Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – PS5 review

Jedi Survivor is the sequel to the 2019 action adventure game Jedi Fallen Order. The game picks up 5 years after the original game as features the same style of play but with all new planets to explore.

I played on the PS5 version of the game so my experience does not reflect the game on how it performs across other systems.

Pro:

New combat stances.

One of the shortcomings of the original game was the lack of lightsaber combat options with it being either a single blade or double bladed lightsaber.

Now the game introduces 3 new styles in addition to bringing back the original 2 styles with each feeling very distinct and very fun to use making each style playing very differently from the others.

I personally used the new Blaster and Cross guard styles as they add new range options with the Blaster being able to hit enemies out of range of the Lightsaber throw or Force abilities.

New Force powers.

In addition to the new stances and movesets Cal also has access to new Force powers to expand the scope of combat.

In the new game all of Cal’s previous Force powers have returned at the start of the game with none needed to be unlocked after the tutorial.

The tutorial also sees the new Force power being the Jedi mind trick that is used to turn opponents to the player’s side during combat to turn the tables on ambushes by multiple opponents. The mind trick is also used in some dialogue scenes to influence how they will play out so it also has a narrative function and not just for combat.

Later on in the story the player unlocks the Slam and Lift Force powers allowing the use of mass crowd control in combat and can be upgraded with the skill trees to lift larger enemies. It’s also an easy way to clear out a group of enemies if you are fighting on a platform since you can lift them all then Force Push to shove them off the ledges.

Bigger planets.

While the original game didn’t have small environments by any means but the sequel easily passes the original with new planets not in the original that are not just vaster but have more underground layers greatly expanding the scale of the environment.

The game does have smaller planets that the player doesn’t revisit but the large scale planets they have are covered in many different biomes so they do not feel static or one note tone wise.

The player is also rewarded with Dark Souls style exploration as the distant structures you can see on the horizon are 9/10 times fully explorable with my favourite locations being what the player sees when they first land on Koboh after getting to the dam section of the map.

Voice acting.

Without going into spoilers all the main cast brings their A game for the sequel including the original cast from the first game and the new cast in this game.

They all give great performances whether they are playing humans or aliens, I just wish that the game had the option to rewatch the old cutscenes again as they are all a joy to experience.

More side content.

Rumour missions, bounty hunter missions, holotactics, aquarium and gardening

All of these are new to the sequel and greatly expand the scope of the game since there is always something to do on any planet and offers a lot more content that the original game did with side content.

The most substantial side quest is easily the bounty hunter storyline and would recommend all players to take part in it due to it having some of the best boss fights and rewards.

Cantina.

The new hub location for the new game features a cantina that is slowly upgraded through the course of the game and recruit more NPCs to serve as vendors or mini game hosts.

The NPCs also have their own short storylines so I recommend talking to all the NPCs over the course of the game so you can learn their backstory and see what happens to them during the game.

A pair of NPCs I recommend you find ASAP are the droid and human located near the barn on Koboh as they function as a jukebox in the cantina to play all the music tracks that you find while exploring or through the shops.

Fast travel.

Lacking from the first gam was fast travel making going for the Platinum a lot more tedious due to having to physically backtrack and walk to any place that you missed a collectible in.

Now the player can fast travel to any other meditation spot they have previously visited and the Mantis is available to fast travel to from any spot.

Customisation.

This game really goes above and beyond when it comes to the customisation of Cal and his lightsaber.

Every part of Cal’s outfit, his hair & beard, BD-1’s armour and Cal’s lightsaber can all be customised with parts either found in chests in the world or bought from one of the vendors on Koboh or Jedah.

So exploration is always rewarded with at least one new piece of cosmetic making so the player always has at least something worth while after all of the exploration and optional bosses littered across every planet.

Con:

Framerate.

This game cannot hold a steady frame rate either at 60fps in its “Performance mode” or 30fps in its “Quality mode” as both options had near constant drops during gameplay, exploration and even cutscenes.

Cutscenes themselves are also locked to 30fps even when playing on Performance mode with 60fps as the game will automatically switch over, so cutscenes seems very janky and slow.

The game also currently runs at a lower framerate and pixel count than the original game on PS4, so the game definitely needs to be patched heavily as that is pretty inexcusable since the prior game is nearly 5 years old game now and is on an older console generation.

Crashes.

During my playthrough I had 6 hard crashes and 2 softlocks and unfortunately due to the infrequence of checkpoints whenever I had a crash when exploring off the main path I would easily lose over 30 minutes+ of progress.

The area I had the most crashes on was Jedha so I would recommend any players to avoid doing sidequests and collectible gathering until more patches come out to help the game’s stability.

Late game health sponges.

By the end of the game since the player cannot upgrade their attack power (Besides a few minor perks) that enemies becomes damage sponges that take too long to finally take down with Cal’s lightsabers feels more like baseball bats since they bounce off enemies without doing actual damage.

Underdeveloped minigames.

While a fun distraction the Holotactics minigame is underdeveloped and lacking depth as it’s too easy to use one build and sweep all opponents.

The other main sidequest that also feels underdeveloped is the gardening as no thought needs to go into cultivating the garden in any way and instead you can just put down randomly with no real reward except a map update.

Exploration rewards.

Most of the optional treasure chests reward the player with an abundance of cosmetic options for Cal but due to the overabundance of them there is other little rewarding except lightsaber parts.

I would of preferred a wider range of rewards besides just cosmetic as the player doesn’t even unlock new lightsaber colours during the main game anymore with them now locked behind new game+ or new cosmetics for the Mantis and Cantina.

Saving.

Unfortunately one big gripe I had with the game is that you still cannot save at any place besides meditation spots, so whenever I would have a crash I would lose a lot of progress.

Conclusion:

A fantastic game that is unfortunately hampered by terrible performance and optimisation that still builds upon everything that was in the original game so it succeeds as a great sequel.

I was even on the PS5 version which was the best performing out of the consoles and PC but still had an over abundance of issues with the game.

When this game receives a few months of patches it will be one of the best Star Wars games available, but until then I only recommend this game if you can put up with constant frame drops and occasional crashes while being a Star Wars fan.

Score: 8.5