‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ review: A big improvement on an already really good game

Back in 2019, Electronic Arts did something few thought possible: It released a genuinely very good Star Wars video game.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was a pleasant surprise for both fans of Star Wars and fans of action-adventure games. Its Metroid-inspired exploration and Dark Souls-inspired combat meshed together with a story that I’d wager is a lot better than certain Disney projects like Rise of Skywalker, though that’s not admittedly not a high bar. 

Three years later, the sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is here. While it’s not a total reinvention of what came before, this is a smartly iterative sequel that makes changes in all the right places. Moreover, it’s just fun to hang out with my guy Cal Kestis and his ragtag bunch of space outlaws again.

Here is how Jedi: Survivor improves upon its predecessor.

You gotta have a dark middle chapter

The Empire Strikes Back is one of the most well-known examples of a trilogy having a “dark middle chapter,” and for good reason. It’s obviously a fantastic movie that expands the universe the original Star Wars established, while leaving its beloved characters in a pretty messed up place that had audiences hankering for more.

Jedi: Survivor isn’t as monumental an accomplishment as that film was, but it follows in Empire’s footsteps tonally. A few years after Cal and his buddies (former Jedi master Cere Junda, starship pilot Greez, and goth witch Merrin) successfully destroyed a document full of the names of force-sensitive kids, our red-haired protagonist continues to be a thorn in the Empire’s side. A heist on Coruscant goes wrong and Cal finds himself temporarily stranded on the backwater planet Koboh, which coincidentally might hold the key to finding permanent sanctuary for those who are oppressed by the Empire.

The yarn that unfurls from there is sometimes typical planet-hopping, swashbuckling Star Wars stuff, but that’s fine. Cal continues to be a compelling hero, a former child soldier who finds himself conflicted about his role in the uprising against the Empire and his relationship with the Dark Side of the Force. The development of his relationships with Cere, Greez, and Merrin is believable, and just like last time around, you’ll find yourself really wanting these people to not only survive, but thrive.

But unlike Fallen Order, this is a game that isn’t afraid to introduce tragedy into the mix. Bad things happen to good people because that’s what happens in war. The antagonists have real motivations beyond just cackling and shooting lightning out of their hands. Ultimately, difficult sacrifices have to be made to ensure the greater good.

Considering how often modern Star Wars media feels like a delivery mechanism for character cameos and little else, it’s just nice that this story has a little meat on the bone.

Bye-bye, backtracking

Credit: Electronic Arts/Lucasfilm

Jedi: Survivor’s world design is also a big step up from the last game. Fallen Order’s worlds were mostly linear, with some side paths to explore and certain areas you couldn’t access until you got abilities later on, a la Metroid. However, backtracking was a chore due to a lack of fast-travel, respawning enemies, and inconsistently placed shortcuts.

While enemies still respawn every time Cal heals at a meditation point, everything else about exploration is more friendly this time around. There are fewer planets to explore, but the ones we get are much larger and more open-ended than before. Koboh, in particular, is a mini-open-world with a staggering amount of stuff to do that has nothing to do with the main story. 

Fast travel, better shortcut placement, and rideable mounts make getting around a breeze. If you get a power that can open up a door you remember seeing several hours earlier, chances are you just need to fast travel and walk like 30 yards to get back to it. 

What’s better is that side quests generally consist of unique areas and even sometimes bosses that all feel hand-crafted instead of just slapped together for the sake of adding content. There are real gameplay benefits to completing them, as well, but I’ll leave those for you to discover.

Stanced up

I hope you like laser swords.
Credit: Electronic Arts/Lucasfilm

Cal’s previous adventure was relatively simple, combat-wise. There was an array of lightsaber moves and some basic force powers, of course, but there wasn’t a ton of variance in how the player could customize Cal’s battle prowess. This is another thing that Jedi: Survivor massively improves upon.

Over the course of the game, Cal gains access to five different combat stances, which range from the traditional single lightsaber stance to one that involves both a lightsaber and a blaster. That one is great and carried me through most of the game; it’s just fun to roll up on a group of stormtroopers or droids and pick off several of them with gunshots before they can respond.

Cal can equip two stances at a time and switch between them freely, depending on the situation. There’s also a wider variety of force powers, like the ability to lift and slam opponents as well as use Jedi mind tricks to temporarily make them fight on your side. This is still a very similar game to Jedi: Fallen Order in the grand scheme of things, but all of these new combat abilities make it a much more exciting, dynamic game to play at times.

Oh, and sometimes you even get a homie who fights with you and can stun enemies on command. That stuff rocks.

It’s not all great, though

The game looks great, but performance is another story.
Credit: Electronic Arts/Lucasfilm

Unfortunately, just like Jedi: Fallen Order, this mostly improved follow-up has a couple of noteworthy problems that are worth discussing. 

First and foremost is that, at least on PlayStation 5, the game just doesn’t run very well in the game’s “performance mode.” A “day 0” patch released just prior to launch promised to fix the issue, but the open-world section of Koboh was still pretty choppy to run around in. The more sectioned-off and linear areas are generally fine, but any kind of open expanse is just asking for trouble, in my experience.

On a broader level, there’s also the fact that Jedi: Survivor isn’t capable of surprise in the same way Jedi: Fallen Order was. That game felt like such a wild-card that I almost breathed a sigh of relief when it came out and was actually good. Star Wars games have a very spotty history, especially in recent years. 

Now, there are legit expectations for Jedi: Survivor, and while the game meets them, it doesn’t really exceed them. It’s full of little changes that make it a more enjoyable and deeper experience, but there is an aura of “more of the same” here. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect more than that.

Still, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is absolutely a worthy successor to a very good game that you should 100 percent play if you enjoyed Jedi: Fallen Order even a little bit. It ain’t quite Andor, but Jedi: Survivor is one of the better Star Wars experiences you can pay for right now.