Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order, a game I played on the old and crusty PS4. I didn’t hate it, but for some reason, my PS4 suffered from serious stuttering during play, which killed a lot of the enjoyment. Beyond that, when the game ran okay, I wasn’t too impressed with it, but as I said, I didn’t hate it. However, it felt way too gamey for the setting, since I have always considered Star Wars fairly grounded for being fantasy in space. Fallen Order is a little too much anime for my liking, and in combination with the Dark Souls mechanics, it transformed the gameplay into an arcade experience. So, how does Survivor compare?
Anime hell
Well, that anime feeling of everything being over the top remains. Eat your heart out Luke, Cal the force God is here. It’s funny because lore wise Luke is considered the master within the Star Wars universe, but it should have been Cal all along because his skills are far beyond anything Luke did on the silver screen. Yes, I understand this is a game, but why must it be so much of a power fantasy? It wrecks the lore continuum since the story from what I understand is played as something serious, while still maintaining the excessive superhero anime stuff. These games are supposed to exist within the same universe, right? Because there are characters from the movies in here. Oh well, what I wouldn’t give for something more low-key, maybe something squad-based, or why not a Knights of the Old Republic 3? Alas.
This is not all that breaks the immersion for me, however. The world is designed in such a way that the only way to get anywhere is by doing parkour, which makes me wonder how normal people and troopers get around. When you have a companion with you, it turns out they get a jetpack to able to follow you, and you might think that’s a nifty way to explain how those people get around at least. But then you got to ask yourself why Cal isn’t equipped with one. It becomes a bit silly – having you run around on the ground, constantly forced to do death-defying jumps to get anywhere, while these assholes just fly around with no issues. Come on game!
Looting as in the first game is restricted to cosmetics only. You can find cosmetics for your little droid, the light saber, and stuff for Cal. This makes it pretty boring to explore, unfortunately. I like playing dress-up as much as the next guy, but you got to give me something more than just a visual upgrade. If that is not enough – to continue on the same theme of immersion here, is that this aspect of the game shatters the immersion even further way past repair. You see, these boxes you find scattered all over the place can contain haircuts and beards. Yes, you collect beards. It’s really funny what you find out there in the wilderness. Why did some random alien decide to store a beard on top of this cliff you may ask, well, I have no answer to give, but when I found my first beard in a box, I had a good laugh. It’s just so goddamn silly!
Open-word fatigue
If that wasn’t enough, yes, these three hours of playing sure were fruitful – the first hub world you visit turns into a semi-open world location. Oh, joy. This combined with re-spawning enemies makes me feel so sleepy. The closest comparison I can make is to Dragon Age: Inquisition, which at times felt like a single-player game trapped in an MMO with its gigantic self-contained map sectors. It’s probably not as bad as that game, but it’s another notch on the already-wrecked belt.
All in all, I’m not impressed. It’s more of the same, but now with an expanded and artificial game world, with arcadey gameplay such as platforming, and Dark Souls mechanics that has me personally fatigued. I’m not even sure I want to play it anymore, it’s exhausting just thinking about it! Anyway, that was my first impression. Until next time!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 