Star Wars: Jedi Survivor - The Force Is With Me Again

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Played via EA Play Pro

We live in a pretty weird time of our lives, there was a point where EA was a hated company for ruining franchises, the same case with Disney, and it all revolved around Star Wars. A billion dollar IP some assumed would have been short-lived.

Then somewhere we got Mandalorian, then a game called Jedi Fallen Order. With things being this bad, and Disney making more bad decisions elsewhere, how did it come to the point that we're finally getting good Star Wars media to consume? Well, because there are people that still love Star Wars, and then some.

Star Wars is no longer just a children's content to use for distraction, or for people with no interest other than seeing nice, expensively made on spectacle. It has become a franchise with all sorts of stories to tell, for all the mature audiences too. And I think as a sophomore title, Jedi Survivor really carries itself well enough to tell its own story.

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Judging by the beard, short, and morose look on his face, I'd say a lot has happened within 5 years of his time being a Jedi rebel working for Saw Gerrera. This mission in particular had a lot to present, as the cinematic cutscene took its time setting the tone and a ploy that is to come later on.

Cal is escorted by a band of marauders to the senator of Coruscant, Daho Sejan. But it was a ruse, since he needed valuable intel from him, Cal takes down the empire soldiers guarding him and managed to take down his ship, as well as escape from the scene. And it turns out the Marauders were his teammates in disguise, all working for Gerrera for the rebellion.

It's a nice deception at first, kind of taking me away from reeling with the doom and gloom of the setting. Cal does the mission well, being dubbed as a Jedi Knight now, he carries it with extreme precision. The game introduces its combat, platforming, levelling system, and exploring all in the span of 20 minutes. It definitely wasn't trying to waste anytime to make room for what's to come.

Combat is sort of the same as the previous game, but having instead larger than life changes and a couple of new additions too. Basic attack, mixed with special that consumes force meter as well as force push and pull. Attacks can be blocked, deflected and parried easily than before.

That easy part can be adjusted in the expanded difficulty settings, creating a controlled and suited experience. Lightsaber stances can also be changed from dual wield to Double-Bladed Saber. Each useful in specific situations, like using the DB to deflect a turret blaster easily.

You can slingshot to walls, create a time stasis area to completely slow the enemy down, mind trick them into working for you, and so on. A lot of new abilities, including ones I've unlocked from the skill tree, where I can use both force push and pull to wedge enemies together. It's basically saying "you already know the game, just try out these new things, go crazy".

And I like that, within an hour, I was in an espionage mission. This had comradery, good banter, and it seemed like the new crew I was with, are likeable people. After getting inside the senator's ship and getting the info we need, we got ambushed by the Ninth Sister, and lost three of our crew members.

The tone has changed, Cal is now distraught and started chasing after her to finally take her down. Which ensues a boss battle that is sort of set as the final stage for this mission. I remember fighting her last time and it was a difficult battle. This time, Cal knew how to fight. After winning, this was a moment where Cal could use his anger against her, but he tries to reach her, knowing she actually was a member of the Jedi order once. But alas, she refuses to join him and dies.

It would seem the Empire is gaining more forces and is now trying to corner him, Cal and whoever left of his group, made the run for it. They were many close calls, but one Cal missed out that led to his last crew member being blasted off. Cal enters lightspeed, and makes way to his old friend Greez to repair his ship in Koboh.

His old droid buddy, tries to comfort him by playing holograms of his old crewmembers from Fallen Order. This first mission for me set the stone for what Cal's journey is supposed to be about. He's a knight, but as a person he still has room to grow. He's not his older self, due to the grief of him losing his friends, and fighting a losing battle as the Empire grows stronger.

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Before I get to the rest of the game, I really do want to appreciate the visuals in here. They went further by creating levels of the game that are really far out and are oozing with visual candy. Sadly, with the state of the PC port, and my lack of owning an M.2 SSD kind of led me here. It was a struggle getting this to run smoothly, too.

I've dealt with odd long loading times, stuttering, FPS hiccups, animation bugs, animations of finisher moves not registering, and so on. It was much worse before the patch arrived, I had to download my new GPU driver to run it smoother. Much better, but the issues are still sort of there. Hopefully more patches help things along.

But being able to play most of the time, exploring Koboh has been really nothing short of amazing. There are a lot of areas to unlock and explore, filled with items to find and rumor quests to take in. Some are locked because of story progression, but I'd say I had a nice few hour distractions while following the main quest track.

As usual for some games these days, platforming require some puzzle solving, meaning I have to look around, and figure out how to proceed. The hand holding in this is barely present, and I had to use my eyes and my brain to solve them. Half the times it feels like Uncharted, but other times it feels like playing Tomb Raider too. But kind of the best of both.

Koboh is big, and by the time I arrived to meet Greez at his pub, I was being overfilled with requests to check areas out. The rewarding part of exploration is finding things get me all kind of rewards; lore items and force memories gift me XP, finding boxes unlock more character customization options, crystals for increased force meter and health bar, and so on.

This sequel is grander in scope, just the first mission and Koboh alone had me playing for over 9hrs now. And that's not even half the runtime. Turns out the side activities are half of the game, the main story is 20hrs long. And yes, while it is a lengthy title, there are plenty of challenging fights pushing me constantly.

Various enemies come in different classes, and there are 5–7 enemies present in each fight. A lot of crowd controlling and situational awareness is involved to survive them. Sometimes I'd be fighting giant beasts before mind trick them into beating the raiders and stormtroopers into pulp. There are so many ways to fight, and a lot to unlock, despite that, combat isn't still fluid.

Which is the same problem the first one had, but I guess if it works well, maybe the fixing isn't needed. Also, with so many skills to unlock, and abilities to use, the game basically evolved from an action game under the guise of a souls-like to an RPG souls-like under the guise of an action game. Take the perk system, it literally provides a lot of passive bonuses upto 10 slots of them.

I was constantly glued to the screen looking for places to explore, how to fight either the inhabitant wild-life or tougher enemies I face, all this alongside in one single planet. There are moves and mechanics even borrowed from Jedi Knight titles, overwhelmingly.

But the big star of this adventure is Cal and BD-1, they're Star Wars literal Ratchet n Clank. The bond they have continues to amaze me, Cal comes to grow as a person with his trauma, while BD-1 bold as he is, has ways of helping him in unique situations. Showing the droid is sticking around for long. And Cal's real journey of fully maturing is another big addition, that and all the interesting characters they meet with. On top of what else is going on.

With the Empire further expanding their power, a lot of people are being careful about who they choose their allegiances with. But even more is the moral grey area around Jedis. Cal finds out darker history from the order he grew and learned from. Contemplating about whether his struggles have been worth or not.

As I've mentioned before, after Mandalorian, Disney has taken Star Wars very seriously. With other series like Bad Batch and Andor that showcase a lot of intrigue and powerful moments. Jedi Survivor is telling me different stories, one about choosing your fights, and other is about choosing your friends.

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