The Return of the Jedi!

“Look, the Order’s gone, it’s time to leave it behind. And I know what I want now.”

The next Star Wars game has arrived in the marathon, Jedi Survivor, the followup to Fallen Order! I quite enjoyed my time with Fallen Order, it had its problems sure, but overall it was a fantastic game, and it was really cool seeing how it all tied into the universe that I grew to love. Despite that though, I was a little wary getting into Survivor. It’s not that I thought it would be bad, I was just nervous Fallen Order was a one off hit considering EA was behind it. At first, I thought these fears were justified, but the more I played, the more the game started to open up, and I suddenly found myself unable to put it down.

Five years have passed since the events of Fallen Order, and the crew of the Mantis have long split up since then. Greeze went off to start a Catina business, Cere went off looking for forgotten knowledge about the Jedi, Merrin set off to explore the galaxy, and Cal formed his own ragtag crew to try and stop the Empire. Things seem to be looking up for Cal until a job suddenly goes wrong and most of his team ends up dead. Lost on what to do, Cal heads back to reconnect with Greez to help repair his ship, and ends up releasing another Jedi survivor known as Dagan Gera. This turns out to be a mistake however as Dagan Gera has grown to despise the Jedi Order, believing himself to be betrayed by them, and sets off to a place called Koboh, a supposed safe haven from the Empire, and wants to use it to assert his rule. Now it’s up to Cal to put a stop to Dagan and bring the galaxy to peace once again. At first, I kinda hated this plot, it felt too disconnected and Dagan barely had a presence, kinda just appearing at random for a boss fight before disappearing from the narrative. It’s not a good first impression at all, and it’s one of my biggest criticisms for the game, it does a horrible job of dragging you in at first! It’s only later on when the plot actually picks back up, as we get more and more introduced to other characters, and the plot starts to finally get a better structure. The finale especially is fantastic, it feels so much better than Fallen Order by the end, and it only made me wish the game was like this story wise from the start, it’s so frustrating that it wasn't! I loved seeing how the former Mantis crew had to evolve since the events of Fallen Order, I loved seeing what they were up to now, I adore these characters a lot after all! I find that Survivor expands the Star Wars universe incredibly well, there’s less planets this time, but only one is a returning planet, the rest are new ones for the series, so we get to actually see more of the galaxy instead of exploring a lot of returning ones instead. The fanservice is pretty great here too, there's a ton of returning enemies I didn’t expect to show up here, and they’re used super well, it was incredibly cool seeing characters like the Separatist droids again, and some of the side quests feel like clear love letters to the series, it was hard not to have a smile on my face each time I beat one! The gameplay makes up for this too, this game feels like such a fantastic follow up to the 1st one it was so hard to stop playing it!

If you’ve played Fallen Order, you should be able to adjust to the combat here pretty easily. Cal keeps a good majority of his moveset from the 1st game, and you have a  good majority unlocked from the start, so it’s pretty easy to get yourself back into the groove again. Parrying still feels as great as ever, platforming is a lot smoother this time, with Cal traveling across surfaces a lot faster, it’s more of Fallen Order, and considering how fun that game is I’m not complaining that it’s back here. Of course, it’s not all the same here, there's a bunch of new mechanics that Fallen Order didn’t have here, and this is where I start to get a tad mixed on stuff. To get the good out of the way, I really adore the new stance system here. If you recall from the first game, you could get different lightsaber type that changed how you approached each situation. That returns here, but there’s a lot more the game has this time, such as the Crossguard stance and the Blaster stance. Blaster stance was my least favorite, it gives Cal a gun that you refill its ammo for by hitting enemies with the saber, and it just feels kinda bad to use. I couldn’t really find much use for it in any combat situation, and I ended up neglecting it most of the game because of it. Crossguard is my personal favorite, it’s basically Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, exchanging speed and dexterity for strength. The blade is slow as hell to swing, but it destroys enemies guards like its nothing and can shred any opposition if utilized correctly. It was incredibly fun slaughtering entire enemies with it, making me feel like a Sith lord taking down a Jedi army, Jedi Survivor really nails that power fantasy Star Wars can give you, and the combat being as fun as it is helped a ton! Force powers also get a few changes here, and like lightsabers, this is also where I’m a tad mixed! The returning push and pull are still fantastic to use here, no complaints on that, but we also have two new ones with lift and slam. These ones are fantastic, even if you get them a tad late, and it’s incredibly cathartic lifting an enemy up into the air and slamming them down at full speed, killing them instantly. I got a ton of uses out of slam especially, for a lot of enemies you can just kill them in one shot after you slam them, and it’s incredibly satisfying slamming down a whole bunch of enemies at once, making armies feel like in the face of your power. My issue comes from how slow is utilized here. Instead of being a power you can utilize whenever, it’s now been relegated to an ultimate attack, used only once when the bar is full, and it makes slow feel near useless. Enemies break out slowly after one hit, and since it’s not free use, it’s really only useful getting one hit on some enemies sometimes, instead of utilizing force power to get multiple hits on someone. It just feels like such a weird step backwards, and it makes what was originally a useful power feel just useless. There’s a new perk system as well, and it just feels super underutilized. You can go the entire game not using them, and they feel like a massively undercooked part of the gameplay loop. Then there’s the structure of the game itself.

Jedi Survivor decides to change up how levels are formatted here, where instead of being a couple decently sized planets that mix linearity with openness, you instead have two giant sized open world planets, and a few smaller, linear based ones. In regular gameplay, this is fine, there’s still a ton of exploration to do, and secrets are plenty, with each planet feeling properly distinct from one another. It’s the side content where things start to take a problem here, as Jedi Survivor feels a lot like the worst of an open world. There are so many collectibles to nab here, too many honestly, and it makes gathering them feel like an utter chore. You got plant seeds, health and force upgrades, skill points, perks, data guides, Jedi Temples, Force Tears, it’s so MANY and clearing out each area takes an agonizingly long time to do! So many of these collectibles feel like they were just added for the sake of it, and while Fallen Order could get into that territory a little bit, it wasn't overpopulated with them, there was just the right amount to where collecting it all felt satisfying. Here it feels like a Ubisoft game, bloating the game for the sake of it in order to drive up game length, and it made areas feel so repetitive to run through during post game! I just got super burnt out, and I opted to just get the achievements instead of everything by the end, I just couldn’t take finding the same collectibles over and over again to drive a number up. This game is also an unoptimized buggy mess. I always play PC versions of games, it just usually gives me the best results, and it’s always fun messing with mods after, I prefer it for a reason, but Jedi Survivor is horrifyingly buggy on PC. I started the game and got a crash 10 minutes in due to a major memory leak issue that had me changing settings on my PC IN ORDER TO FIX??? EXCUSE ME??? This never solved it either, after a few hours of playing the game will just stutter like crazy before crashing due to lack of memory. It's terrible! I also just got a baffling amount of glitches here, too many honestly, and while they were funny, it blows my mind that a game was allowed to be released in a state like this. Shoutouts to the amazing flying [Stormtroopers](https://x.com/TerraRose87/status/2035067492549206217?s=20)! Why the hell did they do this! It drags so much of the game down, and while they were in Fallen Order, it never got to this point! The game’s been out for years too, it baffles me none of this has been fixed, I hate EA!!!

Overall, I enjoyed my time immensely with Jedi Survivor, and while a lot of stuff can feel pretty undercooked, the gameplay loop more than makes up for it, and I really loved playing through this. It takes so many steps in the right direction for this franchise, and I grew to love these characters even more than I have before, it was incredible seeing them all back again. It’s a shame the game is as buggy as it is, it’s the one big thing I think really holds this game back, and I hope the upcoming third game fixes these technical issues. Still though, I’m glad I finally got a reason to play this, and I can’t wait to keep continuing this Star Wars journey!