Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Is A Very Good, Total Mess Of A Game…Somehow

What a strange game this is. Despite having an interesting, massive open world, good characters, decent gameplay, and a passable story, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a broken, almost unplayable mess.

This is what happens when EA gets a small taste of success in a Star Wars game.

To the great sadness of myself and many other gamers, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a huge, sprawling, God of War-like open-world adventure that features some really interesting characters, gameplay, visuals, and items…yet is plagued by game-breaking bugs and framerate issues.

Simply put, I don’t know how EA still rakes in really $7B/year as they are either making half-assed, cookie-cutter sports games that are essentially the same as their 8-year-old predecessors, or they are ruining intriguing IPs and the studios behind them by forcing the studios to crank out the game unpolished, unfinished, and with really bad ports. And that’s the story of Jedi: Survivor in a nutshell.

I don’t want to spoil the game for those who haven’t played it yet, so I won’t get into direct spoilers, but the general storytelling and character development is solid. Yeah, it’s not as good as the predecessor game, Jedi: Fallen Order mainly because it deals with the same issues that plague most game sequels: the nuance and freshness of the characters has worn off, and the storytelling becomes more saturated.

Jedi: Fallen Order was our initial introduction to Cal Kestis, Merrin, Cere, Greez, BD-1, Trilla Suduri (the Second Sister), Cal’s new force powers (ex: Force Echo, Psychometry), and another detailed look into the events of Order 66 and how the Empire has ruled the outer rim/forgotten planets of the galaxy, so it’s only natural that most people (including myself)became so strongly attached to this game and prefer it’s storytelling, character takes, explorable places, etc. over Survivor’s.

Even if the main plot of Fallen Order was almost a carbon copy of the Holocron Heist plot in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but rather the Jedi version of it.

Still, with the early parts of the game I was actually able to play (I’ll get more into that in a second) and reading/watching the rest of the plot, I actually liked Survivor’s story structure and resolution more than Fallen Order’s.

Aside from the rather boring McGuffin compass (most stories have a McGuffin in some form or another, but this one really could have done without the compass altogether and just focused on reaching “the place” as the McGuffin), the competing factions looking for the compass (the purpose of it I’ll leave ambiguous for those who haven’t played the game yet) was really well done.

Sure, some of the early twists were rather obvious, but the backstory and motivations behind said twists were really well written and executed. It made the twists that much more meaningful and nuanced, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever said about an EA game.

Nevertheless, I also liked the more rugged, darker version of Cal Kestis as his balance between the light and the dark side in handling the events that happen to him and the Mantis Crew during the game was fantastic character growth and development.

And, much to my much delight, the relationship between Cal and Merrin was definitely “explored” (you’ll see what I mean when you play the game) more in this game, which was a brilliant (if obvious) choice by EA and developer Respawn Entertainment as Merrin is an amazing character.

Oh, and the lore exploration of the High Republic was really cool. Again, I’m not going to get too detailed about the characters, locations, place, etc. related to the High Republic, but the era (essentially 500-100 years prior to A New Hope) was always one of my favorites times in the Star Wars lore and I’m glad it’s finally getting explored.

And, as for the gameplay itself, it’s pretty much the same as Jedi: Fallen Order.

That’s not inherently a bad thing as it has strong God of War vibes and has an expansive, intricate map featuring all sorts of unique items, characters, side missions, bounty hunter fights, legendary bosses (similar to God of War Ragnarök) etc., but some of the wonky combat situations and environment puzzles (ex: finding the right ledges to climb, platform jumping, running across the right wall, etc.) could have been phased out.

Maybe it’s just my taste, but I’d rather not have to climb up 50 walls and then use my lightsaber to cut solve 20 environment puzzles before reaching an important character/level. More ledges, walls, and cliffs to climb and traverse doesn’t always translate into a better game.

Okay, with all of this gushing praise out of the way, this game is utterly unplayable on PC…which is how I played this game.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I have a good but older PC and I didn’t expect the framerate to be a perfect 60 FPS everywhere I went, but my PC was barley clocking in 10 FPS on planets like Coruscant and Koboh (don’t worry, these are early game planets).

And, to top it all off, when the framerate would marginally improve, such as in cutscenes, there would be graphical bugs and glitches as the characters would freeze, their clothes would freak out and spam all over the screen (ex: capes, hats, etc.), the characters would repeat their poses during cutscenes, and sometimes they wouldn’t even render properly at all.

It got to be so bad that I had to put the game down, and now I’m waiting for EA to release a patch.

Thankfully, it seems like the PlayStation and Xbox ports are working quite well, but to charge $70 for the “Standard Edition”, $80 for the “Deluxe Edition” (I’ve put them in quotes as the only differences is the inclusion of Han Solo’s A New Hope outfit, his blaster, Luke Skywalker’s A New Hope “Rebel victory” outfit, his lightsaber, a R2-D2 skin for BD-1, and a camo-gear skin for BD-1), and take up over 150 GB of storage space to only have the game not work on PC is a travesty.

I don’t care if EA is “going to release patches” as they should have fixed these bugs, glitches, and framerate issues in the testing phase. It’s the job of the publisher to ensure the game is fully polished, tested, and has minimal code bugs, so I don’t know how this game came in such a sorry state other than EA rushed it out for an early summer release date.

The last game didn’t have nearly as many problems as this one and the creators of Respawn Entertainment, Jason West and Vince Zampella, are the people who created the Call of Duty franchise and Infinity Ward. So, I don’t think it’s a competency issue.

If I had to give a review of the game in its current state, I’d give it a 6/10 based on its story, gameplay, character development, and acceptable console ports alone. If EA fixes the game to the point where the console ports are similar to the PC ports, then I’d raise my score to an 8.5, but this game has to be fixed before I can give it a higher score.

Images Source: Featured Image: (EA/Disney/Star Wars) (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – Official Reveal Trailer – YouTube)

In Text Image 1: (EA/Disney/Star Wars) (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – Official Reveal Trailer – YouTube)

In Text Image 2: (EA/Disney/Star Wars) (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – Official Story Trailer – YouTube)

In Text Image 3: (EA/Disney/Star Wars) (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – Official Reveal Trailer – YouTube)