Star Wars Jedi: Survivor [2023]

• Scores

  IMDB: 92 Steam: “Mixed” CR: 76

I've been waiting.

[hyperlinks may contain spoilers and only need to be watched for ~20 seconds]

Survivor is the hotly anticipated sequel to the 2019 Dark Sou… I mean, Star Wars game: Fallen Order. While an improvement in nearly every way over the original in terms of raw gameplay, Survivor and developer, Respawn, haven’t seemed to figure out how to stop reminding us that we’re playing a videogame.

In Survivor you play as Cal Kestis [the same protagonist from the first game] as he sets off to get the gang back together, beat up some troopers, try to find the lost Jedi vacation world, and fall to his death over and over and over as he tries to jump ledges that are 6’ high. It’s a great time… if you can stop quite a lot of jank from getting in your way.

Overall, Survivor’s story is not only fine, it’s quite good. The plot itself is interesting, most of the characters are compelling and likeable, and very little of the dialogue feels either phoned in or like a chore to listen to. Also overall, the game’s combat is excellent. Fast, fun, and engaging, Survivor might be the best Jedi game ever released. As they say though, “the Sith is in the details,” and, oh my word is the dark side of the Force strong here.

From terrible animations during scripted cutscenes, to just plain stupid implementation of narrative elements, Survivor is a very fun game to play, but it constantly and incessantly reminds you that you’re playing a videogame. As I mentioned, its plot is actually quite good and mostly interesting, but the execution of that plot is so childish and phony that it loses any chance at having an impact. Characters are decidedly powerful… until they aren’t. Twists are not only obvious, but so poorly enacted that I was left saying, “What… Ok 🤣🙄” instead of, “No! 😯”. And the plot armor is so thick that it’s incredible anyone even has the strength to move around. Like 2022’s Andor, Survivor has really interesting themes and meaningful things to say. Unlike Andor, however, Survivor can’t quite find the voice with which to say them.

To buoy these criticisms, playing the game is [mostly] very fun. The core combat elements are refined and responsive, rarely leaving me feeling like I pressed a button and the game just didn’t do what I wanted. Survivor absolutely nails something that nearly every other game of this type fails at almost entirely: traversal. Cal’s base movement speed is fast without being out of control, climbing is the same way, and all the narratively unlocked skills [though mostly silly and logistically confusing] are fun to use and intuitive. Cosmetics are vastly improved over the original game and I found myself spending FAR more time than I should have customizing my saber, my self, and the bestest droid in the whole galaxy, my BD-1.

While these core play elements are excellent, they are not free of their drawbacks, however. Though mostly tight, Survivor’s combat is still not as honed as something like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or any of the Souls titles [which it’s clearly emulating]. Cal is very responsive to player inputs, but I found myself in many, many, frustrating situations where grapples and other attacks would teleport me into their grasp, only to instantly kill me and force me to restart the encounter. While fighting 1, 2, or even 3 enemies, the commands and systems really sing, but there are many instances where you fight several more opponents at once, and those feel more like flailing than they do actually fighting. The game features friendly fire, which can be quite a lot of fun in these larger fights… except when it decides that would be too convenient; then you have to fight 2 rancors and watch as they flap and fling their giant arms through one another’s bodies with no effect at all. Though I talked about how great the traversal was, there are other elements of the game where quality of life was clearly not considered.

You can fast-travel from set locations only, making the open-world setting feel more tedious than interesting towards the later sections of the game, when you just want to re-explore places you now have keys to enter. In the same vein, your in-game map displays things like missed chests, doors you can open, and areas you haven’t been to, but the fast travel map does not. So, when trying to go to a specific destination, you often have to consult the in-game [holo] map, then rest at the meditation point, select “fast travel” and remember what the name of your destination was… Rather than just allowing the player to teleport straight from their holomap. Cosmetics are equally annoying to use as some can only be applied in specific locations, while others can be accessed straight from the pause menu. Another area that is overall quite good, but frustrating at times, is the optional areas [Force Tears].

These are almost universally great! They come in two flavors: Combat and traversal. The combat ones either force you to use a specific style of fighting or pit you up against extremely dangerous foes in ways that the base game really shouldn’t [and doesn’t], while the traversal tears make you put to use all the mobility skills you’ve learned in fun and interesting ways. The issue with these comes when you have to retry them. Traversal tears restart you instantly [like… Hotline Miami instantly] which is great, while the combat ones… make you stare at Cal’s dead body, slowly load out of the fight, slowly watch him stand and up say an annoying one-liner, and then slowly load back in. With the intense difficulty of some of these optional fights you might have to go through this process 10, 20, even 30 times before you get it right and, let me tell you, if I have to hear Cal Kestis say, “I don’t think that did it, BD” one more time after getting magnet grappled, I’m calling the Empire and turning all of us in.

I won’t talk about the performance issues on PC as those have been harped on enough elsewhere. But know that they are very, very bad at times and entirely unacceptable from a game marketed at this price point.

Survivor is not a bad game… but it is just that: a GAME. There’s no real authenticity to it, no depth, no drama, no buy-in. It’s an experience that breaks its own rules just as often as it makes them up, leaving most actions, conversations, and events almost entirely meaningless and flat. The story works because the game forces it to work, but it always feels inorganic and coerced rather than natural or alive. Dial this all back two decades, and Survivor would have been an unforgettable experience. But, in the year 2023, we’ve had too much good storytelling over the last 10-years in games like The Last of Us and Detention for this “I’m a videogame so I can get away with nonsense” attitude to slide. While it does feature some of the more interesting and thoughtful accessibility functions I’ve seen in all of gaming, there are still too many small irritations to make the overall experience smooth and fluid. I found myself asking “why is this set up like that” way too many times when trying to do something simple or otherwise unimportant in a brand new videogame. We simply shouldn’t have to make basic, quality of life conciliations like this anymore.

If you like Star Wars, you’re going to absolutely love this game. If you like Sekiro or any of the Souls games, you’ll probably like this as well. If you liked Fallen Order, this game will be entirely faultless for you as it improves over that one in every way imaginable. I happen to love all of those things, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is excellent when it’s working, mostly disingenuous when it’s talking, at times incredibly frustrating, and already calling me back for new game+.

Look into the fire. It will warm you, keep you company. But left unchecked, it will consume everything, until there is only ash.