Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2023
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was an original, surprising and entertaining playthrough of recent times, review here. Successfully mixing Souls-like melee combat with modern Tomb Raider styled exploring and traversal elements from Titanfall 2.
Although all these elements blended together wonderfully, my personal skills at parrying in the combat is bad. Thus, I had to set the difficulty down to easy. However, I had a great time enjoying the Star Wars lore, characters and exploring the stunning environments.
Respawn Entertainment, of Call of Duty, Titanfall and Apex Legends fame, came back and gave us an ambitious sequel in the fall of 2023. Expanding massively in it's world size, character roster and gameplay elements. It's taken me a while getting through this one, but I can finally talk about what I think about it on completion.
Let's power up our lightsaber and take closer look!
I'm not a huge fan of the trend of making games too large, a result in sequels where the budget is higher and expectations are higher still. Often it feels like it's just for the sake of outclassing the previous entry. Funnily enough, the first few hours of Jedi Survivor made me think just that: it had gone too far in it's massive scope.
However, as I progressed I found it more manageable, backtracking to areas you had to leave behind earlier, is easier once you've unlocked more ways for Cal to traverse and interact with objects. Although it's seemingly wide open in large areas on each planet, it cleverly retains some of the linearity of Fallen Order in branches going out from the main large hub area of the largest maps. A welcome balance between freedom and restriction when required to progress.
Like Fallen Order, your team disposes a spaceship, allowing them to jump between planets. An essential part of the game's structure once you've passed a certain amount of story narrative, when the game allows you to explore by yourself. Provided you have the abilities and tools to do so. It's similar to the latest Tomb Raider survivor trilogy, with a Metroidvania styled progression system making backtracking fun and rewarding.
Movement echoes Titanfall 2, with double jumps, wall runs and speedy movement. While it's hardly realistic in any way, it just works smoothly and is highly entertaining when you get into a movement flow through areas with lots of platforming. Climbing and exploring feels distinctly inspired by modern Tomb Raider, requiring you to find hidden objects and reaching treasure boxes through planning your route to get to them.
Many of the main cast from Fallen Order return; Cameron Monaghan voices and lends his appearance to Cal Kestis, now with clothing and hairstyles to customise him more. Merrin returns as Cal's close friend, and maybe something more, but with a renewed and much cooler design! The sarcastic, but charming, pilot Greez returns too, as well as Jedi master Cere. A new companion, called Bode, makes a cool entry wearing a jetpack and offers some helpful gunfire from above in battles. Overall, there's a nice variety in the character designs, personalities and excellent voice acting.
Alongside the great Star Wars atmosphere, the game has a high production value on cinematics, effects and music to bring that movie magic from the franchise into the game. I really enjoyed the more personal depth they dive into with Cal and Merrin this time around.
You'll be happy to know that combat is vastly expanded upon if you're deep into the previous entry. There's a ton more moves and abilities to delve into, and they're properly categorised. Those wanting to focus on protection more than damage for instance, you'll find a whole ability tree for that, or if you want to learn new button combinations of special moves there's a lot to unlock in various combat trees within different fighting styles.
There are so many abilities that requiring them all will take hours, but for a single playthrough then choose wisely to suit your skills and what fighting style you prefer. Maybe you enjoy dual wielding lightsabers, or you prefer one single long lightsaber as a fightstick, or perhaps you enjoy wielding a lightsaber and a laser gun? It's up to you and how you prefer to attack.
Visually, it's very impressive considering the large free roaming areas, expanding on the style and scope of Fallen Order. They've nailed the Star Wars atheticetic perfectly and the lore allows for a lot of variation. Be it dusty planet surfaces and canyons, or natural elements like forests, lakes, swamps, all the way to high tech structures and spaceships.
With the performance mode now properly optimised, it wasn't very stable at launch, it's the way to play. There's a ray tracing alternative locked to 30fps, but now that the performance mode has been enhanced I felt it hardly made a visual difference. With this kind of fast movement and combat, 60fps makes the performance mode the preferred and responsive option.
There's keen eye for detail here outside of just vast outdoor areas; small hideouts like bars and shops have tons of minor detail, as do enemy bases and spaceship interiors. A neat contrast to the massive draw distances outdoors, which are expanded so much in size they require you to use animals to traverse them! Lots of lovely effects on display too, for shiny surfaces, weather and lighting, really giving it that 70s/80s sci-fi vibe we love about the movie franchise.
With a broader scope, tons of extra areas, stuff to unlock and side-missions, there's enough to keep any fan busy. For the less hardcore player, I found it super enjoyable just focusing on the story missions and setting the combat level to easy. Playing the story mainly, clocked me in at 20+ hours, so it's still a nice, lengthy campaign. You can easily triple that you you want to find all the secrets and dig deep into the combat.
The combination of cinematics and beautiful Star Wars visuals to enhance the story, with the gameplay combination of Souls, Titanfall and Tomb Raider make it still a unique experience like the first game. It's a little overwhelming at first, but keep in mind most inaccessible areas you pass, will be way easier to reach when you've gained more abilities. So relax, move on, and enjoy the backtracking at a later point!
If you're new to the series, I'd still recommend the first title over this one though. It's a little more linear with a smaller scope, perfectly manageable for newcomers. You can move on to this great sequel if you love the first game! That said, if you're a Fallen Order veteran, then you're in for a treat in Jedi Survivor!
