The sequel to Fallen Order continues its unexpected mix of Dark Souls and Uncharted, as the Star Wars Jedi saga continues…
It’s a terrible curse to be a Star Wars fan, to endure the roller-coaster of quality that goes from the nadir of The Rise Of Skywalker and The Mandalorian season 3 to the unexpected joys of The Mandalorian’s earlier seasons and the amazing Andor. By comparison, the video games have achieved nothing like the same highs and lows since Disney took over, they’ve just all been pretty good without ever being particularly exciting.
Star Wars Squadrons is probably EA’s best effort so far, but the Battlefront games were both fun, if unimaginative, diversions. 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was more ambitious, although even now the idea of mixing Dark Souls gameplay with Star Wars seems an odd combination. Fallen Order was never as difficult as that comparison implies but that was clearly the primary inspiration, along with Uncharted and Super Metroid.
The end result was a solid and enjoyable experience but one that suffered from some irritating level design contrivances, bland storytelling, and Force powers that were never quite as fun as other games with telekinesis (especially Control, which came out only a few months earlier). It was good but it could have been better, and that is exactly what Survivor sets out to be.
To be honest, the storytelling is still one of the weaker elements, with Survivor taking a peculiarly long time to set up any kind of clear goal or threat. You play as Cal Kestis, de facto Jedi Knight and charisma vacuum, who starts the game ineffectually trying to fight the Empire and then stumbles into a needlessly complex plot involving the High Republic era and an unreachable planet that may or may not be a safe haven for dissenters.
Although it’s a dozen hours before you have any real clue as to what’s going on, the plot isn’t quite as overegged as Fallen Order and, importantly, the character work is generally better. Cal and a lot of the leads have Aloy from Horizon syndrome, in that they’re deadly earnest and dull as dishwater, but many of the side ones are quite fun, including indestructible bounty hunter Rayvis and a number of comic relief aliens and droids. The repurposed battle droids are particularly funny, with their hapless comments ranging from absurdly unjustified confidence to fatalistic despair.
There’s little real depth to the characterisation or storytelling though and while there’s a faint attempt to mimic the more forthright portrayal of the Empire seen in Andor and The Bad Batch it amounts to little of substance. Although the game does better as it tackles the question of morality within the Jedi order, as Cal flirts with the dark side.
The core gameplay of Survivor is very similar to Fallen Order, so much so that you start the game with all the abilities Cal learnt by the end of the last game – rather than you starting from scratch in traditional Metroid style. That’s not the problem for accessibility it might sound, as the basics of combat are very simple: a single main button for swinging your lightsaber and pushing and pulling with the Force is on the left and right triggers.
There’s also a dodge, a parry, a bullet time meter that builds up, and dozens of special lightsaber moves for each of five stances, but these are either easily ignored at first or introduced later, once you have the hang of things. The parry, which lets you get in a free hit if you do it at just the right moment, is certainly optional as you can automatically block most attacks anyway, only having to dodge out of the way when an enemy flashes red.
Lightsaber combat is difficult to get right in any game because theoretically it should cut through anything and there are very few talented opponents in the galaxy, especially in this pre-A New Hope period. Survivor balances its compromises very well though, with a lot of enemies having staffs that can stand up to lightsabers, similar to the ones used by General Grievous’ guards in Revenge of the Sith.
There’s also a lot of heavily armoured droids and fauna, including everything from rancors to different variants of wampa. The idea is that you switch between one of two stances at any time, depending on whether you need to rely on quick attacks, working with a crowd, fighting another lightsaber user, or even using a blaster. You can switch your chosen two stances when you rest at the game’s equivalent of Dark Souls bonfires, where you can also unlock skill trees and assign perks.
The use of lightsabers is an improvement on Fallen Order and a new high watermark for laser swords in video games, with a really solid, satisfying heft to the action. As good as it is though, the Force powers still aren’t as much fun as Control, probably because Star Wars in general tends to use telekinesis in a less bombastic manner.
Survivor, like Fallen Order, is patchwork of ideas from other games, where the joins are very obvious. Much of the platforming is straight out of Uncharted, while it also includes a Metroid style grappling hook and Assassin’s Creed wall jumps. The puzzle-solving isn’t exactly The Legend Of Zelda but it is more involved than the action game norm, with the added bonus that you can tell the game to shut up and stop giving you hints every five seconds.
Everything in Survivor is that little bit better than you’d expect, to the point where you begin to forget that it doesn’t really have a single original idea of its own. However, we’re still not convinced that Star Wars x Dark Souls is a very sensible idea. The level design of a Soulslike, with its interconnected levels and secret shortcuts, is actually quite abstract and nonsensical if you analyse it, but it makes sense in context because of the games’ surreal, fantasy setting.
By being that little bit more grounded it all starts to seem rather contrived in a Star Wars setting, especially in a fictional world where anti-gravity devices and jetpacks are commonplace. Your new pal Bode has one of the latter and the game would probably be over in half the time if you just played as him. As it is you get him, and nightsister Merrin (basically a witch), helping you out in some of the levels, where you can direct them to attack specific enemies.
As well as brand new features, the game also sets about addressing all the complaints levelled at the original, with not just fast travel but also several different mounts you can use on different planets, some just for speed and others because of climbing abilities or other benefits. Together with the generally more coherent level design this makes backtracking far less of a chore than in Fallen Order.
What’s also new is the game’s more open world environments. There are several planets in the game but two of them in particular are quite large and non-linear. They’re not terribly imaginative in terms of biomes – a rock planet with a bit of jungle and a rock planet with a bit of desert – but there’s tons to see and do, including side quests, a near endless array of collectibles, and trial challenges that work something like Zelda: Breath Of The Wild shrines.
It’s going to take the average person something like 30 hours to complete the whole game and far more to see everything, which is very impressive given the size of the world(s) and the quality of the visuals.
There are some blind spots when it comes to the graphics, though, which while generally impressive aren’t very good at faces and come with some disappointing frame rate problems at certain points – as well as the inevitable promises of a day one patch. Some of the animation is a bit jagged too, with some odd choices, such as an overuse of the flip Luke does while training on Dagobah, that never stops looking silly.
Overall though this is a small but measurable improvement on the original. It’s far too beholden to its many inspirations to be considered a classic but is in itself a very solid and well-made game. It has the best lightsaber combat of any Star Wars game so far and while the Dark Souls-isms sometime seem weirdly out of place it also functions as a useful introduction to the Soulslike genre.
Taken as a whole, fans’ ideas for what the ideal Star Wars action adventure should be are as varied and contradictory as their thoughts on the franchise as a whole, but while we don’t think many would identify this as their dream Star Wars game it is certainly the best for a very long time.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review summary
In Short: A small but welcome improvement on Fallen Order, that offers little in the way of originality but does have some of the best lightsaber fights and Soulslite action this side of the Outer Rim.
Pros: Great combat system and a varied range of enemies. Lots of skills and collectibles to discover and some well-designed levels and open world areas. The battle droids are great.
Cons: Almost no original ideas of its own. The plot and most of the main characters still aren’t very interesting. Some graphical issues.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: EA
Developer: Respawn Entertainment
Release Date: 28th April 2023
Age Rating: 16
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