Star Wars Jedi Survivor Review

Another unfinished Release

Time spent with the game: 35h, 1 playthrough on Ps5

Previous experience with the franchise: 2 playthroughs of Jedi Fallen Order

Who is it for:

Star Wars Fans, People looking for a mix of exploring with puzzles and combat

Who should avoid this game:

It’s a very well-rounded game but people that can't stand poorly optimized games

So yeah, right at the start, this game should not have been released in this state. And I am reviewing it a few months after its release. It definitely is playable, but if you are the type of player that is easily upset by bad performance (which is totally fair), you should avoid this game. And what’s really sad about this is that there would be a great game here if it was not released way too early.

Jedi Survivor starts a few years after the events of its predecessor and does what you would expect from a sequel. The world is bigger, you have more variety in combat, more side content, just more options in general. However, bigger is not always better. Let me explain.

Maps and exploring

So, although you could have described the maps in Jedi Fallen Order as semi-open world, they were still fairly linear, whereas here in Jedi Survivor you basically have a few pretty big open-world segments. Progression is still the same principle where you have a linear path to your main objective, but you surely can get lost in the world, exploring every corner.

I myself did not really like this change, as you can miss a lot of collectibles or upgrades. Obviously, if you are very thorough while exploring the map, this shouldn't be a problem, but it really stretches out your story progress.

Since you don’t have the ability to explore the whole map right from the beginning, just like in the first part of the franchise, you are missing certain tools that unlock with story progression. There is a lot of backtracking required. This is all a matter of perspective; I like if there is some backtracking involved. However, I think they overdid this here.

The old reliable holo map is here again to make exploration easier, as it always clearly shows what you can and what you cannot explore.

Star Wars Universe

By far the strongest point of this game is its overall Star Wars feeling. While you encounter multiple iconic enemies, you will also find some new ones.

The world-building and design are very authentic. Although some planets are way more interesting to explore and look at, they still all hold up and are lore-accurate.

I don’t think that any Star Wars fan will be disappointed in this regard.

Combat

There are certainly a lot more skills here and more options (which I won't spoil) in terms of combat. However, besides the bad performance, combat is my biggest criticism about this game. At around halfway through the game, most fights become a gank fest. You always fight multiple aggressive enemies while being shot at from three different directions. And since the core mechanics of the combat system are quite forgiving (parry windows are very generous, damage from normal enemies is quite low, etc.), it's not really more challenging; it's more annoying to fight.

While the game surely has its moments where combat shines, it's far from perfect and in comparison to other action games that have more focus on combat, Jedi Survivor doesn’t quite hold up.

Performance

Now this is where it gets really hairy. Performance is this game's greatest weakness. I played on a PS5 and besides pretty intense stutters, constant frame drops, especially in cutscenes where the frame rate sometimes would drop to around 20fps, flickering, popping, this game has it all. And even though I could see beyond all that, there are a lot of instances where your character glitches out while doing jumping puzzles or even in combat. This means not grappling onto ledges, not being able to wall run, etc. This really can break the immersion in a game.

On PC, this is all even worse; stay away from the PC port of this game at all costs. There are still people reporting broken cutscenes and audio bugs, and this can really break a game for most people.

What to expect:

Star Wars Jedi Survivor is a third-person action game, set in a very authentic Star Wars universe. While the main focus is on exploration with puzzles and combat, its biggest strength is the overall Star Wars feeling it delivers to fans. It is bigger in pretty much every aspect than its prequel, but definitely not better.

While a regular playthrough takes you from 30 to 40 hours, completionists can even expect up to 70h of gameplay.

The good:

Great execution of a Star Wars Universe
Interesting Characters, side, and main characters
A lot to explore
Quite a large variety in combat due to Jedi powers

The bad:

Loading screens are too long for the current gen

A bit too much focus on backtrack exploring
Mediocre story

The ugly:

In short: the performance

In more detail:

Pretty much everything that can go wrong with performance is here, frame drops, stutters, environment popping in when exploring the map, environment flickering in the distance. All in all, very bad optimized.

Also, some of the worst cameras I have experienced in an action game. Constantly losing lock-on for some reason, if you get too close to a wall, the camera can get inside your character and can’t see anything. There is sadly still a lot here that can break the game for you.

I really hope this will get fixed in later patches, but for now, it runs really poorly.