Star Wars - Jedi Survivor - Why a by-the-numbers approach can be a good thing

 Let me start with a disclaimer.

If you put a lightsaber in my hands, physical or virtual, I'm happy. Pretty much every time a game did so, I ended up playing the crap out of it. I can't even remember how many times 15-year old me played through The Phantom Menace game, and when you take off the rose-tinted glasses, it was not a good game. 

And hell, when the game actually was good, it was another story entirely.
Jedi Knight Outcast, for example, I played through so much, that it actually ended up being the first game I played online with strangers, in random duels, and probably the first time I got seriously into modding with skins, something that would continue well past the lifetime of its sequel, Jedi Knight Academy. 

JKA had a special place in my heart for a long time. Not only did I play through the story multiple times, making different choices, trying different lightsaber configurations (for the first time, you could use a double bladed lightsaber or dual sabers), but I played the crap out of multiplayer, especially Powerduel - a 2v1 duel duel in which I always preferred to be the 1 vs the 2. If you're a long time reader, you know I'm not one to toot my own horn, so I will just say this: I was good.

You might believe I digress. But trust me, you'll see where I'm going with the trip down memory lane when it's done.

Other games down the line to offer the chance to wield a lightsaber did not do it quite as well or fluidly, making the weapon feel more like a stick or truncheon and not so much a superheated plasma blade cutting through everything, and the wielder's movement to be more stilted. Yes, even the much-lauded by its nostalgic fanbase Episode 3.

That was until The Force Unleashed.

A game that -at the time- was touted as canon, and did fit in with the established lore at the time, provided you made the "good" choice at the finale. It was a game that made the player use the Force to feel like a force of nature, pushing, pulling, dashing, jumping, electrocuting and slicing freely. The lightsaber itself was ...let's be honest, meh. But the game made up for it by not focusing on it. However, another thing the game did well, was provide iconic moments. From wreaking havoc on Kashyyyk as Vader, to using the Force to tear apart a freakin' Star Destroyer, to fighting your way to the Emperor through everyone (including Vader). And then, came the forced tacked-on sequel that dragged the plot way past its prime while adding very little to the gameplay, killing the mood almost entirely. There were just 5 Star Wars games released for the next 8 years, and that was 2 LEGO games, 2 Battlefront titles and one MMO. It was that bad. Let that sink in.

But then, the stars aligned, and Fallen Order happened (minor spoilers for it in the next paragraph.)

A story-driven single player game, with beautiful visuals, truly engaging story, amazing lightsaber parry-based combat (Souls-lite, to be honest), quite adequate puzzles, open-ish world exploration, and peppered with truly iconic moments from start to finish: from the train escape at the start, to exploring Dathomir, to high-jacking an AT-AT and meeting Saw Gerrera on Kashyyyk, to exploring Ilum to rebuild your saber and stumbling into the early makings of Starkiller Base, to reliving Order 66 as a young padawan, to that ending setpiece which I respect too much to spoil, despite being a 5 years old spoiler at this point.

It's a good thing then, that Survivor takes all that made Fallen Order work, and simply dials it up.

There is no reinvention of mechanics, no reinvention of the formula of the game, no mini-games added in (much...). Also, it dodges the pitfall many sequels fall into, by not resetting Cal's earned abilities. The approach of the game is "you pick up where you left off", with the same mechanics, and the gameplay remains largely the same, but more. For the most part, the new baseline is Fallen Order's endgame. New additions include more lightsaber modes/stances (more on that later), a few types of discoverable "tokens" to exchange for cosmetics or abilities at vendors, Force trials and discoverables that unlock cosmetics and a few improvements in hp and the like, new abilities both for Cal and BD, and, for a couple of planets, mounts. The needle moves, but not by much.

Where Survivor does move the needle is by taking the established story up to that point and progresssing it organically, evolving and adding characters, creating jaw-dropping setpieces and sequences, while at the same time cementing its place in the "present" of Star Wars canon (between Episodes III and IV), casting ties to both the canonical High Republic past, as well as the future that we already know about. 

It's not only a puzzle piece that fits in perfectly; it's a puzzle piece that plenty of other crucial puzzle pieces connect unto, from Clone Wars, Mandalorian, the films themselves, novels et al. I will not go too much into the plot, as it deserves to be experienced unspoiled. All I will say is that yes, it's good, and more than lives up to the standards Fallen Order had established. Even if I did see some things coming, some others caught me completely off guard.

Jumping back into the gameplay additions, most of them are self-explanatory: bigger and more complex areas require traversal aid (hence new moves and mounts), fresh puzzle ideas require fresh abilities etc. 

Let's focus a little more on the combat itself. Survivor retains the Souls-lite approach, with successful combat being a balance of offense and defense, parries and dodging, with the occasional ability thrown in. Especially in higher difficulties, engagements often feel like threading a needle with another needle, where missing hurts.

You retain the single saber and dual-bladed saber stances from Fallen Order, and the dual saber special attack from before now becomes a dedicated dual saber stance that focuses on offense. The two new stances are a crossguard stance that fills in the "slow two-handed behemoth of a weapon" weapon slot, and an interesting blaster stance that is a versatile mix of rapier-like saber melee and blaster ranged attacks. This brings the total to 5 possible stances, of which 2 can be active at any point, freely changeable at any rest point. 

You will quickly settle down to your own preferred playstyle, but may find that some engagements or bosses are better suited to one type instead of another (perhaps maybe even one you are not well accustomed to). Single is balanced, dual-bladed has reach and is good for defense and crowd control but lacks an offensive punch, dual sabers are fast and offer the best offense but lack in defense, crossguard is devastating in both but really slow and creates large openings on your defense when attacking, while the blaster is a jack of all trades type, and the only one to offer ranged offensive abilities besides deflecting blaster shots or throwing your saber.

I can't, in all good conscience, not also say a few words on the launch of the game and specifically its poor PC performance at launch (though longtime readers will know technical aspects is not something I like to focus on).

To my eyes, Fallen Order at maximum settings and Survivor and its maximum settings, at the same resolution and the same hardware don't look too different visually. Certainly not enough to justify the spike of hardware requirements and, most importantly, the very spotty performance of Survivor in its first few days. Console players were having a blast, but PC players with demonstrably superior hardware were not, simply because of bad code optimization.

While I did not have performance issues bad enough to cause me not to want to play, when I did it hurt my experience and the immersion (particularly in cutscenes). I was able to play at epic (the penultimate option) settings with raytracing on comfortably enough with a Ryzen 3800x and an RTX 3060 (not Ti), hovering around 40-50 fps. A couple of patches later, the same rig offers a demonstrably smoother experience, hovering at around 60-70 fps with the same parameters.

So while I did not personally have game-breaking performance issues at launch, I couldn't guarantee you wouldn't either if you were on PC.

But now? I can guarantee that you are much less likely to. And the game is worth it.