Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

In other words, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game that’s an absolute joy to play. Exploring these worlds, slicing through enemies, customizing how Cal looks, uncovering the game’s lore: it’s all done perfectly here, in a way that should appeal to anyone, regardless of their familiarity with Star Wars itself (though being a fan probably helps). There are minor flaws, to be sure, but they’re so minor, they feel like nitpicking. In a year that’s already featured some outstanding games, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still manages to stand out.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game that, despite a few launch bugs and inconsistent jumps, genuinely delivers an engaging experience for fans. The level design and personalization options for both combat and character appearances are definite highlights. It’s an adventure that lets you explore new corners of the Star Wars universe while building on the foundations laid by Fallen Order and tells another excellent tale of a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor does what any successful sequel should do: it expands on the foundations of the first game and does everything better. Combat is just as enjoyable and offers more options, exploration is on a whole other level, and the Metroidvania elements make for engaging puzzles and satisfying rewards. Easily one of the best Star Wars games ever made, it hands 2023 yet another crowning highlight.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a very good Star Wars adventure with strong characters, varied locations but somewhat fickle technology.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a textbook example of what a sequel should be. Bigger, better and flashier than its predecessor. The action will titillate any gaming Star Wars-fan and so will the excellent (Star Wars) story. Yet the enthralling Jedi fantasy this game offers is sometimes bogged down by lackluster performance.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order built a solid foundation on which to build a sequel, and Respawn Entertainment has happily obliged. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor takes what worked in that first game and expands it significantly. It’s bigger, grander and more ambitious, with a few trade-offs.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor does so much right in continuing Cal Kestis' story, delivering the best lightsaber combat in a game to date along with some huge environments to explore. Sadly it's also launching with a bevy of technical issues and frame-rate problems that will provide the worst experience for early adopters. Players deserve better.

I love this particular game series and Jedi Survivor is no less. In my opinion it improves the previous game in almost every aspect. The gameplay is fun and engaging and there are many new things added compared to Fallen Order. More lightsaber stances, more skills, perks, new enemy types and more customization options. Combat feels deeper this time. Riding animals was a really cool addition and I enjoyed that a lot. I do wish they added vehicles like speeders in the open world instead of just one controlled sequence. The Holotactics minigame was also a great addition. The graphics and game worlds are absolutely amazing and gorgeous. Koboh in particular is a beautiful planet and exploring it felt great. Characters, voice acting and performances are phenomenal just like in the previous game. I also liked the character development and the relationships that develop during the story. The story itself may not be as strong as Fallen Order in my opinion, but it is still good and worth experiencing. I spent more than 40 hours in the game and completed the platinum and a 100 percent run. Collecting everything can become a bit tedious sometimes, especially when hunting the last collectibles, but overall the experience was still very enjoyable. There are some things I did not like though. The game only saving at meditation points is a bad gameplay design choice in my opinion. There are not enough meditation points in some areas and if you die you sometimes have to run all the way again which gets frustrating. Changing lightsaber stance only at a meditation point is also a ridiculous design decision. Players should be able to switch stances whenever they want. Another thing I really disliked were some of the platforming Force Tears. Some of those were extremely frustrating if you are going for the platinum. The zipline challenge in particular tested my patience a lot. These kinds of platforming challenges feel unnecessary in an otherwise great action game. The enemies are good overall but they could have been more formidable. The holomap and the way it shows collectibles could also have been better. Things like priorite shards and other treasures could have been indicated more clearly. Loading time is still quite long and the starting logos cannot be skipped. Respawn loading also takes longer than it should. I also experienced a few minor glitches and a couple of crashes, but nothing too serious. Overall this is still an amazing game with some issues. I had a fantastic time with it and this series remains one of my favorites. I hope the next game improves loading time, holomap clarity, saving options and avoids frustrating platforming challenges like those Force Tears.

The lack of being able to customize Cal into your own jedi (even though he's a character a part of a story) to me is a missed opportunity. And I wish there was more of a post-game and interesting planets to travel to. But the overall game (as far as jedi games goes), the lightsaber-usage, stances, abilities, adventure and overall story is as good and gripping as it gets. It's story is as good as any SW movie that's come out tbh (just watching it). The game leaves something to be desired after you finish it. In fact, I very rarely go back to it because there's nothing to go back to. But it's one hell of an adventure-skyrim-esk game when you're in the midst of it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This **** doesn’t know what it wants to be—whether it’s a new Uncharted or a Dark Souls. It fails by trying to do everything at once; the only positives are the story and the fact that you’re a Jedi. The rest is garbage.

Great graphics and improved performance with the latest patches, especially on PS5 Pro. Unfortunately, that's not enough to give it a high rating due to the terrible game design. The further you get into the game, the more it feels like a massive puzzle game rather than a Star Wars-based action title. It's a constant struggle to figure out how to progress, with one puzzle after another that seriously disrupt the game’s pacing. I can't spend an hour on every section just trying to figure out how to move forward on what should be a simple path, all because the game design is needlessly unintuitive. A huge missed opportunity — what a shame.