this boss and it took me well over an hour and countless retries, brutal. I went from loving it to wanting to skip it and that’s a shame. If it was all skill, like a souls boss where I feel I’m the one holding me back I can learn, this just felt like all the worst aspects of locked in animations and bad dodging causing some annoying moments. It’s a big shame that Jedi Survivor was released in a buggy state that got plenty of attention and lowered scores from many sites, as it should. There are all kinds of odd bugs, and I didn’t get the worst of it which are game breaking bugs and crashes. For me I lost access to building a rooftop garden at the cantina. This is a pointless side quest but still I like to 100% games and now I can’t because the key NPC that manages the garden won’t talk to me. There were times where my blaster in blaster stance stops charging, only getting fixed by resetting the save. It is a janky game, it covers the game like a small film. It’s not really bad jank, but it ain’t polished, I died quite a bit in platforming sections cause of strange physics that done make sense. These things don’t hurt MY enjoyment of a game as long as it’s playable and it’s mostly playable but if glitches and occasional crashes are a no go then it’s best to wait. Those two aspects really do hold the game back because the design and content within it is so good. There is entire optional bounty quest line, where bounty hunters will hunt you but you can turn the game on them and get bounties on them. Some of these quests are basic go there kill guy. When I got to a head boss bounty an entire level was changed, him and his entire crew set traps for me, all of a sudden I was in a massive battle in a rescued area but it felt totally new because of this side quest. Oh and there are Jedi temples which act like shrines in BOTW do, these are mini dungeons with a few puzzles to solve and these puzzles are really good. I wish there were more but what’s there serves as a great diversion. Also scattered around the world are force challenges, in the last game these were just combat challenges but here there are platforming challenges which shows how much more complex the platforming gets, it almost feels like a ratchet and clank game as you all these gadgets and powers. It’s a game of constant surprises and fun activities to do all over. Jedi Survivor picks up a few years after Fallen Order, the crew is scattered, Cal is working for a rebel cell and of course events happen that being the group back together. The story is very well done, Cal gets his Empire chapter as he is tested in ways he wasn’t in the last game. The core team all feel like a family and it comes through how much they love each other by the great voice acting. The weakest part is the villain and his backstory, he never is that interesting and his story is kind of disconnected with the state of the current galaxy. By the end there are some twists and turns that will make anyone’s head spin, I don’t know if it was all executed well but at least it kept me engaged. It’s not the greatest SW story told in a game but it’s very good and the presentation is top notch. Graphically this game is beautiful… and it can be a slide show. On a PS5 there is performance and quality mode, normally performance gives a solid 60fps with less resolution. In this game you get an often well under 60fps with less resolution so uhhh why would I pick that. So I chose quality which was mostly a 30 fps experience at a good resolution. When in the bigger open spaces the frame rate tanks but in inside the levels it’s steady. Still this game is BEAUTIFUL! There are vistas that had my mouth agape, every area is so detailed. The music is absolutely top notch, this is what is expected from AAA gaming and sadly so are glitches and first day patches… so close. Jedi Survivor is my favorite Star Wars game since KOTOR. It’s the action adventure style I adore, the kind level design that makes me giddy with excitement. The variety that keeps me enthralled for hours. If this game had a better combat system, which takes up such a big part of the play time, it would be one of my all time favorites. I want to score this game higher, it has so much of what I love about gaming but I can’t over look some of the technical issues and how much improvement can be done on the combat side. If this game had God of War level combat, it’s a 10, it’s a better designed game than God of War but the combat is like an anchor holding it all back. If you love action adventure games this is one of the best in recent years but it might be best to wait for the patches to clean it up. |
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Posted by Dvader Fri, 26 May 2023 04:33:06
Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:24:40
I’m on the third planet and really enjoying this. I like how it feels like both an open world and sort of linear at the same time. Theres really no handholding in this game. Sometimes you really need to think to figure out how to progress. Love it, but just wish I could sink more than about forty five minutes into it each day.
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